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A couple weeks ago I was sitting in our psychology lab when a student wandered in. Me: Can I help you? Student: <locating the clock on the wall> I was wondering what time it is. The student is visually impaired, judging by how close he was standing to the clock and how he was squinting. Me: It’s 20 ’til 11. Student: What? Thinking the student is also partially deaf, I speak up. Me: IT’S 20 ‘TIL 11. Student looks at the clock, clearly baffled. Another student in the lab chimes in. Student #2: It’s 10:40. Student: Oh! I’m late! Finally it dawns on me. TheRead More →

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My students submit their assignments to me primarily as an email attachment. I have ways of quickly filing the email messages in Outlook (see the SimplyFile blog post), and then quickly saving the attachments all at once to my “student papers” folder while appending the students’ names and email addresses to the filename (see the EZDetach blog post). Once the papers are graded, I move them to my “graded” folder. Once I send them back to students, I move them to my “sent” folder where they sit until the end of the term when I move them into a folder named for that quarter. AndRead More →

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During winter break I spent most of my computer time on my personal laptop. When I got back on my (older) work laptop this week, I found that it was moving at a crawl. The sensation was undoubtedly amplified by the, by comparison, rocket ship I had been using. After some trial and error, I identified the culprit: Chrome. Or more specifically, one webpage I had open in Chrome. Chrome is designed in such a way that each tab is essentially another instance of the program running. The advantage is that if a web page causes a crash, only that tab crashes; the rest ofRead More →

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In July 2011 I wrote about Socrative, a web-based student response system. (See the blog post here.) The brief version: The instructor logs into the Socrative website and gets a room number (change to whatever you’d like). Students visit the website on whatever web-enabled device they have (smartphone, iPod, tablet, laptop), and enter the room number. The instructor can ask multiple choice, true/false, or short answer questions. Ask them on the fly or create quizzes in advance. These quizzes can be teacher-paced or student-paced. Responses are collated into a spreadsheet and emailed to the instructor. Socrative has added several very useful features to begin 2012.Read More →

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Scientific American asked their “board of advisers to choose the technologies that they could not live without.” Read their answers here. Having recently read Unbroken, Louis Zamperini’s surviving 47 days on a raft in the Pacific followed by a couple years in a Japanese POW camp, and currently reading The Unconquered, an expedition to find the last uncontacted Indians of the Amazon, I’ve concluded that there is a lot of stuff one can live without. People around the world, not just deep in the Amazon, live without a lot of what we have here in the States. And you know, our ancestors did just fineRead More →

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12/15/2011 11:46am The presentation has moved into the Q&A session, so I’m going to wrap up here. Be sure to check out the report and the 2011 study infographic. As we slide into the winter break, I hope to have time to read the report myself and write about some of their findings in this blog. ___________ 11:41am PT Where do students say they learn the most? Source: EDUCAUSE Live Presentation, 12/15/2011 ___________ 11:34am PT Basically, students don’t think instructors are using technology effectively. How can we make better use of the technology we have? Source: EDUCAUSE Live Presentation, 12/15/2011 ___________ 11:29am PT What doRead More →

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As the term comes to a close and you slide into the break for a bit of a breather, consider checking out these tech tools. I know you probably don’t have time now to look at these, although if you’re looking for a good excuse to do something besides grade papers… If you don’t want to take the time now, bookmark this webpage, and take a look at these when you need a break from your visiting in-laws. (Yes, I know you love them, but that doesn’t mean that you have to spend the entire week with them.) Here they are (the tools, not yourRead More →

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The ECAR survey folks always have interesting information to present. Free and online. Hope to see you there! For those who can’t attend, but are interested, I’ll be tweeting live during the event. Follow me on Twitter by clicking the ‘t’ icon on the far right side of your browser’s window. From the EDUCAUSE website: Speaker: Eden Dahlstrom, Senior Research Analyst, Data, Research, and Analytics, EDUCAUSE Susan Grajek, Vice President, Data, Research, and Analytics, EDUCAUSE (Moderator) Date: December 15, 2011 Time: 2:00 p.m. ET (UTC-5); convert to your time zone Topic: In this free hour-long session, “ECAR National Study of Undergraduates and Information Technology, 2011,” SusanRead More →

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Quick tech tip: Change the default color of comment boxes in MS Word 2010. In any MS Word document, select the “Review” tab, click on “Track Changes” then select “Change Tracking Options. Next to “Comments” click the dropdown menu and select the color you’d like. Any document you open now will use that comment color. Bonus tip: Use the keyboard shortcut to insert comments more quickly. Highlight the text you want to comment on, then press CTRL-ALT-M. After a little practice, the key combination will feel natural to you.Read More →

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Dropbox.com provides you with 2GB free space out of the box. If other people who are invited by you join, Dropbox will increase your allotted space by either 500MB (edu accounts) or 250MB (everyone else) up to an additional 16GB for a total of 18GB. I was recently asked how exactly one gets that additional space. Share a folder with someone who doesn’t have a Dropbox.com account yet. If they join Dropbox.com as a result of your invitation, more MBs for you. Or Send your friends, family, and colleagues a link. Go to the Dropbox.com referrals page. Here you have a few options. Log intoRead More →