Ten Keyboard Shortcuts for Students and Teachers

Who doesn't love a faster way to get work done? Keyboard shortcuts can help you work efficiently on your computer. Here is a list of ten essential keyboard shortcuts to learn to increase productivity.

Note: If you are on a Mac, use command instead of control unless otherwise noted.

1. Copy, Cut, & Paste

I am sure most of us already know the keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting, but do you know there is a third option, cut? Cut automatically deletes and copies the information highlighted. When students are working on word processing tasks and need to move a sentence or word they are better off using cut and paste instead of the more popular copy and paste.

2. Undo

Most applications include an undo button, but you can save time by using the keyboard shortcut. It may even work in situations where there is no undo button, like in your URL bar.

3. Select All

Select all is convenient in many situations. Use it when you want to highlight all of the text in a single text box or on the whole document page, if you want to select all objects on a slide or all slides in a presentation, and when you want to highlight a website in the URL bar.

4. Delete Character to the Right

When we hit backspace it deletes the character to the left. Once in a while it's useful to delete in the other direction. Here's a keyboard shortcut that helps you do exactly that!

5. Search and Find

This is a page-skimmer's best friend! Use this shortcut to search for a word or phrase. This works on websites and within documents. I like to teach the children to search and find when they are looking for specific information on a website. This is my favorite hidden gem shortcut tool!

6. Screenshot

This shortcut allows you to select a portion of your screen for a screenshot. There is another shortcut for taking a screenshot of the entire screen, but it is rare to need that type of screenshot over this one.

7. Zoom

Use this shortcut to quickly zoom in and out on your browser. It also works in other select applications.

8. Bookmark

If you want to quickly add a website to your bookmarks use this keyboard shortcut. 

9. Refresh Webpage

At least once a day a webpage does not load properly or needs to be refreshed because updates occurred after the page loaded. Save time by using the shortcut instead of the refresh tool near the URL bar.

10. New Tab

If you have your mouse in your hand it's easy enough to click the + to open a new tab. If you're working on the keyboard use the keyboard shortcut instead to keep your work flowing.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels