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If you’ve been around this blog for a while, you may be a long-time user of Doodle for helping you and others find a good meeting time. But did you know that you can also use Doodle to help make a choice? Yesterday a friend, who is one of my college’s awesome librarians, wrote to say that she works with an instructor who has her students read books related to the course content and then report on what they learned from the book later in the course. The instructor has worked with our librarians to identify a lengthy list of titles, and she doesn’t wantRead More →

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It’s official. Our faculty contract permits us to hold some of our office hours virtually. This quarter I decided to do one office hour online (Tuesdays, 10am to 11:30am PT through March 22, 2016, if you want to stop by. Click here to go there). But what platform should I use? Our campus has Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). It’s a powerful program that’s great for full-on web conferencing. But for online office hours, I wanted something lighter weight. I considered both Skype and Google Hangouts. Both have an-easy-to-use interface and screensharing, but both require the other party to have an account. And in Skype’s case,Read More →

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Did you know that when you crop images in MS Word, PowerPoint, etc., the full image is still there? Anyone who has a copy of your file can restore the image back to the original. This is especially problematic if you frequently crop after doing a print-screen. Do you remember what was in the background that you just cropped? A sensitive email? Student grades? Your credit card information? Fortunately, you can ask MS Office to delete the cropped areas of your images, but you do have to ask. For each image. In, for example, a Word file, click on the image, select the Format tab,Read More →

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We want students to understand our course content, obviously. The better students know something, the better they can explain it using simple language. Send your students to the Up-Goer Five Text Editor, and ask students to type in their explanation of that particular concept, such as poverty, classical conditioning, or Hamlet’s motivation. Here I’ve pasted in the classical conditioning definition from Wikipedia. The words with a red underline are not included in the 1,000 most used words. Students need to edit their explanation so that all red-lined words are removed. If you’d like to grade it, have students send you a screenshot of their non-red-linedRead More →

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Over the summer, Dropbox added a nifty new feature. Save bookmarks from your web browser in any Dropbox folder. Highlight the URL in your web browser, left click on the highlighted URL, and drag it into your chosen Dropbox folder. Notice that the file “type” is Internet Shortcut. Like filenames, you can rename your URLs by right-clicking on the filename and selecting rename. Yes, if you share a Dropbox folder (read/write privileges for your share-ees) or share a link to a Dropbox folder (read-only for your share-ees), the links are also shared.Read More →

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I’ve written before about polling options like Socrative and Plickers. ParticiPoll is for those who like to have polls embedded in PowerPoint (works in Office 2010 and higher for Windows; Office 2016 for Mac as of 9/30/2016) but don’t like the cumbersomeness or participant limitations of PollEverywhere. During your presentation, your participants will use a designated URL to access the polling buttons through any web-enabled device they have, such as a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. NOTE: ParticiPoll has moved to a pay model. As of March 5, 2020, the lowest plan is $199/year for an individual presenter. With ParticiPoll, you download and install the PowerPointRead More →

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Once upon a time, there was a third party service for Dropbox called DropItToMe. It allowed others to upload files to your Dropbox account. That service went extinct some time ago, but the programmers at Dropbox have been working on creating that functionality inside of Dropbox itself. And it is now available. The feature is called “File requests”. Give people a URL, and when they visit that URL, they will be able to upload a file as big as 2 GB (I think) to your Dropbox account. How cool is that? And, of course, once the file arrives is uploaded to Dropbox.com, Dropbox will syncRead More →

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I’m on the road, taking a bit of a mini-vacation during spring break. Looking at my electronics and electronic-related gear I packed for this road trip, I am reminded of a question I was recently asked. What mobile accessories do I recommend? (Shout-out to Lisa at Xavier University of Louisiana!)   Rechargeable back-up battery If your mobile devices are aging, as mine are, the battery life just isn’t what it used to be. This isn’t a problem when stationary because you can plug into an outlet. This also isn’t a problem when traveling by car, train, or, increasingly, by plane because you can plug intoRead More →

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Mick MacLean (Buffalo State) emailed me with an interesting problem. When you’re teaching in a classroom without an easily visible clock or an easily visible but inaccurate clock, getting class started and ended on time is a challenge. He thought this might be a problem technology could fix. He wanted an alarm of some kind to sound at the beginning class, with five minutes left, and then at the end of class. Ideally this would happen all on its own without his having to remember to set alarms. Here’s the solution for Android users. We’re going to have your Android device read your Google Calendar.Read More →

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