By:
On:
In: Technology for Academics (archive)

If you have had students who have submitted particularly good work or work that illustrates common errors, you may want to share the work with your current students. Since the students’ names are not on their files—or you have removed them—you think you are sharing the work is anonymous. It may not be, but you can make it so. Metadata Most files have metadata—data that is attached to the file but is not visible. For example, PDFs of journal articles contain metadata about the article. PDF managers, like Mendeley and Zotero, pull that metadata into their own databases. Those programs then rearrange the data howeverRead More →

By:
On:
In: Technology for Academics (archive)

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 purposes, keep using it. For those of you have wished that the Zoom whiteboard had a little more functionality, check out the new Zoom whiteboards. In your Zoom meeting room, you can find the new Whiteboards button in the bottom toolbar. You can also access your whiteboards—and create new ones—by logging into the Zoom.us website. Have you created a whiteboard you want to use asRead More →

By:
On:
In: Technology for Academics (archive)

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 it is to visit the Zoom download page and click the Download button. The installer will download to your computer’s download folder. Run the installer to get the updated version of Zoom. Polls/Quizzes: New Central Library For those who use polls/quizzes, you know that the questions you had for your personal meeting room were separate from the questions you had for your other meeting rooms.Read More →

By:
On:
In: Technology for Academics (archive)

I’ve written before about using Tampermonkey scripts for adding functionality to Canvas. If you’re not familiar with Tampermonkey scripts for Canvas, please read that post first. I have another one for my fellow intrepid Canvas users. This one comes from Ben Fisher of Crean Lutheran High School, known as fisher1 in the Canvas Community forums. Read his post here. What the “Set Canvas Default Due Times” script does Everywhere you can add a time for when an assignment, quiz, or discussion is due, you will have time buttons to choose from. Yes, you can decide what those times are. All of my course stuff isRead More →

By:
On:
In: Technology for Academics (archive)

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 view (Rankin & MacDowell, n.d.). The initial video placement is determined by order of arrival, with the most recent arrivals first. Those with their webcams on will be first; those with webcams off will be last.   Every time a person speaks, their video pops to the top left of the screen. The MIT Teaching and Learning Lab staff ask us to consider these threeRead More →

By:
On:
In: Technology for Academics (archive)

I have a colleague who emailed recently needing a transcript from a podcast episode. How could she get one? It’s surprisingly easy. If you do not already have the file (mp3/m4a/wav—or mp4 if it’s a video), you’ll need to get it. Step 1: Download the recording’s file I use a Firefox browser add-on called Video DownloadHelper. For Chrome, try CocoCut. Visit the website that hosts the recording. The browser add-on icon will change when it detects a file it can download. The Video DownloadHelper and CocoCut icons will go from black and white to color. If the add-on doesn’t turn color, try playing the recordingRead More →

By:
On:
In: Technology for Academics (archive)

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 and video filters. Mouse over each avatar to see what the Zoom developers think it is. I’m pretty sure that what they call a grizzly bear (last one in the second row and first in the third row) is a groundhog. If you’ve used Zoom’s video filters to, for example, wear a virtual hat or glasses, you’ve experienced Zoom’s facial detection software. They’re using theRead More →

By:
On:
In: Technology for Academics (archive)

For Windows users, there is free collection of utilities called PowerToys that add some functionality to Windows. While there are a dozen tools in PowerToys, there are two I’m particularly enamored with: mouse utilities and video conference mute. Working with two or three screens, it can be a challenge to find my mouse pointer. Frankly, I’m tired of moving my mouse around and glancing from screen to screen hoping to catch the movement. With mouse utilities, pressing the left CTRL button on my keyboard twice darkens all screens and gives my pointer a spotlight. In the screenshot below, my mouse pointer was in the centerRead More →

By:
On:
In: Technology for Academics (archive)

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 advanced polls or quizzes that contain multiple question/answer types, allow for images, and automatically record answers. New question/answer types include match combinations, rank answers, and fill in the blank. This feature requires version 5.8.3 or higher and currently must be enabled by Zoom. (https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201361953) But big caveat: “Users using older versions of Zoom will not be able to participate in polls with new question typesRead More →

By:
On:
In: Technology for Academics (archive)

One of the advantages of using the Canvas learning management system is that it is built on a platform that makes it easy to make it do things that its inherent programming doesn’t allow it to do. By “easy,” I mean easy for those who know how to write the scripts and easier for us who only need to install the scripts others have written. Using a web browser add-in called Tampermonkey (yes, it is called Tampermonkey; download for Chrome; download for Firefox), we can run scripts in your browser that will change how Canvas behaves. For example, there is a Tampermonkey script that allowsRead More →