Scientific American asked their “board of advisers to choose the technologies that they could not live without.” Read their answers here. Having recently read Unbroken, Louis Zamperini’s surviving 47 days on a raft in the Pacific followed by a couple years in a Japanese POW camp, and currently reading The Unconquered, an expedition to find the last uncontacted Indians of the Amazon, I’ve concluded that there is a lot of stuff one can live without. People around the world, not just deep in the Amazon, live without a lot of what we have here in the States. And you know, our ancestors did just fineRead More →

12/15/2011 11:46am The presentation has moved into the Q&A session, so I’m going to wrap up here. Be sure to check out the report and the 2011 study infographic. As we slide into the winter break, I hope to have time to read the report myself and write about some of their findings in this blog. ___________ 11:41am PT Where do students say they learn the most? Source: EDUCAUSE Live Presentation, 12/15/2011 ___________ 11:34am PT Basically, students don’t think instructors are using technology effectively. How can we make better use of the technology we have? Source: EDUCAUSE Live Presentation, 12/15/2011 ___________ 11:29am PT What doRead More →

As the term comes to a close and you slide into the break for a bit of a breather, consider checking out these tech tools. I know you probably don’t have time now to look at these, although if you’re looking for a good excuse to do something besides grade papers… If you don’t want to take the time now, bookmark this webpage, and take a look at these when you need a break from your visiting in-laws. (Yes, I know you love them, but that doesn’t mean that you have to spend the entire week with them.) Here they are (the tools, not yourRead More →

The ECAR survey folks always have interesting information to present. Free and online. Hope to see you there! For those who can’t attend, but are interested, I’ll be tweeting live during the event. Follow me on Twitter by clicking the ‘t’ icon on the far right side of your browser’s window. From the EDUCAUSE website: Speaker: Eden Dahlstrom, Senior Research Analyst, Data, Research, and Analytics, EDUCAUSE Susan Grajek, Vice President, Data, Research, and Analytics, EDUCAUSE (Moderator) Date: December 15, 2011 Time: 2:00 p.m. ET (UTC-5); convert to your time zone Topic: In this free hour-long session, “ECAR National Study of Undergraduates and Information Technology, 2011,” SusanRead More →

Quick tech tip: Change the default color of comment boxes in MS Word 2010. In any MS Word document, select the “Review” tab, click on “Track Changes” then select “Change Tracking Options. Next to “Comments” click the dropdown menu and select the color you’d like. Any document you open now will use that comment color. Bonus tip: Use the keyboard shortcut to insert comments more quickly. Highlight the text you want to comment on, then press CTRL-ALT-M. After a little practice, the key combination will feel natural to you.Read More →

Dropbox.com provides you with 2GB free space out of the box. If other people who are invited by you join, Dropbox will increase your allotted space by either 500MB (edu accounts) or 250MB (everyone else) up to an additional 16GB for a total of 18GB. I was recently asked how exactly one gets that additional space. Share a folder with someone who doesn’t have a Dropbox.com account yet. If they join Dropbox.com as a result of your invitation, more MBs for you. Or Send your friends, family, and colleagues a link. Go to the Dropbox.com referrals page. Here you have a few options. Log intoRead More →

I bet you don’t schedule many appointments between 9pm and 8am. Yeah, me neither. Google Calendar now gives you the option to hide those hours, or whatever early/late hours you choose. To activate the option, go to your Google Calendar, and click on the cog icon in the top right corner. Select “Labs”. Click “enable” next to the “Hide morning and night” tool. Click the “Save” button near the top of the page, and you’re done. Go back to your calendar. On the far left, where the times are listed, some of the times will be shaded. Click and hold the little bar at theRead More →

My friends over at the Teaching High School Psychology blog, just posted about the 60 Minutes segment on the flavorists which they describe as “a nice piece on the flavor industry and their attempt to create ‘addictive flavors’ to woo consumers.” If you use Chrome and want to show 60 Minutes episodes during class, go over to the Chrome web app store, and download the free 60 Minutes app. When you open a new tab in your Chrome browser, you’ll see the 60 Minutes icon. Clicking the 60 Minutes icon calls up the most recent episode. The segments for the episode are on the left.Read More →

UPDATE: TodaysMeet shut down on June 16, 2018.    I just finished reading a Scientific American blog on how people watch television. The author reports that “TV networks have taken to dividing their audience into two new segments.” There are those who watch TV like people have always watched TV. And then there are those who watch with a web-enabled device in their hands. I’m not sure there’s much difference between those two groups in that both groups want to share the experience. If we have people in the home to watch with, we’ll do that. If our family and friends are scattered to the fourRead More →

Qwerty? 123456? Ashley? Bailey? SplashData has released the list of the top 25 passwords culled from lists produced by hackers. Is yours on the list? Password security is the best thing you can do to protect yourself. I use LastPass to store all my passwords – one password to rule them all. It runs in my browser and on my Xoom and Android phone. If I remember that password, I have access to them all. It will also generate passwords for me if I’d like. Don’t want to use a password manager? Be sure to create strong passwords that you will remember for the differentRead More →

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