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Everyone who writes needs a solid pdf and reference manager. I’m a big fan of Zotero. Zotero is free, and you can back up 300 MB worth of stuff on their servers for free. If you want more space (and I do), it’s $20/year for two GB, $60/year for six GB, or $120/year for unlimited back up space. While I could go on and on about Zotero’s features (and I have in workshops), in this blog post, I want to focus on how Zotero handles article titles. When we import article data into Zotero—through a doi search or by dragging a pdf into Zotero—the titleRead More →

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Windows users have a built-in screenshot app: Snipping Tool. The Snipping Tool got an upgrade. You can now use it to extract text from an image. After taking your screenshot (shout out to LearningScientists.org), look for the text extraction icon. Clicking the text extraction icon causes Snipping Tool to identify and spotlight everything that looks like text. When it finishes, it will give you two new options: Copy all text and Quick redact. Clicking the down arrow next to Quick redact allows you to choose auto redaction for phone numbers and email addresses. After clicking “Copy all text,” I pasted it here: Cientista LEARN TORead More →

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There is a lot of confusion around copyright. What can you use? What can’t you use? How much can you use? A few years ago, I participated in an excellent Educause course on copyright hosted by Thomas Tobin (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and what I learned has been a tremendous help to me. I hope this helps you, too! (Disclaimer: I am not an intellectual property attorney. If I were an intellectual property attorney, well, you’d probably already know that.) To determine whether you can use something without violating copyright, you need to answer four questions. Keep in mind that all four answers are on aRead More →

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Since I posted about Dot cards a couple weeks ago, they’ve added a new feature called dot.Exchange. If you’re not already familiar with Dot cards, please read that previous blog post first. The rest of this will make much more sense. After you tap your Dot card on the back of someone’s phone, and they launch their phone’s browser to view your Dot card profile page, they’ll see this double-arrow button. Tapping the double-arrow button generates this pop-up. Your new friend can enter their contact information. When they press the Exchange button, they’ll be asked if they want Dot cards to use their phone’s gpsRead More →

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I want to pronounce the names of others how they want them pronounced, and I assume that others feel the same way about my name—that they want to pronounce it as I pronounce it. Let’s make it easy for everyone and put a “hear my name” badge in our email signatures, in our learning management systems, and on our dot cards. The free service called NameCoach makes this easy. This is what my NameCoach icon looks like in my email signature. I’ve embedded the clickable button in this blog post. Click on it. My NameCoach webpage will open. Click the speaker icon next to myRead More →

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Are you ready to stop carrying around business cards? Or, perhaps more accurately, are you ready to stop forgetting your business cards at home? I just got back from the American Psychological Association’s 2023 convention where I made liberal use of my business card replacement. A Dot card is the size and thickness of a credit card and has a one-time cost of $20. When you want someone to have your contact information, you place your Dot card against the back of the other person’s unlocked phone. If their phone is NFC-compatible and if NFC is enabled, a pop-up will appear on their phone. (OnRead More →

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Using AI to detect AI feels like a little like the start of the robot wars. Yet here we are. The makers of GPTZero—the ChatGPT/AI detector—have released a Chrome extension (from your Chrome browser, download it here). Once you have added Origin by GPTZero extension to Chrome, visit any webpage, such as an assignment in your course management system. Highlight the text you want to check for the likelihood the text was written by AI. You need to highlight at least 250 characters. Right click on the text, and select “Scan text with Origin.” GPTZero’s Origin extension will generate a popup that will produce itsRead More →

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In what feels like eons ago, I wrote a blog post on protecting your data when in public. I looked up that post. I published it on January 20, 2020, just three months before most of us stopped going out in public. Good timing, eh? Now that most people are out and about, here is that post again revised with updated information from the FBI regarding juice hacking. Read on! USB condoms Let’s start with USB condoms, because, frankly, that’s why you decided to read this post. It’s okay to be honest. We’re friends. The cable you use to charge your phone and your tabletRead More →

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In: Technology for Academics (archive)

Anyone who does research writing needs a pdf and citation manager. I had been a fan of Mendeley until they were bought by Elsevier who changed the code in a way that made it no longer usable for me. Those issues may be fixed now, but it’s too late. I’ve thrown my lot in with Zotero. Every research writer needs a place to store and annotate their pdfs. Writers also need a way to quickly add properly formatted citations to a text. Zotero does both. Are you collaborating with a co-author? Zotero can handle your shared resources. We would need a two-hour workshop to coverRead More →

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For those of you who use Zotero as your go-to pdf and reference manager, you may have encountered problems with citing advance online publications as needed in APA style. I’ve learned the secret. Here’s the citation I am aiming to create using Zotero Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2022). A little good goes an unexpectedly long way: Underestimating the positive impact of kindness on recipients. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001271 To get that “Advance online publication” inserted before the doi, find the Extra field in your Zotero citation. In that field, copy/paste this text: {:status: Advance online publication} Click off theRead More →