Finding new technology so you don't have to
Some people, for a large number of reasons, have an easier time understanding written content when it is read aloud. The course management systems are getting better at this—such as Canvas’s Immersive Reader—but they still have a ways to go…. Read moreRead Aloud for Firefox and Chrome
Let’s start with the easiest solution. Browser bookmarks bar Your web browser bookmarks bar sits directly under the search/web address bar. If it’s not there, turn it on. In Firefox, click the 3-line icon in the top right corner of… Read moreLooking for new ways to handle web browser bookmarks?
Chrome for Windows now has live captioning. (The same functionality is coming for Chrome for Macs.) For any video you play in Chrome, you can display captions for that video even if the video itself is not captioned. Chrome “listens”… Read moreLive captioning in Chrome for Windows
I have three screens, and one of them is relatively small. Sometimes I’ll have browser tabs open on all three screens. For the tab that’s open on the smaller screen, I want to zoom in to make the text bigger…. Read moreFirefox: Zoom in on only one tab
The problem: I have a file folder that contains assignments that I have not yet updated for next term. How do I remember that I have not updated these, besides using a clunky README file? There are a lot of… Read moreAdd sticky notes to folders, files, programs, webpages
You’ve typed something into a box in your web browser—something very well written, perhaps the first page of what will become the Great American Novel. You close the webpage before clicking the “submit” button. When you go back to the… Read moreRecovering content from a web form
What is the web cache, what are cookies, and why does clearing them solve so many browser issues? How do web browsers work? Websites are collections of code—that code is called HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The code is stored on… Read moreCaches and cookies explained
The “Type here to search” box in the lower left corner of Windows 10 is handy for searching all kinds of things. Except the Internet. Windows forces you to use their Bing search engine inside of their Edge browser. But… Read moreSearch Deflector makes Windows 10 search better
This is a mishmash of stuff that I’ve been collecting. Enjoy! Be kind to your eyes: 20-20-20. We are all spending way more time in front of our computers than we did, say, in February 2020. I’ve heard from colleagues… Read moreBe kind to your eyes, find your phone, see and boost your wifi signal strength, delete whole words at a time, & a monitor recommendation
Faculty who have been around learning management systems (LMSs) for any amount of time know that sometimes gunk builds up in the browser cogs resulting in some page in the LMS not working as expected. If it’s something that worked… Read moreClear cache for one—and only one—webpage