Tips of the Week - Information Technology

Technology Tip of the Week - May 11, 2006

Layering Drawing Objects

Whenever you have more than one object on the page, it’s possible for one or more objects to overlap one another. This presents you with a problem: how can you make sure one object appears in front of, or in back of, another object? Word, PowerPoint (and most other drawing programs) solves this problem by layering objects, like a stack of papers. The first object you draw is on the bottom layer, and the last object you draw is on the top layer. Of course, you can change the order in which objects appear in front or back, and that’s the topic of this tip. Note that once you know how to do this in one program, it works the same in all the other Microsoft Office programs.

To Change the Order in Which Objects Appear on a Document:

Select the object,

Click the Draw button on the Drawing toolbar

Select Order, and select one of the following layering commands:

Bring to Front: Places the selected object to the very top layer of the document. All other objects will appear behind the selected object.

Send to Back: Places the selected object to the very back layer of the document. All other objects will appear in front of the selected object.

Bring Forward: Brings the selected object one layer up on the document

Send Backward: Sends the selected object one layer down on the document

The order in which you select and layer objects will determine the order in which they appear on the document. For example, the last object you bring to the front will always appear on the top layer.

Draw a few shapes using instructions from our last tip and try this out.

Also, Glenn Browning sent this reminder to me following the last tip regarding drawing in Word:
"Whenever you choose a drawing object in Word, a large text box appears. Any object drawn in that text box will be surrounded by a lot of white space unless the text box is resized. To avoid these extra steps, you can start the drawing outside of the default text box and place it where you want it. Or, once you have any object that can be selected (text box, graphic, other drawing object), selecting that object and then starting the drawing will allow you to place the drawing anywhere you want it without first creating the default textbox."

Thanks for the important information Glenn! This will clarify drawing objects for everyone.
For more help with this feature, please contact one of the faculty mentors - Tony Basilico (abasilico@ccri.edu) or Luis Malaret (lmalaret@ccri.edu) or one of the IT Instructional Support team (Norm Grant, Gene Grande or Linda Beith).

Website of the Week

A Nature Pod cast

Ever wonder what a pod cast sounds like? Listen to this pod cast on heart attacks, Uranus' tilt, universal constants, starlings, tree-rings, and the origins of gills and jaws at: http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/v440/n7088/nature-2006-04-27.mp3. This pod cast can be listened to either from your computer or downloaded to your iPod. How would you envision using this tool with your students? Did you know that URI is starting to use pod casts to do weekly updates to their campus community (see their pod cast site at: http://podcast.uri.edu/)? Their first pod cast was approximately 2 minutes long and addressed these topics:
-           Stolen laptop issues and countermeasures
-           McAfee AntiVirus software for Windows Mobile PDAs.
-           New music downloading service FREE for students while on any URI campus

What do you think, would you rather get your news this way versus e-mail?

Feel free to post your thoughts or opinions of this site in the Teaching Forum message board.

These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology instructional support team. If you have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu. View an archive of past technology tips at http://it.ccri.edu/Training/Tips/tip_week.shtml