A student emails me asking for a letter of recommendation. Before I respond, I want to refresh my memory of the student, beginning with the work the student produced in my course. I go to “Everything” and type in the student’s last name, and as I type, filenames that match the characters begin to appear. By the time I type in the last letter of the student’s name, I have all of the files at my disposal. How cool is that?
Everything is not the only Windows indexing and search tool out there, but it is free. Its search is limited to just the filenames. If you’re willing to pay the price, X1 will search filenames and file content.
Once you have Everything installed, create a keyboard shortcut for it for quick access. (See this blog post for instructions on creating hot keys.)
[One person asked how is this different from the built-in Windows search. It is much, much faster.]
Very cool. I have the student write a draft of the recommendation. Then I review it, edit, and return to student for review and once revised send it onward or let the student do that if possible. Interestingly, though not surprising, most students do not write a draft. They seem to think that we can just easily write a recommendation easily. Putting the responsibility on them I think is important. Many of the recommendations they write are excellent and leave little room for editing. I also use this as an assignment in my Intro to Human Services class which is a lot about developing a career, resumes, long term plans in the field. Thanks for this excellent tip as this would be a great resource to share also with students! Polly
Interesting idea, Polly! Thanks!