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, and for success in the workplace. Illiteracy costs the global economy more than $1 trillion (U.S. dollars) annually in direct costs alone (World Literacy Foundation, 2015). The indirect costs are far greater because the failure to attain satisfactory literacy blocks people from acquiring basic knowledge, such as understanding information about hygiene, diet, or safety. Consequently, low literacy is a major contributor to inequality and increases the likelihood of poor physical and mental health, workplace accidents, misuse of medication, participation in crime, and welfare dependency, all of which also have substantial additional social and economic costs (World Literacy Foundation, 2015). Low literacy presents a critical and persistent challenge around the world: Even in developed countries, it is estimated that approximately 20% of 15-year-olds do not attain a level of reading performance that allows them to participate effectively in life (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2016).

Let’s see what some of the paraphrasing tools do with this text.

Paraphrasing-tool.com

Figuring out how to peruse changes lives. Perusing is the reason for the securing of learning, for social commitment, for majority rule government, and for accomplishment in the work environment. Absence of education costs the worldwide economy more than $1 trillion (U.S. dollars) every year in coordinate costs alone (World Literacy Foundation, 2015). The roundabout expenses are far more noteworthy in light of the fact that the inability to accomplish agreeable proficiency squares individuals from gaining essential learning, for example, understanding data about cleanliness, eating regimen, or wellbeing. Subsequently, low proficiency is a noteworthy supporter of disparity and improves the probability of poor physical and emotional wellness, work environment mishaps, abuse of drug, investment in wrongdoing, and welfare reliance, all of which likewise have significant extra social and financial costs (World Literacy Foundation, 2015). Low education exhibits a basic and determined test the world over: Even in created nations, it is assessed that around 20% of 15-year-olds don’t accomplish a level of perusing execution that enables them to take part adequately throughout everyday life (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2016).

Prepostseo.com helpfully identifies the changed words with a different color font. (This is the same as paraphrasing-tool.org, paraphrasing-tool.net, and paraphrasing-tool.org.)

Learning to scan transforms lives. Reading is that the basis for the acquisition of data, for cultural engagement, for democracy, and for achievement within the geographical point. Illiteracy prices the world economy over $1 trillion (U.S. dollars) annually in direct prices alone (World acquirement Foundation, 2015). The indirect prices ar way biggeras a result of the failure to achieve satisfactory acquirement blocks folks from exploit basic information, appreciate understanding data regarding hygiene, diet, or safety. Consequently, low acquirement could be a major contributor to difference and will increase the chance of poor physical and psychological state, geographical pointaccidents, misuse of medication, participation in crime, and welfare dependency, all of that even have substantial further social and economic prices (World acquirementFoundation, 2015). Low acquirement presents a essential and chronic challenge round the world: Even in developed countries, it’s calculable that more or less two hundredthof 15-year-olds don’t attain A level of reading performance that permits them to participate effectively in life (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2016).

Rewriter Tools also identifies the changed words, except when the words it identifies as different are actually the same, e.g., “read” in the first sentence.

Learning to read transforms lives. Reading is the groundwork for the acquisition of knowledge, for cultural engagement, for democracy, and for success in the workplace. Illiteracy prices the international economic system more than $1 trillion (U.S. dollars) annually in direct prices by myself (World Literacy Foundation, 2015). The indirect fees are a waysgreater because the failure to attain best literacy blocks people from acquiring basic knowledge, such as appreciation facts about hygiene, diet, or safety. Consequently, low literacy is a predominant contributor to inequality and will increase the probability of terrible bodily and intellectual health, administrative center accidents, misuse of medication, participation in crime, and welfare dependency, all of which additionallyhave vast additional social and economic fees (World Literacy Foundation, 2015). Low literacy presents a fundamental and continual undertakinground the world: Even in developed countries, it is estimated that about20% of 15-year-olds do not obtain a degree of studying performance that allows them to participate correctly in life (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2016).

Paraphrasingonline.com doesn’t make a lot of changes. And the changes it does make are creative. I especially like “clam” in place of “dollars” and “15-twelvemonth-olds” for “15-year-olds”

Learning to read transforms lives. Reading is the basis for the acquisition of knowledge, knowledge , for cultural engagement, for democracy, commonwealth , and for success in the workplace. work . Illiteracy costs the global economy more than $1 trillion (U.S. dollars) clam ) annually in direct costs alone (World (Humanity Literacy Foundation, 2015). The indirect costs are far greater because the failure to attain satisfactory literacy blocks people city block mass from acquiring basic knowledge, such as understanding information about hygiene, diet,dieting , or safety. safety . Consequently, low literacy is a major contributor to inequality and increases the likelihood of poor physical and mental health, workplace accidents, misuse of medication, medicament , participation in crime, and welfare dependency, eudaemonia dependence , all of which also have substantial additional social mixer and economic costs (World Literacy Foundation, 2015). Sir David Low literacy presents a critical and persistent challenge around the world: Even in developed countries, it is estimated that approximately 20% of 15-year-olds 15-twelvemonth -olds do not attain a level of reading interpretation performance that allows them to participate effectively in life (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development,Evolution , 2016).

Goparaphrase.com yields a lot of gibberish. “Costochondritis”?

Taking in will read transforms exists. Perusing may be those premise to those securing from claiming knowledge, to social engagement, for democracy, Also to achievement in the working environment. Absence of education costochondritis the worldwide economy more than $1 trillion (U. Encountered with urban decay because of deindustrialization, engineering imagined, government lodgin. Dollars) yearly On immediate fetches alone (World ability Foundation, 2015). The backhanded expenses would a wide margin more terrific on account of the disappointment to accomplish palatable ability obstructs individuals starting with procuring essential knowledge, for example, Comprehension majority of the data something like hygiene, diet, or wellbeing. Consequently, low ability will be An significant donor should imbalance and expands the probability for poor physical Furthermore mental health, work environment accidents, abuse from claiming medication, support On crime, Furthermore welfare dependency, the greater part about which also bring generous extra social Also monetary fetches (World ability Foundation, 2015). Low education displays a basic What’s more constant test around those world: Significantly over formed countries, it will be evaluated that pretty nearly 20% for 15-year-olds don’t accomplish a level from claiming perusing execution that permits them on take an interest viably to term (Organisation for monetary collaboration and Development, 2016).

Plagiarisma.net is also firmly in the gibberish arena. “Kinsmen immigrant possessions”?

Sense of values to offer transforms lives. Portent is the build for the fulfilment of associate, for cultural exercise, for democracy, and for fulfilling in the aid. Illiteracy skimp the widespread second-rate thither over than $1 trillion (U.S. dollars) annual in artless retrench just (mould Literacy Foundation, 2015). The redundant scrimp are prevalent more intelligent to the foundering to swing adequate literacy blocks kinsmen immigrant possessions basic knowledge, such as understanding information about hygiene, diet, or safety. Consider, shoddy literacy is a pre-eminent backer to discrepancy and increases the possibility of vile quick and absurd well-being, responsibility accidents, decry of remedy, sophistication in outrage, and open-handedness dominion, all of which also have substantial additional social and economic costs (World Literacy Foundation, 2015). Common literacy endowments a stabbing and continuing bloke all over the world: Down in qualified countries, it is approximate rove to 20% of 15-year-olds reach keen cut a residue of sign step focus allows them to participate effectively in life (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2016).

Articlerewritertool.com does a reasonably good job – especially if students take the time to edit.

Making sense of how to examine changes lives. Scrutinizing is the purpose behind the anchoring of learning, for social responsibility, for larger part lead government, and for achievement in the workplace. Nonattendance of instruction costs the overall economy more than $1 trillion (U.S. dollars) consistently in arrange costs alone (World Literacy Foundation, 2015). The circuitous costs are unmistakably critical in light of the way that the failure to achieve pleasing capability squares people from increasing fundamental learning, for instance, understanding information about tidiness, eating regimen, or prosperity. In this manner, low capability is an imperative supporter of dissimilarity and enhances the likelihood of poor physical and passionate health, workplace setbacks, manhandle of medication, interest in bad behavior, and welfare dependence, all of which moreover have critical additional social and budgetary costs (World Literacy Foundation, 2015). Low training displays a fundamental and decided test the world over: Even in made countries, it is surveyed that around 20% of 15-year-olds don’t achieve a level of examining execution that empowers them to participate sufficiently for the duration of regular day to day existence (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2016).

However, quality is on the rise

Quillbot is still in beta testing, so the non-sign-up version gives you a 180-character limit, but it is the best of the paraphrasing tools. I entered this: “The indirect costs are far greater because the failure to attain satisfactory literacy blocks people from acquiring basic knowledge” and Quillbot returned “The indirect costs are much higher because the lack of sufficient literacy prevents people from learning the basics.” Don’t like the word or phrase that Quillbot chose? Click on the changed text to see other choices.

Paid services

CleverSpinner is a subscription service for $9.90 (US)/month. A 43-second video shows the tool in action. Where the others I’ve identified above are considered paraphrasing tools because they only give you one new version of text, CleverSpinner is considered an “article spinner” because it renders multiple versions of the text. Why would one want multiple versions? Some web writers are writing for multiple web-based outlets. They write the text once, and then spin it. Now they have multiple versions that can be published in multiple venues without being pinged for publishing duplicate content. One article looks like ten.

What can you do about it?

If you have suspect text in a student assignment, there is probably not a whole lot you can do about it, frankly. If you really want to pursue it, you can use a cloze test. In the cloze test, words are removed from the suspect text, and the student is asked to enter the missing words. The idea is that if a student wrote the text herself, she should be able to fill in the missing blanks.

Here is a cloze test creation tool. When I entered the articlewritertool.com text from above, I get

Making sense of how __ examine changes lives. Scrutinizing __ the purpose behind the _________ of learning, for social ______________, for larger part lead __________, and for achievement in ___ workplace. Nonattendance of instruction _____ the overall economy more ____ $1 trillion (.US.. dollars) ____________ in arrange costs alone (_____ Literacy Foundation, 2015). The __________ costs are unmistakably critical __ light of the way ____ the failure to achieve ________ capability squares people from __________ fundamental learning, for instance, _____________ information about tidiness, eating _______, or prosperity. In this ______, low capability is an __________ supporter of dissimilarity and ________ the likelihood of poor ________ and passionate health, workplace ________, manhandle of medication, interest __ bad behavior, and welfare __________, all of which moreover ____ critical additional social and _________ costs (World Literacy Foundation, ______ Low training displays a ___________ and decided test the _____ over: Even in made _________, it is surveyed that ______ 20% of 15-year-olds don’t _______ a level of examining _________ that empowers them to ___________ sufficiently for the duration __ regular day to day _________ (Organization for Economic Cooperation ___ Development, 2016).

If you want to make it a little easier on your student, you can provide the list of removed words in random order:

World achieve anchoring and around budgetary circuitous consistently costs countries dependence enhances execution existence fundamental government have imperative in increasing is manner of participate physical pleasing regimen responsibility setbacks than that the to understanding world 

Conclusion

It also can’t hurt to discuss the importance of academic integrity with your students. Ultimately, it’s their own personal integrity at stake.

References

Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100618772271

Rogerson, A. M., & McCarthy, G. (2017). Using Internet based paraphrasing tools: Original work, patchwriting or facilitated plagiarism? International Journal for Educational Integrity, 13(2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-016-0013-y

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 each other or using a shared document in Dropbox or Google Drive.

After creating a Hypothesi.is account, add the extension to Chrome or add the bookmarklet to Firefox. In Chrome, look for this icon.

If it is greyed out, click on it to turn on Hypothes.is.

Next, highlight any text on any webpage. On the popup, click on “Annotate” to add a note or “Highlight” to, well, just highlight.

From the slide-out menu, enter your comments, add tags if you’d like, and select if you want to make this available to a group (if you’re part of one) or if you want this to be a personal note (“Only me”). Click on the “Post to…” box to save your annotation.

A blue box will appear on the Hypothes.is icon. (You may need to reload the page to get this to appear.) That tells you that there is one annotation on this webpage. On the far right side of your screen, click the arrow to slide out the Hypothes.is ‘drawer.’

The yellow highlighted text is the text that is annotated. Mousing over the annotated note on the right will turn the highlighting blue. That’s the easiest way to know which annotation goes with which highlighting. At the top of the Hypothes.is slide-out, you can see the group this note is shared with: ID@Highline. Clicking the eye icon will hide all of the yellow highlighting on the page; mousing over the annotation will still turn on the blue highlighting on the page to show what the annotation is referring to. Clicking the page icon allows you to add a note to the whole page, not just specific text on the page.

Going public

If you want to make your comments public to other Hypothes.is users, click the group name at the top of the slide out box. (You’re right. It would be more intuitive if the “only me,” group, and public options were all part of the same menu.)

I added a public comment to this page so you can see what public comments looks like. Feel free to jump in on the conversation.

Where all have I annotated?

Log into the Hypothesi.is to see a list of your annotations.

Click on an entry to expand it. The bolded text is the webpage highlighted text. Click “Visit annotations in context” to go to the webpage.

Where all have my groups annotated?

Log into Hypothesi.is, click on “Groups,” and select the group you want. Click on an annotation to expand it. You’ll see the list of annotations, who created each one, and when.

Example use 1

In doing research for a group project, students may spend more time sharing information about websites than any other kind of source (O’Farrell & Bates, 2009), depending on the nature of the project, of course. To track how the groups are progressing and who is participating and when, create a Hypothesi.is group for each student project group. You’ll be able to see the websites the groups are referencing and each student’s thoughts about the content of those websites.

Example use 2

Use Hypothesi.is to track the content changes you want to make in your course management system. In Canvas, for example, each page has its own unique URL. As your course progresses, annotate the pages you want to change the next time you offer the course. Tag the content with your course name and term, like “Psych 100 Spring 18”. When you’re ready to make your changes for the next term, log into the Hypothesi.is website, and search for your “Psych 100 Spring 18” tag.

References

O’Farrell, M., & Bates, J. (2009). Student information behaviours during group projects: A study of LIS students in University College Dublin, Ireland. In Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives (Vol. 61, pp. 302–315). https://doi.org/10.1108/00012530910959835

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. Use this if all you want to do is highlight text. If you change your mind and want to add a note after highlighting, clicking on the highlighted text will let you add a note, change the color of the highlight (yellow, red, green, or blue), or delete the highlight. If you want to go directly to adding a note, click on the middle icon.

After creating a note, mouse over the call-out box to see what you’ve written.

Once you’ve created a note, however, you cannot edit it. You can add a second note, or you can delete the first and write a new one.

Click on the Beanote icon at the top right of your Chrome browser to see a list of all of the notes you have ever created. Use the Beanote search bar to find a specific note. It searches both the text of your notes and about the first 55 or so words of your highlighted text.

Click on a note to see the highlighted text and see what message you have left yourself. Click on the webpage’s icon to go to that webpage.

Course Management System Bonus

If your course management system has a different URL for each of your course pages, you can leave yourself personal notes in Chrome, perhaps what you want to change in your syllabus or what you want to change in an assignment.

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.) Choose a username, like your name. This is what everyone in the room will see.

And this is what it looks like.

Send your students to qbbuzzer.com on a computer, tablet, or phone. Have them type in your room name and then enter their name as their username so you know who buzzed in. Make sure that students type in your room name correctly. If they don’t, they will inadvertently create a new room.

Once all of your students are in, ask your question, and once a student hits the “BUZZ” button, buzzing will be locked for 5 seconds. Here you can see that I buzzed in (“your buzz”), and the lock will automatically clear in 4 seconds. The person who buzzed in can clear the lock by clicking the “CLEAR” button. In the history area, you can see that I buzzed in at 9:34:32.

If someone else buzzes in first, the message says:

Everyone’s screen looks the same as yours so everyone can see who buzzed in; you don’t need to display this on your computer screen.

If you want to make sure that you get at least part of your question asked before someone buzzes in, click “BUZZ” yourself as you start to ask the question. That will buy you 5 seconds before your students have the opportunity to buzz in.

Who created this site?

There is no other information on QBBuzzer website, so I did a little research. The site was created by some people who wanted to practice for Quiz Bowl, but they only had 10 buzzers. They found this pretty limiting given the number of people they had present for practices. They did what any reasonable person would do. They created a buzzer website, QBBuzzer.

Have fun!

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. These hold a number of advantages over their paper counterparts. Fabric posters can be folded up in your carryon, won’t tear, and when printed on the right kind of fabric, make lovely (and nerdy) scarves. Many services that make fabric posters charge over $100 for a 56″ x 36″ poster. That makes them much less attractive.

Did you know that you can have a 56″ x 36″ fabric poster made and delivered for under $25? Check out Spoonflower. (Shout out to Suzie Baker for telling me about this service – and, frankly, I was envious of her poster scarf in the brisk March wind of Philadelphia on the last evening of the Eastern Psychological Association conference.)

Spoonflower will custom print fabric, giftwrap, or wallpaper. While I love the image of conference posters printed on wallpaper and giftwrap, let’s stick with the fabric for the purposes of this post.

Before designing your poster, check the conference website or the email you received from the conference organizer to find out how big the conference poster boards are. Be sure to design your poster to fit in that space.

You can find detailed instructions on how to go from a poster designed in PowerPoint to a Spoonflower-made, fabric poster in your mailbox. If you are on the main Spoonflower page, mouse over “Design,” select “Upload,” choose your file, check the box to confirm that you own the copyright, and then click upload. Otherwise do as the instructions say.

[Ridiculously important note: When you save your PowerPoint as a pdf, do it as “save as” pdf. Do not “print to pdf.” They sound the same, but for this purpose they are not the same. “Print to pdf” will get you a poster that is half the size you ultimately want. “Save as” yields a poster that is the correct size. It took me 45 minutes of troubleshooting to learn that. You’re welcome.]

The recommended “performance piqué” fabric is $20/yard. You only need 1 yard – and you’ll get 10% off for creating a design. Now you’re at $18. Standard shipping ($3) will ship in “10 to 12 days,” and of course it will need some time to get to you. The Spoonflower pricing page says that the standard shipping will take 7 days to get to you once it ships. In other words, be sure to give them 3 weeks before you have to leave for your conference. The total cost is $21.

If you procrastinate, it will cost you. The conference will be over in 3 weeks? You can have your fabric poster in about a week and a half for $15 shipping. If you need it in 4 or 5 days, it’s $25 shipping. Frankly, $43 (18+25) is still a lot cheaper than the other poster printing services I’ve seen – and you get your poster by the end of the week. If you’re a big-time procrastinator – or if you keep making changes up to the morning you need to leave, stick with printing on paper.

While I’m here, here’s a quick plug for Better Posters for those who are ready to up your game. Poster quality at conferences seems to be getting better, but we all have room for improvement.

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 (who was watching via Zoom web conferencing) looked at the bibliography, and said, “There’s an error in the reference.” That’s when I got to show how easy it is to fix any errors in Mendeley and how to use a little-used feature in Word.

First, Mendeley. Mendeley works by pulling metadata off the pdf. Each journal article pdf in the databases libraries use has hidden data attached to it. The publisher includes information like the title of the article, name of the publication, year, volume, doi, authors, and abstract. When you add such a pdf to Mendeley, Mendeley also pulls out that information and uses it to create in-text citations and a full reference based on whatever style you choose to use.

The error the participant saw was in a journal article title – every word was capitalized; in APA style, only the first word and the word after a colon is capitalized (plus proper nouns, of course). The metadata for the article title sometimes has all of the words capitalized and sometimes just the initial word, depending on whim or policy of the publisher. The fix is easy. In Mendeley, click on the title, change the capitalization of each word so it is correct. Since Mendeley autosaves, all I needed to do was go back to my Word document, click “Refresh,” and just like that the reference updated with the correct capitalization.

Easy, but tedious. Click on a word, delete the first letter, type the capital letter. Repeat for each incorrectly capitalized word in the title. And some of those journal article titles are just so dang long, such as “Strengthening Causal Estimates for Links Between Spanking and Children’s Externalizing Behavior Problems.” That’s nine capital letters I need to change.

Screenshot from Mendeley showing the article metadata

Anytime I encounter something that is tedious, I think, “I bet someone’s created an easier way to do this.”

Here’s Word’s easy fix. Copy and paste the journal article title into Word. Highlight the text. And then on the “Home” tab, click the “Aa” button and select lowercase (or uppercase). That will change all of the letters to, well, lowercase (or uppercase).

Click the “Aa” button again, and select “Sentence case.” Now just the first word will be capitalized.

That’s it. A quick copy and paste into Mendeley, and my reference is updated.

For reasons I don’t understand – I’m certain it has to do with how Word has been coded – “sentence case” only works if all of the letters are of the same case, thus the need to do lowercase (or uppercase) first. And if anyone can tell me why someone would need “toggle case” please write it in the comments.

I was honored earlier this month to be a guest on a podcast on teaching hosted by Elizabeth Yost Hammer, director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development (CAT+FD) at Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA). The topic was – no surprise – technology for teaching and learning.

When you have 40 minutes to kill, give it a listen.

Elizabeth and I have been friends for years, and she knows that I read a lot of non-fiction. The podcast ends with Elizabeth asking about my three favorite books from 2017. Because of time limitations, I was limited to three – although I appreciate Elizabeth’s flexibility because I thought I was going to be able to just talk about one. In any case, she has given me a reason to give my entire list here. In the interest of full disclosure, Elizabeth and I are in online book group together, and for the last I-don’t-know-how-many years, in December or January I give an annotated list of my 5-star and 4-star books from the previous year. I hadn’t done it for 2017, so with Elizabeth’s prompting, I wrote it up. And here it is for you, with (most of the) typos edited out.

5-star books

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis

After Lewis wrote Money Ball, he learned that the biases he wrote about had been well-researched years earlier by Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky. And that led to him writing this Kahneman/Tversky biography. It’s a must-read for anyone who teaches or has ever taught psychology.

The Orphan Tsunami of 1700: Japanese Clues to a Parent Earthquake in North America by Brian Atwater

The sleuthing that went into this discovery will have you on the edge of your seat. That 1700 quake was a biggie.  

Caesar’s Last Breath by Sam Kean

Kean (The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, The Disappearing Spoon, The Violinist’s Thumb) brings us another awesome tour through science history. The framework for this one is gas – specifically the gases that we breathe. He opens with the death of Julius Caesar and the liter of air that was expelled in Caesar’s last breath. It takes about 2 weeks for atoms in the breath you just exhaled to circumnavigate the globe and about 2 years to fully disperse in our atmosphere. It is likely that in that breath, you exhaled an atom or two of Caesar’s dying breath. That alone should be enough reason for you to pick up this book.

Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them by Jennifer Wright

If you’re currently sick, as I was when I read it, the chapter on the bubonic plague will make you feel much better. The chapters on tuberculosis and the Spanish flu hit a little too close to home. Wright is a relatively new history writer – and she’s good. She gives a good sense of what it was like to live with these illnesses in those time periods. And she draws some powerful connections between then and now. If nothing else, read in the Spanish flu chapter how it came to be called the Spanish flu and not the more historically accurate Kansas flu.

The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America’s Enemies by Jason Fagone

How did practice with decoding bootlegger messages during prohibition help bring down the Nazis? This fascinating biography starts in a group with a cult-like feel and ends with the creation of the NSA, another organization that arguably has a cult-like feel.

Huế 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden

We’ve reached a point in American history where we can (finally) be more reflective about the Vietnam War. The author takes us into the experience of what this battle was like for people on both sides of the conflict – and reveals the hubris of both sides.

The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War by Doug Stanton

The battle for Huế described in the book above took place during the Tet Offensive. This book takes a different angle and describes the experience of one company.

Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon by Jeffrey Kluger

The year 1968 wasn’t just about war; this was also the year we sent people around the moon. The story that grabbed me the most from this book (and told in the XULA CAT+FD podcast) was Charles Lindbergh, merely in his 60s, visited with the astronauts the evening before their launch. I cannot, as hard as I try, wrap my head around that. How did we go from one guy flying solo across the Atlantic to sending people to fly around the moon in the span of 41 years?

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

This is Trevor Noah’s memoir about growing up in Johannesburg during apartheid. He’s an excellent storyteller with compelling stories to tell.

4-star books

What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes

If the two 5-star books on the Vietnam War are not enough for you, consider this one. This is Marlantes personal war memoir. What was it like for him to serve in Vietnam? And what advice does he have for today’s soldiers?

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

When you’re an ethnic minority and you have oil money, people have reason to want you dead and other people have reason not to care. And in the end we got the FBI.

Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Schutt

About half the book is on human cannibalism and about half is on non-human cannibalism. You will not look at your neighbor the same way again.

The Great Quake: How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet by Henry Fountain

This was the 1964 Alaska quake. And with it finally came an acceptance of plate tectonics.

Quakeland: On the Road to America’s Next Devastating Earthquake by Kathryn Miles

Miles writes in the style of Mary Roach. Identify a bunch of topics related to earthquakes, visit interesting places and talk with interesting experts, and then write about it. While not as funny as Roach – but that bar is pretty high – her writing is accessible and engaging. One chapter is dedicated to the 1700 Pacific Northwest quake. If you’re going to read the 5-star The Orphan Tsunami, then read that book first. I don’t want this chapter to ruin the mystery for you.

Logical Family: A Memoir by Armistead Maupin

Maupin has had a fascinating life.

“From his loving relationship with his palm-reading Grannie who insisted Maupin was the reincarnation of her artistic bachelor cousin, Curtis, to an awkward conversation about girls with President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office, Maupin tells of the extraordinary individuals and situations that shaped him into one of the most influential writers of the last century.”

And, yes, the conversation with Nixon was quite awkward.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

This was the first graphic novel I’ve read. And I’m game to read another one.

[I knew that the Game of Thrones television show was too violent for me. And I had heard that the novels were just as gruesome. I thought I’d give the graphic novel a go. Nope. In the first 7 pages, a person was mauled by demonic creatures and others were beheaded.]

While there is death in Fun Home, there are no beheadings.

Al Franken, Giant of the Senate by Al Franken

This memoir focuses on his getting into office and being in office. He brings a humanity to the Senate that is tough to see from the outside. I skimmed the latter chapters when he hopped on top of a soapbox. No comment about his resignation.

Nine Who Survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Robert Trumbull

There are nine people that Japan recognizes as having survived both bombs. This book tells their stories. Some were in Hiroshima on business. After the bomb hit, they hopped on the train as soon as it started running again to return home – to Nagasaki.

Drone Warrior: An Elite Soldier’s Inside Account of the Hunt for America’s Most Dangerous Enemies by Brett Velicovich and Christopher S. Stewart

Drones are the new air support for ground troops. What does this new warfare look like?

Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

This book provides the history and the context I needed to understand how we got to here. When I read recently about the 21 million opiates shipped to a town of 3,000 in West Virginia, I was not at all surprised.

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston

There is so much about ancient South American cities that we don’t know. See Get Well Soon for more on what happened to so many of these cities. Also, there are good reasons I’m not a jungle explorer. Enough said.

The Seeds of Life: From Aristotle to da Vinci, from Sharks’ Teeth to Frogs’ Pants, the Long and Strange Quest to Discover Where Babies Come From by Edward Dolnick

This book wins for longest subtitle. I remember when I read The Fourth Part of the World and was introduced to what it was like to live before we had maps, let alone accurate maps. The knowledge of the world we have today is astounding. Not only do I know where Europe is, I’ve been there. And with a credit card, I could be there tomorrow. The Seeds of Life does the same thing for knowing where babies come from. I graduated from storks a long time ago, and now I can’t fathom what it’s like to not know that. (This is sounding like the start of a psych blog post on hindsight bias.) How is it that science came around to finally sorting this out? And, you know, it wasn’t that long ago. This really is a fascinating history. You might know Dolnick as the author of The Clockwork Universe, The Forger’s Spell, and The Rush.

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore

It turns out that radium is dangerous. This a tragic story of how factory workers were seen as easily replaceable. I can’t say much more without giving away a lot.     

The Long Haul: A Trucker’s Tales of Life on the Road by Finn Murphy

Murphy will load up your furniture, haul it across the country, and unload it. While it sounds straightforward, he’s got some stories!

Blue on Blue: An Insider’s Story of Good Cops Catching Bad Cops by Charles Campisi

Internal Affairs, the department within the police department that looks into cop corruption, has never been looked upon favorably. Campisi found himself almost accidentally in charge of Internal Affairs at the New York Police Department. In what was a brilliant move, he took the best people coming out of the police academy, and assigned them to Internal Affairs for a set time period. After that, they could have any posting they wanted. That changed everything. Those who were working in Internal Affairs were known to be the best – and, more importantly, they didn’t have any choice but to do it. If they purposefully “failed” out of Internal Affairs school, they were given the worst posting imaginable. Campisi has some amazing stories to share – including some 9/11 challenges. Feel free to skip the last few chapters where Campisi identifies everything that has gone wrong with the department since he left.

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel

This guy decides one day, without telling anyone, to go live in the woods. And there he stayed for 27 years. How did he live? Why did he do it? And why did he come back to civilization?

The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures by the Library of Congress

The history (and demise) of the card catalog as revealed through photos of cards from actual (retired) card catalogs. If you’re a fan of libraries – and especially if you remember the card catalog – this is a must-read.

When we moved from standing in the library making Xerox copies of journal articles to downloading pdfs from a database, it seemed like an awesome development. Until we realized that marking up pdfs digitally is not easy. I would not be surprised if you told me that you print your pdfs.

Here I will show you Mendeley Desktop for Windows. There are also desktop versions for Mac and Linux. Mendeley’s web interface will keep all of your content synched across your computers.

What does Mendeley do?

Indexing

Pdfs live on your computer wherever you want them to live. Mendeley acts as an indexer. Drag and drop your pdfs from a folder to have them indexed in Mendeley.

Right-click on any pdf to open its “containing folder” so you can see where that file is stored on your computer.

Within Mendeley, you can do some manual indexing of your own by moving your Mendeley pdfs into folders which are all on the left side of the screen. In the screenshot at the top of this post, you are looking at the contents of my “Course Eval Research” folder.

In the bottom left corner is a list of every article author in your Mendeley pdfs. Click on an author name to see all of the articles by that author.

Searching

Type in a search term in the top right corner and Mendeley in real time – meaning as you type – will return all pdfs that contain your search word anywhere in the document, highlighting your search term in bright yellow.

Taking notes

One of the challenges in working with pdfs is how to take notes on them.

Double-click on any of your pdfs to open it. Use the toolbar at the top to add notes or highlight text. On the right side panel, click the notes tab to see your notes. Change the color of your note based on the type of note. For example, the notes that I want to follow up on in some way I make green. Double-click on any note to take you to that place in the pdf.

Mendeley is not altering the original pdf. Mendeley is a sort of transparency that lies on top of the pdf. You’re writing on the transparency, not on the pdf.

At this writing, the “general notes” at the top of the notes page searchable, but your “private annotations” are not.

Sharing

Working with collaborators or a research team? Create a group to share your pdfs.

Click “Create Group” in the left side panel, and select the type of group you want. Choose “Private” if you want to share your pdfs’ “private annotations.”

MS Word integration – where the magic happens

Mendeley has an add-in for MS Word that pulls in your references from the pdfs you have stored in Mendeley. Almost all pdfs you download from a library database contain metadata – data stored in the pdf file but that is generally not visible to you. Mendeley pulls out that metadata and makes it visible in discrete data fields, like author, title, publication, abstract.

Select an article, and in the “Details” tab on the right, you will see the article’s metadata.

The MS Word plug-in makes use of that metadata. [The plug-in should install automatically when you download Mendeley Desktop.]

Let’s say you’re writing something about the research from one of your pdfs. When you’re ready to include the in-text citation, from the “References” tab on the Word ribbon, click the “Insert Citation” button. In the pop-up start typing author name, title, or year, and Mendeley will give you a list of articles to choose from. Select your article and click “Ok.” If you press “Enter” instead, you can search for additional articles to include in your citation. Go to the end of your document, and click “Insert Bibliography” to, well, insert your bibliography. Any new citations you add will automatically be updated in your bibliography. Delete a citation? Click the “Refresh” button, and it will be deleted from the bibliography.

This metadata is created by humans, and sometimes humans make mistakes. Mendeley understands that and makes it easy for you to edit the metadata. Just click on the field to select it for editing, and edit away. When you are done editing, Mendeley saves the change automatically. Go back to Word, and click “Refresh,” and your citation will be updated.

Web importer

Do you reference a lot of web content? Install Mendeley’s web importer into your favorite browsers. Click the Mendeley button to get the pop-up. Enter the information and click save. This will save the reference in Mendeley; it will not save the page. [You may need to click the Mendeley “Sync” button to see the reference appear in Mendeley Desktop.]

If you want to save the page as a pdf, I encourage you to use CleanPrint (read my blog post) to eliminate all of the content from the page you don’t need, save the pdf, drag/drop into Mendeley, and then add the metadata. That sounds like more work than it is, and you only need to do it once.

Troubleshooting

Sometimes in the Mendeley Word plug-in, the “Insert Citation” button will disappear. Save any documents you have open in Word. Close Word. When you run Word again, the button will reappear.

Conclusion

Start using Mendeley. Like any software it can take a bit of time to get used to, but once you get the hang of it, I doubt you’ll go back.

This functionality is now native to Canvas.

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After I copy my current course into my Canvas course shell for next term, I have to adjust all of the due dates. Going into each assignment and changing the date is tedious. And if you’ve been reading my blog, you know I hate tedium. Why can’t I see all of the due dates on one page and change them there? Here is a big time shout out to James Jones of Richland Community College for creating a mechanism that does just that. [And a shout out to Marc Lentini of Highline College for pointing me to all of James Jones’ Canvancements.]

What it is

You will see all of your course assignments in a single Google spreadsheet. Adjust the dates on the spreadsheet. Two clicks later, and all of those due dates will appear in your Canvas course. I see that incredulous look on your face. Pretty awesome, right?

How it works

Jones created a Google spreadsheet that you connect to your Canvas account using API (“application programming interface”). Canvas makes it easy to get an “API access token;” you create it in your account settings. That will give your Google spreadsheet permission to access data in your Canvas account. Next, you tell the spreadsheet which course you want it to access by pasting in the url for your course – just open your course and copy the url from your browser’s address bar. Then in the “Canvas” menu Jones put in that spreadsheet, select “Load due dates” and all of your assignments and current due dates will be downloaded to the spreadsheet; you can watch as each line is populated. Now, make your changes using the same date/time format. When you’re done, in the spreadsheet’s Canvas menu, select “Save due dates” and your new due dates will be uploaded to your Canvas course. Reload your Canvas course, and, like magic, your assignments will all have the new due dates.

How to do it

Jones created an excellent set of instructions. Just do what he says.

In step 4, you may have to “authorize” Google when you try to “Configure API Settings.” If so, just use whatever Google account you want to use. Once Google is “authorized,” then select “Configure API Settings” again.

As a heads up, when you follow the instructions to get the API access token for your Canvas account, you will likely have to scroll down on that Canvas page before you see the “New Access Token” button.

Bonus tools

Of Jones’ other Canvancements, I’ve installed “Sorting Dashboard Course Cards” so I can put the dashboard cards in the order I want, “QuizWiz” so I can save a rubric score or comment AND advance to the next student at the same time, and “Sorting Rubrics Made Easy” that (finally!) lets me move around the criteria in a rubric.

When presenting, I sometimes want to show something on my screen that is small. In Chrome, I can zoom in with CTRL + [plus sign], zoom out with CTRL + [minus sign], and return to normal with CTRL + [zero]. If it’s text I’m showing in Word, I can zoom in using the zoom slider in the bottom right corner. If I want to show, say, the Word toolbar ribbon, I have to use something else to magnify it. This is also for anyone who has said something like, “I know you can’t read what’s on this PowerPoint slide, but…”

Windows Magnifier is likely already installed on your computer – also good to know if you have to use someone else’s computer or your classroom computer. Search for Magnifier.

Click the plus sign to magnify. In “Views,” switch to “Preview full screen” to see your whole screen and drag the zoom area to where you’d like to zoom. Or use the “Lens view” like a magnifying glass. Drag your mouse and the “lens” will follow. To use the touch screen with the lens view, tap your screen to see shaded handles appear on the edges of the “lens.” Tap and drag those handles. If you change the lens size, however, those handles disappear; you’ll only be able to move the lens with your mouse or trackpad.

The next time you run magnifier, it will default to the last settings you used. That means that if you like the lens view and only use the lens view, the Magnifier will always start with the lens view.

Once you’re zoomed in, it’s difficult to use the Magnifier toolbar. Decide which features you prefer to use, and memorize those keyboard shortcuts – don’t try to memorize them all; that’s not necessary. Or if you know you’re going to need this with your next tiny font PowerPoint presentation, type the keyboard shortcuts into the notes field for that tiny-font slide.

There are other magnifier programs out there. If you have one that you really like, please let me know!