I’m often asked about the easiest way to set up a website. While the course management systems are fine for, well, managing courses, if you want students to access information before or after the course a personal website is a logical way to go. Last week I was at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP), the best psychology-focused teaching conference. During a participant idea exchange on favorite tech tools, one person suggested Weebly.com. (I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name! If you read this, please email me. I want to give you proper credit.)

Go to Weebly.com, and set up an account. You can log in with the Facebook credentials or create a unique username and password for the site.

Next you’re asked for a title and choose the type of site you’re setting up.

If you select education, you’re give this choice of categories to select from.

Next, choose your domain. That’s going to be your URL. Since I already have a website, I chose to just go with a Weebly subdomain: http://suefrantz.weebly.com. If I didn’t already own the domain suefrantz.com, under “register a new domain,” I would enter suefrantz in the box. If you want something other than .com, use the dropdown menu to pick a different extension. Since I own suefrantz.com, if I wanted to move from my current host, I could enter suefrantz.com in the box under “use a domain you already own.” Weebly would walk me through everything I needed so that visitors to suefrantz.com would be directed to Weebly instead. Whatever decision you make here is not irreversible. More on that later.

With those decisions made, you’re now taken into the editor.

Paragraph with Title

It’s a drag-and-drop interface. Want to add a paragraph with a title, click on “paragraph with title” in the toolbar, drag it to where you want to put it, and unclick.

After dropping it in (below the default image), Weebly tells you what to do. Click on the big print to edit the title; click on the small print to edit the paragraph text.

After selecting “click here to edit” (either one), you get a familiar toolbar. The buttons are, from left to right:
Bold, italics, underline, font color, increase font size, decrease font size, remove formatting, add a link, align left, align center, align right, justified, undo, and redo.

When editing a paragraph instead of a title, you get two additional buttons on the toolbar: Bulleted list and numbered list.

Quick tip: Use TAB to move between elements. For example, when you’re done with the title, use TAB to move to the body of the paragraph. Use CTRL-A to select all of the text in that element. Typing will erase what was selected. If you added a second titled paragraph under it, hitting TAB again will move your cursor to the next title.

If you change your mind about an element, you can always delete it. Mouse over it and in the top right corner of the element you’ll see a little red circle with a white x in it. Click the red circle to delete.

Paragraph with Picture

After dragging this element onto the page, I can edit the title, the paragraph text, and add an image.

Clicking on the sample image, this box pops up. If the image is on your computer, open the image’s location, and drag and drop it to add it. Or, if you prefer, click on “upload a photo from your computer” to navigate to it the old-fashioned way. Click the search button to find photos, both professional ($5 each) and free. Mouse over the photos you want to mark as “favorites” or click “select” to choose it. Click the “favorites” button to see the photos you marked as such. For most images on the internet, you can right-click on it to “copy image URL”. If you go that route, be sure that you either own the copyright or that the copyright owner is fine with you using the image.

Custom HTML

When you drag this element on to the page, you can add any HTML content you’d like. Here’s where this comes in handy.

For most YouTube videos, you can get an embed code. Under the video, click “Share” and then “Embed”. Copy the code, and paste it your “Custom HTML” box. The video will play on the page.

You can do the same with TEDTalks. Click the “Embed” tab under any TEDTalk video. From the popup window, copy the code, and paste in your “Custom HTML” box.

Changing the default banner image

While we’re talking about images, let’s change the default image on the page.

Mousing over the image makes an “edit image” button appear. Click the down arrow to “edit image.”

Clicking the “add image” button gives you the image options discussed above. Or you can replace the image with text. Click the “add text” button multiple times to add multiple text boxes. If you decide you don’t like any of your changes even after saving them, click on “revert to original” in the top right corner to the left of the “Cancel” button.

Design Tab

Now that you have the idea of how the page elements work, let’s move on to design.

Flip through the filmstrip at the top to choose the layout you like. Click the arrow on the far right to see even more. Keep going. There are plenty to choose from!

Going social

At the very top of the page, are the social media icons. Mouse over them to add your contact information. Click the “x” to the right to delete it. To change the order, click the far left handle (the little box with the dots in it) and drag it. Click the “add more” button to add more.

Add a page

Since you may not want all of your content on one page, add a page. Click the “Pages” tab, then click the “Add page” button.

After adding a page title, click “Save” at the bottom. You’ll be redirected to the same page editor interface you started with.

Want to go back to editing your main page? Click on the “Pages” tab again, and select “Home,” and then click the “Edit Page” button at the top of the page.

Settings tab

Want to change the site address you set when you started this whole process? You can do that here.

Publish

When you’re ready to go live, click the orange “publish” button in the top right corner.

Pro version

For a reasonable sum of money, you can add a number of nifty features, such as the ability to password protect individual pages.

Conclusion

This is the drop-dead easiest way to create your own website.

My favorite appointment scheduling service, YouCanBook.Me, lets people book themselves into your calendar. (See this earlier blog post for more about how YouCanBook.Me works.) One hesitation in using the service I’ve heard from faculty is that they want students to request appointment times, not have the appointment automatically confirmed. You now have that control.

Choose your YouCanBook.Me calendar you’d like to edit. On the “advanced” tab, at the very bottom, check “make new bookings tentative”.

The next person who selects an appointment time will get text at the top of the confirmation screen that reads “**This booking is not yet confirmed**”. You may want to change the text that you displayed on the confirmation screen to reflect that the appointment hasn’t been confirmed. The email sent to the appointment-maker includes that same text at the top of the message. Also consider changing whatever text you’ve told YouCanBook.Me to include in the email message to reflect that the appointment isn’t solidified yet.

This is the email that I received from YouCanBook.Me. I now click on Accept or Reject.

Accepting

If I click accept, I get this screen in my web browser.

If I check the “send a message” box, the screen expands to this.

After clicking the “accept booking” button, I’m redirected to my “bookings profile” page, where I learn, for the first time, that I have a bookings profile page.

The appointment then appears on the calendar like it normally does.

Rejecting

If I click reject, I get this screen in my browser.

If I check the “send a message” box, the screen expands to this. I can edit all of the message components except the ‘to’ address.

My bookings profile page now shows the rejected appointment request.

This is the email the appointment requester gets.

Viewing tentative bookings

YouCanBook.Me creates a new Google calendar for you called “YouCanBook.Me Tentative” where it holds the appointments that are in limbo.

To see that calendar, visit your Google Calendar page, and click the down arrow to the right of “My calendars”. Select “Settings.”

In your list of calendars will be your tentative calendar. Click on the checkbox to make the calendar available for you to see.

Now, click the “Back to Calendar” link at the top of that webpage. You can now view what’s in the tentative calendar. (The calendar name will have a white box next to it. To change the color, mouse over the name of the calendar, and click the down arrow that appears. Select the color you’d like those entries to appear in your calendar.

Accepting/rejecting from the bookings profile page

The easiest way to accept or reject an appointment is from the email YouCanBook.Me sends, but that’s not the only option you have.

Log into YouCanBook.Me. The page you see will list all of your calendars. If you’re editing a YouCanBook.Me calendar, you can always click on the “dashboard” button at the top of the page to get your list of calendars. Click the “bookings” button.

Here I can see that listing of all of my appointments. The most recent one is showing as undecided.

Clicking on the “undecided” button takes me to this page. I see the details of the booking, and I can decide to accept or reject it.

Conclusion

Are you a YouCanBook.Me user? What do you think about this new feature?

Print Friendly lets you print what you’d like from a webpage.

For example, let’s say that you wanted to print a post from my blog. If you used the print capability of your web browser, you’d get something like this. In addition to the content that you want, you’d also get the header, menu tabs, and the right navigation bar.

Using Print Friendly, you get the name of the website, the URL, and the content of the blog post. That’s it.

Try it out yourself. At the bottom of this post, there is a Print Friendly button. Click on it to print this article.

How it works

Go to Print Friendly. On their website, enter the URL of the website you’d like to print.

Better yet, in the section labeled “Get the Bookmarklet”, click and “drag the [Print Friendly button] to your browser’s bookmark toolbar.” Any time you’re visiting a webpage you’d like to print, just click the Print Friendly button in your toolbar.

Whichever method you use, you will get a screen that looks like this. You can print, save as PDF, or email an uncluttered version of the webpage. Change the size of the font if you’d like. You can even remove the images from the page.

Don’t want to include some content? Mouse over the paragraph you want to delete and click. It’s gone.

When you save as PDF, the URL in the top right corner of the page is clickable.

Conclusion

If you are printing webpages or saving webpages as PDFs, this is a must-use tool.

[Note: I’ve previously recommended JoliPrint as a similar service. JoliPrint announced in mid-December 2012 that they will be closing up shop in early January, 2013.]

ZoomIt was designed to let a presenter zoom into a particular portion of the screen. For most presentations I don’t need a zoom, but I would like to be able to draw. Of course PowerPoint gives you drawing tools, but the menu system is a hassle. If I’m showing, say, a webpage, then the PowerPoint drawing tools are of no use.

When I press CTRL + 2, my cursor changes to a red plus sign. I click and hold to draw on the screen. When I’m done, I press ESC. It’s pretty straight forward.

After downloading ZoomIt, run it on your computer.

Look for the ZoomIt icon in your system tray (bottom, right corner of your screen). Right click on the icon, and select “Options”. Here you can see the instructions for the various functions. Once you’re familiar with them, press “Cancel” and use the keyboard shortcuts to do what you want to do. (Note: The keyboard shortcuts won’t work if you have the ZoomIt options screen open.)

Zooming

The first tab shows the zoom functions. The default keyboard shortcut is CTRL + 1. After pressing and holding the CTRL key, press 1. You zoom in on the screen, and moving the mouse now moves the entire screen. Use the mouse wheel or the up and down arrow keys to zoom in and out.

Click on the screen, and the cursor changes to a red plus sign. You’re now in drawing mode. Click and hold to draw. (See the “Drawing” section below for more drawing functions.)

When you’re done zooming, press ESC.

The second tab is for LiveZoom. In regular zoom, the screen will freeze while you zoom. Usually this isn’t an issue, but if you’re showing video or other dynamic content that you want to continue to run while you zoom, LiveZoom is your better option. In LiveZoom, use the up and down arrow keys to zoom in and out.

To draw in LiveZoom mode, press CTRL + 2 to enable the drawing tools. At that point, LiveZoom will act like regular zoom in that the screen will freeze. Press ESC to exit drawing, and LiveZoom will be re-enabled.

When you’re done LiveZooming, press ESC.

Drawing

You can also have just the drawing functions without the zoom.

Press CTRL + 2 to enter ZoomIt’s drawing mode. The cursor changes to a red plus sign. Click, hold, and drag to draw.

Like in other Windows programs, CTRL + Z will delete what you just did, CTRL + C will capture the screen, drawings and all, and CTRL + S will save it. Want to erase everything? Type ‘e’.

Want to change the pen color? While in drawing mode, type “‘r’ (red), ‘g’ (green), ‘b’ (blue), ‘o’ (orange), ‘y’ (yellow), or ‘p’ (pink).”

Want nice clean lines? Hold down the Shift key for a straight line, CTRL for a rectangle, and Tab for an ellipse. For an arrow, hold down Shift and CTRL.

Switch to a white (‘w’) or black (‘k’) background.

Would you prefer to type? Press ‘t’. Use the up and down arrow keys to change the size of the font.

When you’re done drawing, press ESC.

It’s portable!

If you want to use it on another computer, such as a classroom computer or a conference presentation computer, copy the files onto a flash drive. On the other computer, plug in the flash drive, and run the ZoomIt program. When you’re done with your presentation, exit ZoomIt, and eject your flash drive.

Multiple monitors

ZoomIt works on multiple monitors. However you can’t just move from one to the other. If you want to use ZoomIt’s drawing tools on, say, a presentation monitor, you need to move your cursor to that monitor before pressing CTRL + 2. You will only be able to draw on that monitor. To draw on the other monitor, you need to press ESC, move your cursor to the other monitor, and press CTRL + 2 again.

Conclusion

Try it out in your office or at home. When you’re feeling comfortable (it won’t take you long!), put it on a flash drive and carry it to class.

For some of my assignments, students are asked to write them in a word processor and email them to me as an attachment. In the most recent batch of student papers, one arrived with a .pages extension. Since I don’t have a program that can read that file format, I went to Zamzar and converted the file.

In step 1, I clicked “choose file” and navigated to the file I wanted to convert. In step 2, from the dropdown menu I selected .doc. In step 3, I entered my email address. In step 4, I clicked convert.

In less than 30 seconds, Zamzar had sent me an email informing me that the conversion was complete. I followed the link in the email message, and the converted file was downloaded by my browser.

For those concerned about privacy, if you are an unregistered user, Zamzar holds the files for one day and then deletes them.

Quick Tech Tip for Gmail users.

Want to quote just part of an email message in your reply instead of the entire message?

Highlight the text you want, and then click the reply button or tap the ‘r’ key on the keyboard. Only the highlighted text will be quoted in your reply.

Like having different wallpapers for your desktop? I have 110 different images that change every 15 minutes on both my work and personal laptops. (You’re right. This has nothing to do with teaching. But it is fun.)

Here’s one.

How to do it

Create an account at Desktoppr. During the registration process give Desktoppr permission to access your Dropbox.com account. (Don’t have a Dropbox account yet? Sign up here.) Desktoppr will add an “Apps” folder to Dropbox if you don’t already have one. Inside of that folder it will add another folder called “Desktoppr” where it will sync the wallpapers you select.

I filter by “most downloaded first”. For the wallpapers you want displayed on your computer, click the cloud icon under the image. Here you can see that the wallpapers with white clouds are ones I’ve chosen.

The images you select will automatically be downloaded, via Dropbox, to your computer.

Displaying the wallpapers

Now that the images are on your computer, you need to tell your computer where those images are and to display them as wallpaper.

In Windows 7, right click on your desktop and at the bottom of the menu, select “Personalize”. Alternatively, go to Control Panel – > Personalization. (Mac users, see instructions here. I’m guessing that step 4 is where you’d choose the Desktoppr folder.)

At the bottom of the screen, select “Desktop Background”.

Click “browse”. Navigate to your Dropbox folder -> Apps -> Desktoppr. Next, decide how often you’d like the wallpaper image to change.

Changing wallpaper manually

While I have my wallpapers set to change every 15 minutes, I might not be in the mood for the one that is currently displaying. When I right-click on my desktop, I get this pop-up menu. About 2/3 of the way down, I can click on “Next desktop background” to cycle to the next one in the queue.

Deleting wallpapers

Go into your Desktoppr folder in Dropbox and delete the wallpapers you don’t want.

Adding wallpapers to Desktoppr

If you’d like to make your own images (where you own the copyright) available to other Desktoppr users, save your images in your Dropbox -> Apps -> Desktoppr folder. That’s it. If you decide you don’t want everyone to be able to use them, you will need to contact the good folks at Desktoppr and make that request.

Since I wrote about Join.me in February 2011, the developers have added some new features. For those who missed that post, Join.me is a desktop sharing application. Run Join.me, and the program generates a URL. Share that URL with whomever you’d like, and they will see your computer’s desktop in their web browser.

In the free version of Join.me, you use your computer’s microphone to talk with those who are seeing your desktop.  To listen, use headphones, not your computer’s speakers. If you use your speakers, it will sound okay to you, but the others who are participating will hear an echo of their voices. The sound from your speakers is picked up by your microphone so anyone who is speaking will hear their voice through their headphones. If you want conference calling over the phone, sign up for Join.me Pro. Or use FreeConference.com. Or Speek.com.

Multiple monitor support

The center icon in the Join.me toolbar has been changed from a pause button to a monitor. Clicking on it still pauses your screen. Let’s say you want to do something on your screen without everyone seeing it, pause freezes your screen for everyone who is watching, but you still retain full control.

Clicking the down arrow under the monitor icon is magical if you are running dual monitors. Click on “Switch screen”. An orange outline will appear around your screen to show that you are currently sharing, say, monitor 1. Mouse over to your second monitor, and the orange outline will move with you. Click anywhere on that screen to share it. Repeat the process to move back to monitor 1. Okay, maybe it’s not magical, but it is pretty cool.

Mobile app (Android/iOS)

Visit Google Play/App Store, to add the free Join.me app to your smartphone or tablet. Run the app, and enter the 9-digit code (hyphens are added automatically). If you view someone’s screen from the app, you join the audio as a conference call via a phone number and access code (pro version is not required). The other limitation is that you do not have the option to control the computer screen you’re viewing. You can only look, not touch.

Teaching tip

I have an engineering colleague who teaches in a computer classroom where each student station has dual monitors. During class, the professor runs Join.me, and his students watch his screen in the web browser via Join.me on one monitor while they do the same steps on the other monitor.

How are you using Join.me?

Last week I was at the Clickers 2012 Conference where there was much discussion about whether faculty are okay with students using web-enabled devices (smartphones, laptops, tablets, etc.) during class.

I was surprised, although I shouldn’t have been, that many faculty ban their use outright. The emotion around this issue runs high. Ask your colleagues “what’s your policy regarding cellphones in class?” Watch how quickly they heat up. At this conference, one person noted that his colleague kicks students out of class if they are spotted using a smartphone.

I have never been a big fan of abstinence-only education; I believe in teaching safe tech.

The psychological literature is rife with studies demonstrating the general ineffectiveness of punishment. Punishment generally doesn’t stop the behavior. We just get better at avoiding punishment. Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket? Did it stop you from speeding? Of course not. You just got better at not getting caught. You slow down through that section of highway since you know that’s where police are likely to hide, speeding up as soon as you’re past it. Perhaps you’re also more vigilant for police. There is an exception. Punishment can be effective if it is severe enough. If police could shoot you on the spot for speeding, it’s unlikely that you’d ever speed. But who wants to live in that society?

Yes, students have been chastised in the past for using smartphones in class or using laptops to do “unauthorized” things, like viewing Facebook. Have students stopped? Of course not. They have, however, gotten much better at not getting caught. Ask your students to anonymously report whether they have, in the last week, used their web-enabled devices to access content that is unrelated to your course during your course. The (high) numbers might surprise you.

At the same time, the research on multitasking is clear. Our attention can really only be in one place at a time. While we can switch back and forth quickly, we lose information during the switch. If you want to get some serious work done, close your email program. When you switch from that work to your email and then back to your work, it takes some time to regain your train of thought. An hour spent on task and an hour spent on email is much better than switching back and forth every few minutes. If you do the latter, it’s going to take you much longer than two hours to do the same work.

Students need to understand this, because our mobile technology is not going away. Even if an instructor implements harsh penalties for unauthorized tech use during class with classroom sentinels to monitor behavior, that will not impact what the students do in other courses or, after graduation, on the job.

Some of you remember when the internet was born. During its early childhood, we tried to help students manage the information they were accessing. Students were advised that .com websites should be viewed much more cautiously than .org websites. That advice seems quaint now. Over time we have morphed into teaching a more complex “information literacy.”

“Technological literacy” is in its infancy. The question should not be whether to allow students to use technology during class. Rather we should be asking, “What should we be doing to help students understand not only how to use technology, but also how to use it appropriately?”

I talk with my students about the multitasking literature. Most students know that when they are paying attention to something other than me, they’re not paying attention to me. I give the example of trying to talk on the phone while watching TV. You either lose track of what’s happening on the TV, or you lose track of what the person on the phone is saying. The classroom is no different.

To really drive the point home, I show this one-minute video (watch the video below). (If you want to read more about this concept, it’s called “inattentional blindness”; also see “change blindness”.)

We also need to help students learn how to stay focused, to resist being distracted. For example, explain the value of “deep processing”. When students take notes on a laptop, they are more likely to try to transcribe what the instructor is saying rather than “process” it into their own words. That’s akin to reading without thinking about what is being read. Suggest that students work to connect what they are learning to what they already know or what they are learning in their other courses.

It’s easy to blame technology for a student’s lack of attention. It’s hard for an instructor to compete with everything that’s on the internet, an internet that a student holds in the palm of their hand. And we can see that student holding that phone so it feels actionable. If I tell the student to put away the phone the student will then pay attention to me. Keep in mind that those of us who were students before the internet found plenty of ways to be distracted during class. While instructors want students to pay attention during class, we’ll settle for having students who look like they’re paying attention?

Or we could help students understand the impact of distraction on their learning, and help them learn what they need to do to maintain focus.

I visit a lot of faculty offices and view a lot of computer desktops. If you pretty much only see your computer screen(s), check out this NPR story on a photographer whose chosen subject is the computer desktop. Do you use your desktop as a dumping ground for anything and everything new? Or do you only use if for what you are currently working on? Do you store files and folders there, or just program icons? Do you wish you had multiple screens, like your smartphone does?

I recently started using Fences (30-day free trial; $9.99) [for Windows; Mac users try Desktop Groups] . I should have moved to it when it first came out a couple years ago. Fences creates folders for your desktop.

When it first runs, Fences defaults to corralling your icons into 3 fences: Folders, programs, and files & documents. In the screenshot above, you can see I have the original 3 fence types and 2 new ones I created.

Create a new fence by clicking on an empty space and dragging the cursor. You’re given the option to “Create Fence here” or “Create Folder Portal here.” In this case I created new fences. One holds the program icons for 3 clicker programs; I don’t use them all, but I will be demonstrating them soon for a conference presentation, so I wanted the icons where I could easily get at them. The other one I created for my Psych 100 course. I put in shortcuts to the PowerPoint files I’ll be using in my upcoming class sessions.

If you want to move icons to a different fence or out of a fence, just click and drag.

A folder portal is a quick method for displaying an existing folder on your desktop. It is just a series of shortcuts to the documents in that folder. This is a very handy feature if you’re working on a project that has you frequently dipping into one particular folder.

Multiple screens.

All of your fences don’t fit on one screen, or perhaps you just don’t want to see certain fences all the time. Click the very right edge of your desktop and drag left (or click left and drag right) to get a clean screen. Just like your smartphone. To move an existing fence to the new screen, click the top of the fence and drag it to the edge, and just like your phone, the fence moves to the new screen.

Now that you’re organized.

Don’t let your desktop fall back into chaos. Create a new fence, and click the settings menu in the top left corner. Mouse over “Organize.” Decide if you want to send all new desktop stuff into this fence, or only certain content.

For the completely clutter-free desktop.

If you want an ultraclean workspace, double-click any empty space on the screen, and the fences and their icons will disappear. Double-click again to make them reappear. You can exclude any fence from “quick-hide” by going to that fence’s settings menu, and under “View,” selecting “Exclude this Fence from quick-hide.”

While we’re here on the view tab, notice that you can change how visible the fences are. Anything less than 100% makes them appear ghosty on the screen. Mousing over them makes them completely visible. In the screenshot below, the top fence is 100% visible. The bottom fence is set to 40%.

Further customization.

Fences adds itself to your control panel. Access it there or from your Start menu to make Fences work exactly as you would like. For example, change the color of the fences and fence titles. Change their degree of transparency. You can even see snapshots of your screen (taken daily) and restore to that earlier layout.

Ready to organize your desktop?

We really should also have a conversation about your email…