Finding new technology so you don't have to
There is no shortage of screen/webcam recording tools. It occurred to someone at Dropbox that if so many people are uploading their recordings to Dropbox and sharing links to those recordings, wouldn’t it be easier if recordings were automatically saved… Read moreDropbox Capture: New screen recording tool
Here are some handy features in the latest Canvas update. Some of these features needs to be turned on by your Canvas administrator. If you don’t see this feature in your instance of Canvas, ask your Canvas administrator to flip… Read moreCanvas updates: Apply score to ungraded, default due time, speedgrader emoji, & downloading all work
I wish it would have occurred to someone to call whiteboards “snowboards.” That sounds way more fun. Zoom has had a rudimentary whiteboard as part of its Screenshare menu. For those of you who find that that whiteboard serves your… Read moreNew Zoom whiteboards
Zoom released its latest update today, Monday, April 18, 2022. Below, I’ve listed some of the features that I find particularly useful. You can find the full list here. This update is a manual download. The easiest way to get… Read moreZoom update (5.10.3): Polls, breakout rooms, reactions
Why do these webcam videos appear in this particular order? [Source: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362323-Adjusting-your-video-layout-during-a-virtual-meeting] The good folks at the MIT Teaching and Learning Lab have taken serious consideration of the algorithm Zoom uses to determine the order of webcams in Zoom’s gallery… Read moreZoom’s gallery algorithm. Are we inadvertently ignoring some students?
In Zoom 5.10.0 (released March 21, 2022), we have some new features that instructors and their students might appreciate. This release is a manual download. Get it here. First, animal avatars. You can find the menu next to virtual backgrounds… Read moreZoom update includes animal avatars
Zoom has new question options available on in the latest version 5.8.3. This version is not an automatic update, so you’ll need to download it manually. Account owners and admins can enable advanced polling to allow meeting hosts to build… Read moreZoom update: New polling questions with quiz option
Faculty seem to always be thinking about the best way to communicate with our students. While most academics still live inside of our email, most of our students do not. Some instructors use Remind or Slack to message their students,… Read moreSend texts via email
I first wrote about the YouCanBook.Me scheduling tool in 2010. YouCanBook.Me checks your web-based calendar to see when you are free, and then makes your free times schedulable by others, such as students. To access YouCanBook.Me’s full power, you need… Read moreOffice 365 Bookings tool
Living near Seattle during COVID-19 has been… interesting. While as of this writing, my college is open for face-to-face courses, our college president wrote, in part, “In accordance with King County Department of Public Health guidance, we encourage supervisors to… Read moreWorking from home? Some ways to communicate synchronously with students