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UPDATE 9/5/2011 : Be sure to read an even more recent post on this tool. UPDATE  12/2/2010: Be sure to read my more recent post on this tool. It’s surprising how much of my email has to do with scheduling. Students or off-campus colleagues ask when they can meet with me in person or via a phone call. I ask when they’re available; they ask when I’m available. Five or six emails later we have a time. For my colleagues at my institution, they can just look at my Outlook calendar and suggest a time. Anyone else is stuck in the email spiral. If youRead More →

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I use a student response system in my classroom (iClicker) for low-stakes quizzes and for ungraded questions that give me a sense of what my students are getting and what’s still a little fuzzy. If your institution doesn’t have funds to support this technology, or if you’re not sure you’d use it enough to make it worth the expense, consider trying Poll Everywhere. Poll Everywhere uses your students’ cell phones as ‘clickers.’ All you need is a live internet connection in your classroom. Cost: If you choose ‘higher education’ you can collect up to 32 responses per question for free. If you would like moreRead More →

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It’s been a few months since I posted, and I’m emerging from my technology sabbatical. Fall quarter is in full-swing; it’s time to share what’s new. It’s often the day-to-day kinds of activities where a little change can make a big difference. My focus in this post will be changing a default setting in Outlook that affects the order in which Outlook shows you messages. Outlook assumes that you want to start reading the most recent message first. After deleting or filing the first message, Outlook takes you to an earlier message. But that’s not how I read my messages. I start with the earliestRead More →

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A few years ago I started letting students send me their assignments electronically if they wished. I found that I was writing more on the papers I was grading electronically, and my typing was much more legible than my handwriting! A year or so ago, I made this a course requirement. All assignments now need to be sent electronically. I’ve written before in this blog about how I manage this; for those posts, type ‘grading’ in the search box. As much as I’ve enjoyed going paperless, I’ve discovered an unintended consequence. I’m having a harder time learning students’ names. When I had paper to passRead More →

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On one of the teaching listservs I’m subscribed to, participants were having their periodic row over using PowerPoint versus not using PowerPoint. But this time, rather than simply defending themselves, the PowerPoint users went on the attack noting that using the whiteboard was not exactly the idyllic world the non-PowerPoint users were making it out to be. Whiteboard markers, they argued, were often dried up, and colors other than black weren’t bright enough to see. Throwing away all that plastic is bad for the environment. And they stink! Literally. While I enjoy my pixels, I’m not opposed to writing on a whiteboard. In fact, sometimesRead More →

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Update (5/8/2012 ): Subtextual appears to be out of business.  A number of users are reporting that it no longer works with their system.  The website is still up, but no one is home. Update (11/3/2010 ): bccthis is now Subtextual. Their web address is still bccthis.com, however. As you know, bcc (blind carbon copy) allows you to add recipients to an email message without the other recipients being aware of it. Let’s say you reply to an email message, and you want your department chair to be aware of the exchange but you don’t necessarily want your recipient to know you’re making your departmentRead More →

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Prezi is (free for educational use) web-based presentation software that allows you to create a map of your presentation instead of using slides. You can make your presentations public or private; you can download them for offline use if you’d like.  Prezis can be embedded in a webpage.  Give the link to your laptop wielding students, and they can step through your presentation with you during class.  I haven’t tried it, but you should be able to embed Prezis on a page inside your course management system (e.g., Angel, Blackboard).   If you don’t want your students to have everything you’re showing in class, create aRead More →

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[UPDATED 12/8/2010: For further tips, tricks, and ideas for using QR codes, see this more recent post.] With the number of smartphones on the rise, such as AT&T’s iPhone or Verizon’s Droid, more and more of our students have this technology in our classrooms. Can you harness this power for your own use? In this post I’m going to introduce you to QR codes and barcode scanner software for cell phones, and how they might be useful to you and your students. If you have an iPhone/Droid, search the App Store/Market for barcode scanners. If you have a different web-enabled phone, here’s a handy listRead More →

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If you’re like me, email is a huge part of your work life. Are you using these Outlook time-savers?   Managing attachments To add an attachment to an Outlook message, locate your document, left click and hold on the icon. Now drag it into the body of your email message. It’s attached! In this image, I’m dragging a Word document from my Desktop into the body of my email. This works the other way, too. If you receive a message that has an attachment, left click and hold on the attachment and drag the file icon onto your Desktop or into a folder.   Outlook-specificRead More →

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After a longer-than-planned hiatus, I’m back. And hopefully I have some new stuff that will make your teaching life easier! Last May I explained in a post how to use MS Word and Excel to create grade reports. As I was walking across campus this week, I ran into my colleague in Engineering, Rich Bankhead. He had a great idea. He gives his Engineering students a take-home final that includes solving mathematical problems. This quarter, he gave each student their own data. Students aren’t supposed to work with each other on this assignment, but if they do, they at least have to work the problemsRead More →