Here is the Crescendo Music Education Podcast - Episode 54.
Hello, it's Debbie O'Shea here. And we're going to have a short IT Byt, IT short for Information Technlology, byt spelt with a y, a bit like computer lingo, bytes. So IT Byt, anyway, I'm going to have a chat to Stuart. It's only a fairly short episode. So Stuart from CKP Creative, we're going to talk Google Chrome, taming your book marks, Chrome extensions, a fabulous quick way to bookmark a page and folders for your bookmarks. We're going to video this episode, and it will eventually be available on YouTube. So for now, you can just imagine, we try to explain it through the audio version. But I hope you enjoy this episode, this little IT Byt.
And now I'm back with Stuart, and he's going to give us our first IT Byt.
I'm excited. Let's do it. Now. Everybody uses a browser. And the typical browser that everyone's using is Google Chrome. Now, we're going to reveal a few little mysteries. If you know these, fantastic, so your nerd level is really coming up here. And I have a great, great deal of respect right there. But if you don't know these things, they may very well blow your mind. And we're going to show you how to save some time. Now what I know is as somebody who does a lot of research, and I know that music teachers are always looking at ways to improve what they do and how they do it. Of course, they need to go to Crescendo first. But here we go. So you might want to be bookmarking a few interesting things. So now, if you're human, and I'm sure you are, I might be talking to a few bots out there but I really doubt it. But here we go. So you're going to have a collection or a cluster, you could insert a word in your head there of bookmarks. Okay, so it is a very standard situation for everybody to be in, now taming your bookmarks can be done in a couple of different ways. So I'm gonna go through in our very IT Byt, I'm going to show you how to tame them using some folders, and also how to actually bookmark something really quickly in a way that you may not have seen before.
Can I say before you go any further? Are you seriously going to help me tame my bookmarks? Because Stuart, you haven't seen my bookmarks?
I tell you what, I I'm going to say right now, I'm going to say there's probably a cluster of bookmarks. They're in no order. And then when you pop out the little chevron down the side, I'm going to say that pretty goes on for an eternity.
Okay, yeah, maybe.
Okay. All right, that, that just proves that you're human. It's totally okay. And get ready. We're going to whip all of that into shape. And I'm hoping that we can all learn something along the way as well. So I tell you what, without further ado, could you share your screen, please. And we're gonna dive in. So this is a real music teacher, on a real browser with real bookmarks. Here we go.
Seriously, now really, talk about being vulnerable. And this will end up on YouTube at some point as well. So we will describe it because it's originally, well in the first instance, this will come out, obviously, in audio only. So you know, we will describe what we're doing. But eventually it will be on YouTube and yo'll be able to see. Before you start, can I tell you that I did start trying to do something. If you look along here for my first bookmarks, I did reduce them to be just icons so that I could get more along the top. So if you have a look here Canva, I haven't done it yet. So Canva is bookmark. I mean, I live on Canva. And so all I have done with those is get rid of the writing so it's just the icon. So you can see my first bookmarks here. That's what I've done. But it's helped because I've now got more bookmarks visible, but they're still not really organised. So go Stuart work your magic.
Okay, I'm gonna say you're already magic because this is one of my first tips because cluttering up with words. I mean, we all know what the icons are. We live in them every day. A lot of these areas, for the ones that you're still learning what they look like things that aren't obvious, then absolutely having their names next to them, but you can actually shorten them down as well. So just in case, you know, you might need to go Oh, which one is that. And sometimes you might be bookmarking something and those little icons which represent the website, there might be multiple icons. So this is where you might want to leave a short descriptive word next to each of them, so that it makes sense to you. So but that is fantastic. So you are on the right path Debbie, you've already got the gold stars of course. Do people still give out gold stars, I hope they do, because I still love getting gold stars. Alrighty, so here we go. What we're going to do next is we're going to have a bit of a look at basically organising them. Now, one of the things that I'm spotting a bit of consistency across the top is that you've got some socials icons. So now, YouTube is actually a social platform as well. And for those that are listening in, so what we've spoken about is the top area inside Google Chrome, and you can actually collect bookmarks across the top of the page, it allows you to be really, really organised. If you don't have bookmarks, then what I encourage you to do is have a bit of an explore and create some. So what do you say I show you the quickest way of creating a bookmark. Now there's all sorts of shortcut keys and all sorts of things. But this one's visual, and very fast. So now, we already have a tab open up the top. Now this is a bit of a sneak preview, because we are going to have a look at Chrome extensions shortly. But let's just click on Chrome extensions.
Yes, here we go, let's do it.
Absolutely. So now, if you want to go back and look at Chrome extensions. Now, if you're saying to yourself, What the heck's a Chrome extension? Well think about it as it's like a bookmark, but next leveled up to where it can actually do things for you as well. Now, if you would like to move your mouse to where the Chrome extensions are just as a bit of a sneak preview up the top there, Debbie, just the top of the page. There it is, that's the one there. So all of those are your Chrome extensions. Now, sometimes they're hidden. And if you're playing along at home, you can actually click on the Chrome extension, it looks like a little puzzle piece. And you'll see that some have got a blue pin, and others don't. Now, I can see some fantastic Chrome extensions in there, which is fantastic. So what you can do is, if you wanted to hide one of these, if you weren't using it anymore, you can actually unpin it. So which means like just for example, if you were no longer using, if you scroll down, let's have a look and see if we can hide one, ok text blaze, oh that's a bit of a favourite. I'm going to hold myself back from talking about text blaze. But let's just say if you want it to reveal that, if you click on that little pin, it's actually going to appear up the top there.
It pops back up the top, here.
It pops back up.
I hid it because I didn't know how to use it. so anyway.
That's it. Well, we'll look at it. It's a fabulous thing. Well, I think, well, let's, let's put a pin in that. Ah see what I did there, okay, I see. So now speaking your pins with that blue pin. Now, just so you can visualize this, if you're listening to the audio only. On the top of Chrome, there's a little puzzle piece that we've clicked on. It's revealed Chrome extensions, if you don't have any Chrome extensions, that's okay, your collection is going to start fairly shortly, what you can do is you can pin and unpin to hide them. And it's a fantastic way of keeping organised. And you can scroll down there, Debbie. And if you can unpin by clicking on the blue pin there in front of text blaze, you'll notice it disappears. It's fantastic. So so that is the Chrome extension area. And look, I know we got slightly sidetracked but it was in the field of view, I had to reveal what we're going to be talking about. But let's make a bookmark now. A traditional way of making a bookmark, you could, How would you normally do it without doing it? Would you be clicking on the star or would you be clicking on OK?
I would click up here on the three dots right at the top right hand side and I would go bookmarks and it would pop out and then I'd go bookmark this tab.
Fantastic. Well done and there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that. But are you ready for a lightning quick method?
Yes. Oh yes, please. Anything that saves me time.
As teachers and I know, I am one. So we want to save time, seconds are precious. We don't get them back. So let's make best use of our time when we're bookmarking tabs. Okay, here we go. So now the three dots, which are typically next to a little photo or an icon or whatever you got sitting up there, you can actually do a bit of a shortcut. I'll show you that. So you click on the little three dots, and they're called an ellipsis. There you go, if you knew that already. Fantastic. Now, when you click on bookmarks, again, as you did there, when you hover over that one fantastic, you'll actually see that there's a shortcut. Now, these change, when you're on a Mac, or a PC, now, I'm going to say that a lot of people are on PCs right about now, but the actual shortcuts, slightly change. So here we go to bookmark this tab on a PC, you could hit Ctrl D. So you just have to locate the Ctrl key on your keyboard, and go Ctrl D. So it's visually showing for those watching on YouTube and watching on the on the video podcast as well. You can actually hit the Ctrl D key to make a bookmark but are you ready for something visual? I'm going to say that teachers are very visual beings. So are you ready for something that's so quick and easy, you'll you'll kick yourself. Okay, let's close those little ellipses. So you don't have to go to those three dots anymore. You can click away from somewhere. Fantastic. Are you ready for this? Okay, now there's a little padlock that's on the URL, which is the fancy name for the website. So this is just another website. Really? Okay. So now, hover over that. Now, if you click and drag that directly next to YouTube, for example.
No, that's not going to, no!
Click and drag, do it. And release. Release it.
No! That's exciting. That's how easy it is. No, I'm gonna do another one. You keep talking.
Okay. So here we go. Hang on, you got to do the most important website. Of course, let's do Crescendo. Here we go. So do it. That's a lot easier, isn't it? So now, here's the thing. Be warned. After you've learnt this secret, please share this with as many people as you as you can as well, you're going to end up with a cluster of oh, what bookmarks,
Something like this. Are you ready? It looks something like that. Yeah. Something like this. Ready?
Yep. It's it all. They're all the hidden ones. Oh, my goodness. It's all there. Absolutely. So here's the thing. It's kind of like when you go shopping at Christmas, you end up with a streamer. That's a streamer. Right. So now, I'm going to show you a really quick way to organise some of your existing bookmarks. Okay, here we go. And for those that are just listening, this will be very, very straightforward. Here we go. And for those watching, even more straightforward. So what we're going to do is just right click on one of your bookmarks, so why not? Let's right click on Facebook, the massive time consuming platform? Well, apart from when you're on a wonderful group and communicating with your fellow teachers, Facebook is a wonderful thing. Alrighty, here we go. What we're going to do, if you right click on that bookmark that's sitting there in your bookmarks area, at the top of Chrome, you're going to notice a few interesting things. And you're going to be right clicking. So you can in fact, open this in a new tab. So now we're opening things in new tabs perilous journey, it's really good because you can keep what you're doing open and you can also continue your journey somewhere else, which is fantastic. But here we go. What we're going to do right now, is we've right clicked on one of the bookmarks, we're going to move down until we see on the page, Add page, Add folder. Let's click on that one,
Add Folder.
Okay, so now you're presented with, there are a few bookmarks in there and the bookmark folders there are probably quite a lot of people have gotin there, bigpond, Microsoft MSN, yes, and everyone's been using computers for a long time. You'll have those folders.
I didn't put them there, though.
Well they're put there by this, yeah, look, I'm not even gonna go there with systems doing things that you potentially don't want them to. But anyway, let's move on.
Let's ignore that, so I've got New Folder in a popup window.
You do indeed so that'll be highlighted in your system cover. Now what we're going to do there, just for this example is we're going to type in the word social. Now keeping it short, like you said before with editing a bookmark. We're going to do that next as well. And I think that's quite enough. For us, we're like diving in this is a bit of a few byts here. Now what we're going to do, we've typed in the word social. Now we're going to hit save, it's created a folder in the bookmarks area. Now, you may be wanting to then go to the bookmarks manager and have a bit of a look and open this other window up and be tempted to go the long path, let's go the short path. What we're going to do now is just simply drag bookmarks into that folder. Let's drag Facebook in, over the top of that folder, let's do it and release, drop, and it's gone. That's it. It's gone. Now it hasn't gone anywhere, it's gone into the folder. Let's do one more. Let's do. Let's do YouTube.
YouTube because it's right beside it, I will grab that and drop it in.
Absolutely drop that in. Now something a little bit more controversial at the moment, Twitter, it's in the news headlines.
Let's drag in Twitter and look there's a red dot which means there could be something in there for me to read. And drop.
Absolutely lets release that. Now, this is a fantastic way for you to organise all of your social tabs, sorry your social bookmarks, you can open them in tabs if you like. So they now all live in that folder. Now, you may have a collection. Here's another way that you can use this. And I think this will be enough for everybody's, probably right now exploding minds, we don't want that. Here we go, you might have a collection of areas that you go to when you first open your browser. So you can create a little quick launch without using anything other than the inbuilt mechanisms inside Chrome, you can create a little bit of a quick launch right there that you can open up with one click. So it's a fantastic little thing. So let's have a look. If you click on that social folder now, we will notice that they fold down. Fantastic.
There they are.
Now, absolutely. So that's a really quick and easy way to access all of your it could be social, it could be your accounting, it could be doesn't matter what it is, it's a fantastic way to collate and organise all of your bookmarks, and so that you don't end up with a giant streamer. Okay, so now there are a few other actions you can do. Let's do one more, just one more, if you right click on that folder. So guess what you can do, you can open all three of those tabs. And we won't do that. Because we'll dive into social media and away you go, we might lose you forever.
Yes.
Okay. But you can actually open all of those three tabs with one click. So, think of the time you're going to save by creating bookmarks by just dragging them down into that top area, and then organising them into folders as well. You're gonna save so much time, because I know how busy teachers are. And I know that we just want to save time. And this is a great way of doing it.
That is wonderful. I think there's more I want to know, I think we have to do this again. But I think this is absolutely plenty for our first IT Byt. The next one will be even shorter, because we won't have that nice, lovely introduction, oh I will stop sharing my screen. So you can stop looking at my ribbon, what did you call it my ribbon of bookmarks.
That's it. That's it. But so here's the thing. Now, in a future episode, we'll see how Debbie's taming her bookmarks, you can too.
Alright, I've got homework. Alright.
That's it, but it's not home work, it's not home work. It's just a way that you can save time. That's what we want to do. So that's what we've even done that in the name of these segments. It's an IT Byt. That's a short one. So let's keep your time productive. And we're going to come up with some more ways that you can do that in future episodes.
Absolutely. Thank you so much Stuart. See you at the next IT Byt
See you soon. Bye.
Thank you for joining me for this podcast. Don't forget, you'll find the show notes and transcript and all sorts of information on crescendo.com.au. If you've enjoyed the podcast or found it valuable, you might like to rate it on your podcast player and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it if you did. All I couldn't be as the best version of me. All you can do is be the best you. Until next time, bye.
As we know laughter relieves stress. Don't lose sight of the funny side of life. All these sea monster jokes are just cracking me up.
