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A colleague (thanks Craig C.!) recently sent me a link to a Forbes article (10/18/2011) about Drew Houston, founder of Dropbox. (Disclaimer: Craig swears he doesn’t usually read Forbes; he was in the waiting room of his dentist’s office.) At a recent presentation before 100-or-so psychologists (educators, researchers, and practitioners), I asked how many used Dropbox. About 90% of the hands went up. I confess I was surprised at the number. But in case anyone had any doubts about the widespread use of Dropbox, read this excerpt from the Forbes article: The opportunity in front of Drew Houston revealed itself again a few months agoRead More →

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by Eric Landrum [Note: I am thrilled that Sue Frantz has allowed a guest blog to appear here within her excellent Technology for Educators blog. I just hope I don’t ruin the neighborhood]. Recently heard at an anonymous meeting: “Hi, my name is Eric, and I am a clicker user.” [Audience in unison: “Hi Eric”]. OK, so I don’t think there are truly CA meetings, but I hope by the end of the this post you may be a bit more intrigued about why someone would use clickers in the classroom. There are many different vendors and software systems for the use of audience responseRead More →

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Quick Tech Tip. In my last two posts I’ve addressed ways to get to the folder where your open Word document is located. Folder navigation in general can be a hassle – unless you’re the kind of person who just puts everything in the same folder, in which case you have other issues. For Windows 7 users, you have a quick way to access your most-used folders. Open any folder. Here I’ve opened my Dropbox folder. On the left, see the favorites area? You can add any folder here. No matter what folder I navigate to, my “favorites” will always be listed here. To addRead More →

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I have an open Word document. When I hit CTRL+ALT+O on my keyboard, the folder that contains that document opens. This is very handy if I want to attach the open file to an email message by dragging and dropping the filename onto the message. It’s also very handy if there are other files in that folder that I want to open. Tip: Always save your file before attaching it to an email message. If you attach without saving, only whatever portion that was already saved will be sent. In my last post, I discussed four options for opening the containing folder of an openRead More →

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I ran into a colleague today who posed an interesting question. (Shout out to Tina O. and Eric B.!) Paraphrasing, “I’m replying to an email message in Outlook, and I open a file in Word, and edit that file. Now I want to attach that file to my Outlook email message. Is there a way to do it?” There’s the save-and-send option in Word, but that will attach the file to a new email message, not attach it to a reply, so that’s not going to work here. Option 1 (least desirable). In the Outlook message, click the Insert tab, then click “Attach File,” andRead More →

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[Update 12/15/2012 : Given the issues with Google Calendar Sync, I wasn’t surprised to hear that it was being sunsetted.  Use gSyncIt instead.] To users of Google Calendar Sync (synching Google Calendar with Outlook) [Everyone else can safely ignore.] Warning: Appointments added to Google Calendar may show up in Outlook one hour off for the next week. Possible solutions: Free option: Double check your calendars to make sure the times are correct. $19.99 option: Switch from the free Google Calendar Sync to the $19.99 gysncit for synchronizing Google Calendar and Outlook.  (http://www.fieldstonsoftware.com/software/gsyncit3/)   Why the federal government is to blame: It all started when theyRead More →

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As you all know, I’m a Dropbox fan. But what happens when your Dropbox capacity is 2GB and you’re sharing a folder with someone who has 16GB, and that person puts a 3GB file in your shared folder? (Shout out to the attendees of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology’s Best Practices conference – especially to the person who raised this question!) Well, Dropbox chokes. Here’s an alternative. JustBeamIt.com (via LifeHacker) lets you transfer large files others. How it works? You go to JustBeamIt.com, drag your file onto the webpage. Copy the URL (CTRL-C), and send it to your collaborator. You have to stayRead More →

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The theme for the last week on this blog has been email management. This morning I ran across a LifeHacker blog post that was talking about the same thing. See “Top 10 Tricks for Dealing with Email Overload.” That post reminded me that I’ve been wanting to show you how to turn off Outlook 2010 email notifications – that little popup box that appears in the lower right corner of your screen when a new email comes in. If you’re like my colleague Deb M., you are able to completely tune it out and ignore it. If you’re like me, you see it, and ifRead More →

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UPDATED 5/17/2014 Videodropper is now Orchard, which is nothing like Videodropper.  If you’re looking for a video downloader, check out KeepVid.  This blog post explains how it works. UPDATED 6/24/2012 A visit to the videodropper.ep.io website shows that the service is no longer available.  It has been replaced with a mysterious message. “We’re working on something new. Want to be the first to hear?” with a place to enter an email address to get updates.   UPDATED 10/13/2011. My sincerest thanks to the developer for posting his comment below.  I tried the service again this morning, and it worked perfectly.  Dropbox even downloaded it to myRead More →

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Quick Tech Tip. Tired of guessing which way your USB cable needs to be inserted? Look for the logo. That way is up. For those of us who have to squint to see the logo, add a little white out or nail polish to the top side. Never guess again. (Thanks to Lifehacker for the suggestions from Royce Eddington and one of the LifeHacker readers.) *The frowny-face in the USB cable image wasn’t intentional.Read More →

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