Time-Saving Tech Tips For Teachers

Alan Harrison

Teachers know every second counts. Spare time just slips away, disappearing quicker than biscuits in the staffroom. Here are some easily digested tech tips that each take a minute to learn but can save hours over a tough teaching term.

Windows and Office apps

• CTRL-Z to undo. Stop fumbling for the Undo menu option or trying to fix unwanted changes. My left hand hovers unceasingly over the undo shortcut, ready to pounce when an edit goes awry. CTRL-Z works almost anywhere – Windows dialogues, Microsoft 365, Google Suite, Canva, Adobe products. If you regret changing something, don’t fix forward, hit CTRL-Z and try again.
• CTRL-Y to repeat format change. Use this if you are repeatedly changing fonts, styles or colours, or adding or deleting rows in a spreadsheet. CTRL-Y repeats the last formatting change so you don’t have to replay the same sequence of clicks.
• CTRL+ and CTRL- to zoom: works in all browsers and most apps, no more mouse clicking to zoom. CTRL-mousewheel works well also.
• CTRL-K to add a hyperlink: In Word, Outlook, Teams, and many more programs. Copy a web address, select text in your document or email, hit CTRL-K and then CTRL-V to paste as a hyperlink over the words you choose. No more clumsy, long hyperlinks within the text.
  • Bonus tip – shorten those links by deleting URL parameters used for tracking, options and settings – you can safely delete everything from the question mark onward from any links you share, and the link will still work. For example:
    • delete the ?si=… in YouTube links: https://youtu.be/MacVqujSXWE?si=Gv3EL0ywIuR7RNYH
    • delete everything after the product number in Amazon links https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Teach-Computer-Science-practice/dp/1913622576/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1JC5BY2FAJQ6U&dib=eyJ2Ijo-….
• Win-V clipboard history: Access your last 25 snippets, great for pasting from a selection of marking comments or phrases in parent reports. You can keep a bank of saved comments right there in your clipboard history.
• Ctrl + Shift + V: Paste without formatting: saves time when copying between apps. Works in 365 and G-Suite. (You can set this as the default paste behaviour in Word too!)
• Use .docx/.xlsx formats: They play nice with 365 and crash far less often. If you’ve ever wondered why that schedule or policy doc won’t just open in the browser, try saving again in the newest file format.
• Win-Shift-S (sometimes mapped to PrtScrn) to open snipping tool: snip a portion of the screen, no need to save a print screen and crop it! You can snip just the area of the screen you need, annotate it and paste into other apps.

• Office Mobile App / Google Drive Mobile app Snap paper docs or projector contents and convert to editable Word, Google Doc or PDF – both apps perform optical character recognition (OCR) to capture text from the camera image automatically, and straighten up the image back to a rectangular document.
• Collaborate on shared documents: instead of emailing copies around and collating replies, save a document you need others to update – maybe a curriculum choices booklet, mock exam timetable, duty schedule or laptop trolley booking sheet – in a shared folder and share the link, letting staff update it directly. And use Forms for ad-hoc data collection instead of drowning in email responses.

Accessibility

• Live subtitles in PowerPoint: Real-time captions and translation of your live speech for inclusive teaching. In the Slide Show ribbon, choose Subtitle Settings – if necessary, choose a language for subtitles that is different from your spoken language, and your speech will be translated on-the-fly! Furthermore, if you present your whiteboard through Teams and enable live subtitles and translation, then pupils can use their own devices to follow along, each in their own language!
• If not using PowerPoint, and you are on Windows 11, try Win + Ctrl + L for Live Captions: system-wide subtitles for any app, great for videos, Teams, or your own voice. On a Mac (macOS Ventura and later) or iPad (iOS 16+): go to System Settings → Accessibility → Live Captions. And if using Google Slides in Chrome
  you can use Chrome’s built-in Live Caption: go to Settings → Accessibility → Live Caption (currently supports English only).
• Immersive Reader: Built-in, extremely powerful accessibility tool for pupils: ditch coloured overlays, large font printouts and manual translation, give the student an affordable device and away they go. Includes font style and size options, background colour, picture dictionary, read aloud, translation and much more.
• Dictate: Use speech-to-text to type for you, or show pupils how to do this, if they struggle to type on a keyboard. A dictation feature is built into most Microsoft 365 apps, Google Docs and Apple Notes. Speech-to-text is pretty accurate in 2025 after a shaky start in the early days, so if you rejected it previously, why not give it another try?
• Voice note:  record narration over your slides in PowerPoint, and leave them as Feedback in Teams or by using the Mote app in Google Workspace for Education. Pupils can respond with voice notes too.
• Reading Progress in Teams Assignments: Assign a text for the pupils to read, you listen back and give them feedback. Tracks fluency, mispronunciations, and pace, great for literacy interventions or just allowing pupils another means of expressing what they know.
• Translation tools: Instant translation of documents or web pages, right there in Word, Edge or Google Docs. Ideal for EAL student support or parent comms in a diverse community. Don’t cut and paste phrases into Google Translate, just press a single button to do it all at once.

PowerPoint & Presenting

• Extended display, not duplicate: I know a lot of teachers still duplicate their screens. Extending your display has many benefits and it’s worth getting used to. Keep your main laptop/desktop screen free for teacher work, even while you play videos, and enable presenter view and all its benefits by using Win-P and Extend.
• Presenter view: Make notes underneath your slides – questions to ask, misconceptions to look out for, handouts to give out – and have them visible on your laptop screen while the slide show is playing on the projector or whiteboard by using Presenter view in PowerPoint, under the Slide Show ribbon, in the Monitors group.

• Slide Show essential shortcuts:
  • W/B = blank white screen, blank black screen, bring the focus back onto you, the teacher. This also works with comma (white) and full-stop (black) keys
  • Go to slide #: type a number then Enter to jump to numbered slide or G to show all slide thumbnails and choose a thumbnail to go to that slide.
  • Ctrl-P = switch to pen tool – draw on the slide with your mouse or stylus, then press E to erase and Esc to exit.

Email and Productivity

• Reduce email overload: Email is too big a topic to discuss in this article, so I wrote a blog about it which you can read here: Taming the email menace. In short, treat email as part of a larger problem: that of workflows. Apply systems thinking to your school and design email out of workflows. The blog links to a Sway you can share with your school SLT.
• Use @mentions in comments: In 365 and Google Suite: tag a colleague or student in a comment on a doc and they get notified. Reduces email and speeds up feedback loops.
• Use a department planner, one row per week with columns for each phase/key stage, team tasks, staffing reminders and whole-school events such as parents’ evenings. Here is a template.
• Sync your timetable to your calendar: Always know where you are, save time scheduling meetings and save notes about lessons right inside your Outlook or Google calendar. Sync your timetable from SIMS, Bromcom or Arbor to your usual office calendar. No more switching back and forth between your MIS timetable and your regular meetings calendar!
  • In SIMS, if SIMS ID is switched on, your timetable just appears in Outlook, check with your IT Manager if this is not working.
  • In Bromcom, go to “My Calendar”  “Calendar Sync”
  • In Arbor, go to “My Items”  “My Calendar” and copy the “Live Feed” and add it to your calendar app.

Why not try out some of these and build them into your workflow. Investing a few minutes now to learn some time-saving tricks will pay you back in the long term. So you have time to pop out and buy more biscuits for the staffroom!