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

A lot of new tech stuff I learn is too often due to me making a bone-headed decision. In this case, I created an Excel file to look at some data. Thinking I had everything I needed, I closed the file without saving it. Not two minutes later it occurred to me that I wasn’t done with it. I didn’t especially want to enter the data again. Granted, it probably didn’t take me more than 10 minutes to enter that data, but there were other things I could do with those 10 minutes — like write a blog post about how I learned how toRead More →

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

Do you know the most common way I learn about new technology? Something starts bugging me, and I go looking for a solution. Today’s problem? If I want to keep my existing Chrome tabs open, to open a bookmark in a new tab, I have to open a new tab and then click on the bookmark. I know. In the greater scheme of things, this isn’t a big deal. But I’ve done it a lot today. I mean, a lot. So, it’s time to learn something new. A pretty quick search gave me the answer. The solution(s) Hold down CTRL and left-click on the bookmarkRead More →

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

A veteran colleague recently advised a newly-hired professor to not send students email at 1 am. Why? Because students will come to expect that all of their professors will respond to their email inquiries at 1 am. I don’t know if that’s true, but another colleague replies to messages late at night but delays sending them until the morning for that very reason. Outlook comes with the ability to delay sending emails. Gmail can do it with an add-in. Gmail users: Install Boomerang. (Try the pro version for free for 30 days. After that, use the pared-down free version or pay $4.99/month for more features.)Read More →

Spacedesk logo

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

We are leaving in a couple days to visit my father-in-law. I want to work while on this trip, including getting my online courses ready for the fall*. Now that I routinely work with three monitors, the thought of trying to ready my courses with only my Windows laptop monitor made me a little twitchy. I travel with a small Android tablet, so surely there must be an easy way to extend my Windows laptop to that tablet as a second screen – easier that the software I used a few years ago. And there is. Spacedesk is free. Your Windows computer will be yourRead More →

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

Have you had this experience? You’re reading a student’s paper, and your internal plagiarism detector starts setting off alarms. The prose sounds different than anything else the student has written. You start googling phrases – and nothing comes up. Using Turnitin? That probably won’t catch it either (Rogerson & McCarthy, 2017). Your student may have used one of the many freely available “paraphrasing tools.” Here is the first paragraph from a recent issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018). Learning to read transforms lives. Reading is the basis for the acquisition of knowledge, for cultural engagement, for democracy, andRead More →

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

It didn’t take long. I found a replacement for Beanote, the Chrome extension I wrote about in my last blog post. Hypothes.is has more power and more flexibility. Add to any webpage a personal note just for yourself, a note for your group, or a public note that can be seen by anyone running Hypothes.is Several of us at my college are working on editing pages that explain to faculty how to get a video captioned. Using Hypothes.is we can leave notes on each webpage that everyone else in our group can see. This is much easier than taking screenshots and emailing them to eachRead More →

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

Sometimes I want to add a note to a webpage. Beanote is a Chrome browser extension that will let me do that. When I give my tech tools presentation, I discuss LastPass, for example. I don’t always remember all of the LastPass features I want to talk about, so I’m going to add a Beanote “sticker note” listing those features on the LastPass homepage. Anytime I visit that page with my Chrome browser, that note will be there. I’ve highlighted the sentence “LastPass remembers all your passwords, so you don’t have to.” You can see the 3-icon Beanote toolbar. The first icon is a highlighter.Read More →

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

NOTE May 22, 2019: QBBuzzer appears to be no more. Instead, use BuzzIn.Live. Just as free and even easier to use.  ********************* Yesterday a colleague sent an email to our faculty asking if anyone had buzzers she could borrow for a Jeopardy-like review she was doing in her class. I thought that there must surely be a digital solution. QBBuzzer is about as easy to use as you can imagine. Visit the QBBuzzer website and choose a name for your “room.” This is what your students will type to get into your room. Keep it simple. (Room names are not case sensitive; spaces are permitted.) ChooseRead More →

Spoonflower logo

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

One of my favorite conference activities is attending poster sessions. I especially love hearing from undergraduates about their research. The topic isn’t even that important to me. In fact, the less I know about the topic, the more fun it is for me to listen and the more questions I get to ask. “Wait. I’m not familiar with that construct. Can you explain what that is?” While I enjoy posters, it pains me to see conference attendees carrying around tubes, wrestling with getting posters in and out of tubes, and forgetting tubes in airplane overhead bins. Fabric posters have been around for a while. TheseRead More →

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

Recently, I gave a presentation on academic technology at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana. One of my favorite tools to show is Mendeley, a pdf manager with a very nifty MS Word interface for references (see this blog post). During my presentation, I created a Word document, entered some in-text citations via Mendeley, and then clicked “Insert Bibliography,” and like magic, the full list of references for all of those in-text citations appeared. And then I showed how you can quickly switch from, say, APA style to Chicago and back again. A sharp-eyed participant (whoRead More →