How do I change mouse pointer size while handwriting in OneNote?

O

Omer

The pointer while inking in Onenote is a small DOT. That is invisible for
teaching purposes where the students should follow the pointer hovering on
something that I show on mu TabletPC projected on the board. This pointer
should (and MUST) be optionally made a larger shape (a pen?). Just because of
this, I am unable to use Onenote, and I prefer other simple inking
applications. If this cannot be done with Onenote, howcome people use it for
teaching purposes? Students simply cant see a single DOT moving rapidly on
the projection screen!
 
J

John Guin [msft]

Hello Omer,

If you are trying to use the ink pointer as a "laser pointer," you can
change the pen size to 12 or point or something similarly large. It shows
very well.

To do this, click View | Toolbars and show the Writing toolbar. Now you
choose the dropdown for the pen, choose a pen (as opposed to a highlighter)
and customize it to be large.

If you are also wanting to write on the page during the lecture as well, it
can be cumbersome to change back to a thin pen for writing. I was just
playing around with the UI and figured out the highlighter pen (chosen from
the Writing Tools toolbar) shows as a rectangle. It seems like with a tiny
bit of practice, you could use the highlighting rectangle pen as a pointer,
and change back to a thin pen for writing.
 
O

Omer

Dear John,

Your suggestion of switching to highlighter pen while not writing is a good
one, if it is the quickest thing to do. Your extremely prompt response and
continuing interest is beyond my appreciation. I have practiced your
suggestion a bit, and it seems to work as long as I am concentrated (although
very awkward, cause I am capturing the screen with camtasia, and the video
looks really funny with all gestures quickly trying to switch pens all the
time...) I am sure that I will forget or get exhausted about forgetting
switching pens while teaching hours of math related lectures :-(

Why not a cursor in the shape of a pen!?

Omer
 
K

Kathy Jacobs

Omer,
Do you teach live or just via Camtasia recordings? If all is done via
Camtasia recordings, then you might want to play with the pen settings in
Camtasia. To get to them, bring up Effects--> Options and go to the Cursor
tab. All kinds of fun things you can change to make the cursor more obvious.
If you want to go even further, Betsy Weber just blogged about pointers in
Camtasia here:
http://visuallounge.techsmith.com/2008/04/post_1.html

--
Kathy Jacobs, Microsoft MVP OneNote and PowerPoint
Author of Kathy Jacobs on PowerPoint
Get PowerPoint and OneNote information at www.onppt.com
or on my blog, http://geekswithblogs.net/VitaminCH/Default.aspx

I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived
 
O

Omer

OMG! I didn't know that Camtasia could do such things! I never thought it
should alter the way mouse cursor looks... It is close to perfect!

I teach live, but record for supplementary material purposes. So, this "at
least" helps a lot. At least for the recordings. And for the class, well,
howcome Onenote just does not do this? Does anyone hear me from development
department?!

Omer
 
K

Kathy Jacobs

So glad to help! You would be amazed at what you can do with Camtasia. If
you haven't played with Pan and Zoom in Camtasia 5, you should. It is
absolutely amazing!

--
Kathy Jacobs, Microsoft MVP OneNote and PowerPoint
Author of Kathy Jacobs on PowerPoint
Get PowerPoint and OneNote information at www.onppt.com
or on my blog, http://geekswithblogs.net/VitaminCH/Default.aspx

I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived
 
C

calvin.giles

The link for the site of the creator of pen attention is
'Teaching, Technology, and Learning |
(http://www.math.uaa.alaska.edu/~afkjm/techteach/)

all the information is there. If you have trouble with pen attention
he has made cursor attention too, which doesn't look for a pen input t
switch views, simply changes the cursor whenever you choose.

You can always use google to search for pen attention, the link
posted before is first on the results, if that doesn't work, somethin
is blocking websites for you
 
R

Rainald Taesler

John said:
I think he is suggesting a solution :) but the reply has become
dislocated from the original thread.
Click to expand...

Oh I see now. Thanks!
I could not even make a guess on what this posting might address :-(

It seems that the posting was meant as a reply to a thread long gone
from the MS Newsgroups servers but still mirrored somewhere else.
The intervals for scrolling things off the MS Server simply is too short
{siiiiigh}
It's called PenAttention, for use as a kind of laser pointer when
giving Powerpoint or OneNote demonstrations.

http://jkontherun.com/2008/04/24/penattention-a/
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link!
Seems to be a really interesting solution. As the main reason to use a
TabletPC is the usage if presentations in my lectures, I'll try it out.

Rainald
 
R

Rainald Taesler

Thanks for the additional information!
I could get access to the originally posted URL.

I downloaded the tool which seems to be really good add-on.

Thanks again
Rainald
 
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