Handicapping your Productivity with a Little Mouse Unfortunately, near-total reliance on a mouse (As in, using it for almost every computer process except typing) will dramatically and unnecessarily handicap your computer use and waste untold hours, and ultimately days, of your time. This is because whenever you have to switch from typing mode to use a mouse, your hand (typically right) must move off of the keyboard and over to the mouse and then back again. For a very simple operation like bolding a word or copying and pasting some text, the time taken to move hands off the keyboard and back is insignificant by itself but adds up to an incredible amount of time when added up. When you consider that computers are here to stay, and for the forseeable future, we will continue to use QWERTY keyboards and a mouse or other cursor-based hardware to navigate the virtual spaces of software, hardly any grind skill could be more important than maximizing the use of both devices. Since the keyboard is how we input data, our hands actually produce* when they are kept at the keyboard. The more time they stay on the keyboard, the more time we produce and the more efficiently we use our time.
I find that Mac users tend to know their shortcuts, but if you are a Mac user and need to familiarize yourself and work more efficiently visit the Apple Shortcut list.
Extra Credit:
Open the document called hot_keys_practice below (or Teachers "R" Drive, Instructional Technology, Career, hot_keys_practice). Practice the exercise without using your mouse. When you are comfortable with the commands and can complete it in less than 15 minutes, arrange time during class (if you have finished current work) or after school and do the exercise in front of Mr. Rafter.
You may ractice on your own as many times as you want. Your live demonstration for Mr. Rafter will count as part the extra credit. Once you have finished the demonstration, send the hot_keys_list to yourself in an email as an attachment.It has many more useful combinations for you to use as a student, including the special characters for foreign language. BCC Mr. Rafter in the email as proof that you sent the list home.
Keep the list by your home computer and take advantage of learning a new shortcut each week . . . you will be amazed at your increased efficiency a year from now!
Internet Shortcuts Just for your own benefit, check this out!