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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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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 →

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As I get ready for next term, I’ve copied my fall Canvas course into next term’s course. My Trello “course reset” checklist tells me that I need to delete all of my course announcements. As of this writing, the only option Canvas gives me to do that is to manually click each box and then click the trashcan icon at the top of the page. This seems unnecessarily cumbersome, but we have a couple workarounds. Tampermonkey If you have installed Tampermonkey, I recommend this userscript available via the Greasy Fork. IMPORTANT: If you use this script, edit line 7 to read: // @match https://*/courses/*/announcements ThatRead More →

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If you have updated Windows 11 recently, you have a new feature that will make your life a little easier. It comes without fanfare and therefore is easy to miss. File explorer tabs Open file explorer—that’s what you use to see your files and folders. At the very top of your file explorer window, you now have tabs. In this screenshot, you can see that I have one tab open: Dropbox. Clicking the plus sign to the right of that tab will open a new tab. When I clicked the plus sign to open a new tab, I navigated to my Downloads folder. Dropbox isRead More →

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For all of you Canvas learning management system users, I have compiled all of my favorite Canvas enhancements onto one page. The page is listed as a link in the top horizontal menu for easy access. If there is anything on the Canvas enhancements page that could be clearer, please let me know via sue@suefrantz.com.Read More →

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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 to Dropbox? Enter the newest recording tool: Dropbox Capture. Those of us on Dropbox Basic, Plus, and Family plans get 120 minutes of total recording time. Once you record something using Dropbox Capture, a folder called “Capture” will be added to your Dropbox folder. Once I’ve recorded 120 minutes, I’ll need to delete or move recordings to be able to record more. It’s better thoughtRead More →

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In spring of 2022, I wrote about some of the very cool features in MS PowerToys for Windows 10 and 11, such as highlighting the mouse pointer (very handy with three screens) and creating fixed zones on the desktop to drop windows into (also very handy with three screens). The good folks at Microsoft have just released a PowerToys update with three new features: text extractor, quick accent, and screen ruler. I’m particularly excited about the first two. Get PowerToys here. It’s free. No ads. No annual fees. It really is free. If you already have PowerToys, to get the update, launch PowerToys from yourRead More →

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A colleague recently received a question bank from a publisher as a CSV (spreadsheet) file. He wondered how to get those questions into Canvas. It takes a few steps, but there is a way. For those of you hate all the clicking Canvas requires for you to create quiz questions, you will love this. This blog post from Kristina Wilson at the Northwestern University School of Professional Studies Distance Learning office will give you all of the instructions you need on how to use the Kansas State University’s CSV to QTI converter. Here is the short version. First, download the Kansas State template. Here areRead More →

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Zoom has released a new manual update. You can get it from their download center. There’s not much here that is especially exciting for instructors. Here are a few highlights. If you’d like the full list, visit Zoom’s release notes page. Hand gestures We can now quickly turn on/turn off gesture recognition. Click the new up arrow next to Reactions to toggle “Recognize hand gestures.” This is a welcome addition for those of you who have discovered that you wave your arms a lot when speaking. Apply video filters to future meetings Want to be a pirate by default when joining all future meetings? ApplyRead More →