How to Use Snip and Sketch in Lesson Planning

Welcome to our new series of “How to Guides” with technical tips and help, particularly using Office 365 and other online resources to give educators easy ways to make the most of the technology available.

Windows 10 includes a handy new tool called Snip and Sketch that allows you take a snip of either part or all of your screen. The Snip & Sketch app is useful for creating step-by-step instructions (like this blog post!), annotating over a map or piece of writing as a learning resource, sending a snip of an error message for technical support or just taking a snip of an interesting piece of information on a webpage to include in a power point presentation. Snip and Sketch can also be used is on virtual whiteboards to highlight important areas of text or images. 

Snip and Sketch could become your new best friend to help you create interesting lessons or lectures during another lockdown, if you are required to provide virtual learning for some of your students. 

To open Snip and Sketch click Start, type Snip & Sketch and then press enter:

Once the Snip and Sketch window is open click on the down arrow next to New

This gives you the option of taking the snip now i.e. what is on your screen now or delaying the snip for 3 or 10 seconds. The delayed snip options are useful if you need to take a snip of a menu or a page that isn’t currently open on your screen. 

You will then see the 4 options:

• Rectangular snip

• Freeform snip

• Window snip

• Full-Screen snip

Rectangular Snip allows you to highlight and snip a rectangular area of your screen. This can be useful if there is a square or rectangular shaped box that you need to take a snip of.

Freeform Snip allows you to highlight and snip a custom shaped area of your screen. This can be useful if there is an irregular shaped area you need to take a snip of

Window Snip allows you to take a snip of a particular open window. This can be useful if you want to take a snip of a webpage

Full-Screen Snip allows you to take a snip of the whole of your screen. This can be useful if you need to take a snip of the whole of your desktop

Once you have taken the snip you can use the editing tools to annotate, highlight and crop the snip:

Touch Writing allows you to write over your snip if you have a touch screen. Otherwise you can use your mouse/track pad

Ballpoint pen, Pencil and Highlighter allow you to select option like colour and thickness of line and then write, draw or highlight over you snip

Eraser allows you to erase any of the Ballpoint pen, Pencil or Highlighter edits you have made to the snip

Ruler helps you to draw a straight line over your snip

Image Crop lets you crop your snip

Once you have finished editing your snip you have a few options on what to do with it:

Zoom allows you to zoom into your snip

Save As gives you the option of saving your snip as either an JPG, PNG or GIF image type

Copy copies the snip to your clipboard and from there you can paste the snip into something like an email or a word document

Share gives you the sharing options like attaching the snip to an email or posting the snip to your social media pages

So why not give it a go next time you are creating lesson resources?

The Resources section of the Kent-Teach website is full of insightful articles and links to some great resources. Kent-Teach resources cover everything from seasonal classroom activities and crafts, to more niche topics such as how to support digital technologies in the classroom or how to encourage positive behaviour in the classroom.