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You’ve typed something into a box in your web browser—something very well written, perhaps the first page of what will become the Great American Novel. You close the webpage before clicking the “submit” button. When you go back to the page, everything you had typed in that browser box is gone. You gouge your eyes out. Or perhaps you’ve spent an hour crafting the perfect Canvas announcement when your computer suddenly reboots. Your announcement is gone. Forever. You gouge out someone else’s eyes. Been there? In this week’s Porta Potty Picayune, we are going to make sure you never have those experiences again. Recovering contentRead More →

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What is the web cache, what are cookies, and why does clearing them solve so many browser issues? How do web browsers work? Websites are collections of code—that code is called HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The code is stored on servers (servers are just big fancy computer storage units—think of the hard drive on your computer multiplied by millions and millions). The Internet is what we call the network that links those servers together. When we enter the URL for a website in our browser’s address bar (or click on a link in a webpage), we end up connected to that webpage’s server, wherever itRead More →

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Let’s take a look at your home Internet setup. With many of us working at home and sharing our home wifi with kids, spouses, ex-spouses, extended family, and the mysterious person you suspect might be living in your basement, here are a few suggestions for evaluating and improving your speed on your home network. Let’s get some data, first. Using your wifi-connected laptop, tablet, or phone, move close to your modem/router.* On your device, go to Speedtest.net, and click the Go button. Once speedtest is done running, you’ll have two numbers. The first will be your download speed—how quickly information moves from the Internet toRead More →

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The “Type here to search” box in the lower left corner of Windows 10 is handy for searching all kinds of things. Except the Internet. Windows forces you to use their Bing search engine inside of their Edge browser. But I’d rather use Firefox as my browser and use Shortmarks (see this blog post) as my search engine. Thanks to the $1.99 Search Deflector available from the Microsoft Store, now I can. [Shout out to Ashwin at ghacks.net!] (There is an identical free version available via GitHub, but for such a useful tool, I’m happy to pony up a couple bucks.) After installing and runningRead More →

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This is a mishmash of stuff that I’ve been collecting. Enjoy! Be kind to your eyes: 20-20-20. We are all spending way more time in front of our computers than we did, say, in February 2020. I’ve heard from colleagues who have been struggling with eye strain, so I know I’m not alone. Be kind to your eyes and follow the ophthalmologist-recommended 20-20-20 rule. Every 20 minutes look at something 20+ feet away for 20+ seconds. The trick is in remembering to look away every 20 minutes. I use the “Tomato Clock” browser extension (Chrome/Firefox). Barring that, you know how to set an alarm onRead More →

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I taught my first online course in the late 1990s. I had done my homework, reading up on everything I could find about teaching online, attending conference sessions about teaching online. While the Internet was out of its infancy, it was still in toddlerhood, so there wasn’t a ton of information out there about teaching online. For that matter, there wasn’t a ton of information about the Internet itself. Some time in the mid-1990s, my wife, who was a reference librarian at the time, had a file folder labeled “Internet.” That pretty much sums up how little information there was. Anyway, I learned everything IRead More →

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I have been getting inquiries regarding my availability to present to faculty remotely. I am very happy to do this. Most commonly, I have given presentations on using the tech tools and tips covered in this blog to make your life as an academic easier. For example, if you’re not using a clipboard manager (e.g., Ditto for Windows, Copy Less 2 for Mac) and a text expander (e.g., PhraseExpress for both Windows and Mac), then your assignment grading is more time-consuming than it needs to be. I have also given presentations on interteaching. This teaching method works well for online, hybrid, virtual, and face-to-face courses.Read More →

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Faculty who have been around learning management systems (LMSs) for any amount of time know that sometimes gunk builds up in the browser cogs resulting in some page in the LMS not working as expected. If it’s something that worked before but is suddenly not working now, the first thing tech support will tell you to do is clear your browser’s cache. But why clear the cache for every website you’ve ever visited when it’s just this one particular LMS page that’s giving you fits? You can clear the cache of one Chrome or Firefox webpage with a keyboard shortcut. Windows and Linux users: CTRL+F5.Read More →

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Are you teaching remotely using Zoom? And you only have one monitor? Do you miss using PowerPoint presenter view in your classroom? PowerPoint presenter view This is what presenter view looks like. When you have a computer screen and a projector (or a second monitor), this is the view on your computer screen, and the slide alone shows on the projector (or second monitor). In this presenter view screen, you can see your next slide on the right, and right below that are any notes you’ve entered for the slide your audience is currently viewing. Under the currently-viewing slide are a few tools: pen/pointer, seeRead More →

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Is all of that bland text in your LMS starting to get to you? Do you wish you could jazz it up a bit? As far as web browsers are concerned, emojis and Unicode symbols are the same as text. This is module view in one of my Canvas courses. I put suns on either end of an announcement title, a red exclamation point and a blue-boxed 1 in the titles of modules, and a gold star in a text header. Once you fine Unicode/emojis you like, copy the image. Go to your LMS. Edit the text, and paste the image. Save. Done! Be aware,Read More →