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 ago during a booze-fueled lunch at VC Ron Conway’s Belvedere, Calif. bayside villa. As Houston carefully explained what Dropbox did, he was cut off in the exact way that Steve Jobs had so many years ago: “I know, I use it all the time.” Rather than a tech CEO, his drinking buddy was rapper Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, who told Houston he used Dropbox to collaborate with producer David Guetta on the hit “I Got A Feeling.”

Such tipping point anecdotes now pour in. After his laptop crashed during final exams one law student wrote in: ”Without Dropbox I would have failed out of law school and be living under a bridge.” A watch design firm just outside of Venice, Italian Soul, uses Dropbox to create new pieces with a designer in Mendoza, Argentina, the hulking 3-D files living painlessly in the cloud. Haitian relief workers kept up-to-date records of the deceased and shared those names with Miami and other cities. Professional sports teams inventory videos of opponents’ plays, accessible wherever the team is playing. 

While others are nipping at Dropbox’s heels, e.g., Box.net, iCloud, and Drive (a promised product from Google), Dropbox has quite a head start. As of this writing it has 50 million users. And new users are joining at the rate of about 1 per second.

What is Dropbox doing to keep the hounds at bay? “Houston must combat a MySpace-like implosion by spending a lot of his war chest on ubiquity. He’s protecting his flank against Google via a new deal with phonemaker HTC, which will make Dropbox the default cloud storage option on every one of its Android phones. Deals with six other phone firms are almost inked; PC and television makers are next. Houston has hired a team to tailor Dropbox to businesses. A couple hundred outside developers are making apps for Dropbox.”

Keep an eye on Dropbox. If you’re one of those 50 million users, how has it changed how you work? Not a member of Dropbox yet? Now’s a good time to join.

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 response systems (AKA clickers)—summary to follow. And there are also web-based smartphone applications that do not require separate clicker hardware, just the use of text messaging or an app on your phone. But here I will highlight my use of Turning Technologies TurningPoint software, which is an add-in to Microsoft Word, in conjunction with the TurningPoint XR response device.

The general web site for Turning Technologies is here: http://www.turningtechnologies.com/

To download the free PowerPoint software add-in: http://www.turningtechnologies.com/responsesystemsupport/downloads/

After you install the PowerPoint plug-in, your PowerPoint ribbon will have this new tab:

You can continue to use your own themed slides—there are so many options you can pursue for designing the type of clicker question, how it is displayed, a countdown for students to respond, a prompt to ‘answer now,’ a counter that tallies how many students have responded so far, and so on. A sample clicker slide before being displayed to students looks like this:

One of the key benefits to using an audience response system (i.e., clickers) is that you and your audience can receive instant results as to whatever question was polled, whether a factually-based knowledge question, a question about attitudes and beliefs, a descriptive, informational question (like the one pictured here), or any other type of question-and-answer form.

My friend and colleague Stephen Chew of Samford University would argue that students arrive equipped with a built-in audience response system—raising their hands. Of course he is correct, but I believe (and others do too) that there are additional advantages of using clickers in your classroom:

• A clicker allows for anonymity, whereas hand-raising connects a students’ identity to his or her response (particularly useful for shy students who would be reluctant to otherwise participate)
• Clickers (and the software) can provide a precise, instant tally of a roomful of responses, and display that data instantly (as well as save that data for future use)—good for demonstrating the value of data in the social sciences
• By thinking about the classroom as a laboratory for teaching, teachers can embrace the scientist-educator model in higher education and systematically study classroom interventions and new pedagogies, contributing to the SoTL literature
• Clicker use provides another strategy for promoting student engagement in the classroom, and clickers can be particularly useful in large lecture halls

Imagine if you were teaching your introductory psychology class and you asked your 300 students to raise their hand to answer your questions; of course there would be audience response, and folks in the fixed-seating forward-facing auditorium could spin around and see how their student colleagues responded. But I would contend that it is much more efficient in the large lecture hall to use clickers and engage students from every corner of the room. Plus, by building in course-based points for clicker use and participation, you can “take attendance” in a large lecture hall situation without ever taking attendance.

Are there drawbacks to using clickers (and for that matter, any type of technology) in the classroom – of course. There are the respective learning curves for faculty and students. There is an investment for hardware by students (although some departments loan clickers to students). I believe that the benefits highly outweigh the risks, and I encourage you to conduct your own risk-benefit analysis. Higher education legend Vincent Tinto recently wrote “Simply put, the more students are academically and socially engaged with faculty, staff, and peers, especially in classroom activities, the more likely they are to succeed in the classroom” (2011, para. 8).

Types of clicker systems, with URLs for more information:

• eInstruction        http://www.einstruction.com/
• i>clicker        http://www.iclicker.com/
• iRespond        http://irespond.com/products/?gclid=CNHIq4fxpKwCFQNShwodzlbzBA
• Promethean World    http://www.prometheanworld.com/server.php?show=nav.22335&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=%2Bclicker&utm_campaign=BTS_Generics
• Turning Technologies    http://www.turningtechnologies.com/

For a nice resource on different applications of clickers in higher education, see this web site at the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching: http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/teaching-guides/technology/clickers/

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 add a folder, navigate to the folder you want and open it. Below I’ve chosen my syllabi folder. I right-clicked on the word “Favorites”. Now I can select “Add current location to Favorites”.

Done.

Now no matter what folder I’m in, I can get to my syllabi folder.

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 open Word document. The first two required navigating the folder system. The third option required a little programming, and the fourth option (Office Tab) required $25.

For those who are interested in free option #3, here are the programming instructions courtesy of Tina Ostrander in my college’s Computer Science department. (Thanks, Tina!) The original code comes from the Code for Excel and Outlook blog. While it may look scary, it took less than 5 minutes to set it up.

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Tina Ostrander writes:

In Word, select the View tab. Then Click Macros, View Macro…  Type a Macro name, then click Create:

Copy this code:

  As String, ByVal lpFile As String, ByVal lpParameters _

  As String, ByVal lpDirectory As String, ByVal nShowCmd _

  As Long) As Long

Sub OpenContainingFolder()

  On Error GoTo ErrorHandler

  Dim currentDocPath As String

  currentDocPath = ActiveDocument.Path

ProgramExit:

  Exit Sub

ErrorHandler:

  Resume ProgramExit

End Sub

Into the macro window, like this [Note from Sue, highlight any existing code in the box, delete it, then paste in this code.]:

Click Save and close the window.

To run the macro, select Macro

Click Assign, then Close, then OK.

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That’s it! Open a Word document. Use your keyboard shortcut. The folder that contains that document will open.

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,” and navigate to the file.

Option 2 (less desirable). Open the Documents folder, navigate to the file, drag and drop the file onto the message to attach it.

Both options 1 and 2 require you to remember where you saved the file. My colleague explicitly said that she doesn’t want to have to remember where the file has been saved and then have to navigate the folder system to find it. Fair enough. I don’t want to do that either.

Option 3 (not that great unless you’re a programmer). You can write a little code that will allow you to open the containing folder of any Office file. See this blog for instructions. Fortunately for my colleague she is a programmer. I suspect she’s going to take this route. I’m normally the adventurous sort, and I briefly dabbled down this path.

And then I remembered something.

Option 4 (for those who have $25; try it with limited functionality for free). A couple months ago I read about an Office add-in that opens files as tabs, and I’ve been trying it out. Appropriately, it’s called Office Tab (works with Office 2003, 2007, and 2010). In the screenshot below you can see I have two files open in Word 2010. Just like most web browsers, I click on the tab to switch documents. But here’s the cool part. Right clicking on a tab generates a menu.

From here I can create a new document, open an existing document, close this file, close all of the other files open in this program, save this file, save it as a new file, or save all of the tabs I have open.

Now I get to the answer to my colleague’s question. I can “open folder”. Yes, this opens the folder where this particular document is saved. Now just select the file and drag it onto the email message to send it as an attachment.

To finish out the nifty stuff in this menu, I can also choose to open the file in a new window, rename the file, or lock the file.

Office Tab works with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. If you go with Office Tab Enterprise, it will work with those programs plus Publisher, Visio, Access, and Project.

[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:

1. Free option: Double check your calendars to make sure the times are correct.
2. $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 they changed the dates for daylight savings time.  Apparently Google Calendar Sync is coded in such a way that it recognizes the old dates for daylight savings time.  Between the last Sunday in October and the first Sunday in November, it will sync appointments one hour off.  You’ll have the same experience in spring when we do this again.

Why Google is to blame:

You’d think it would be simple to do a little recoding in Google Calendar Sync to recognize the new dates that have been in effect since 2007.  But apparently not.

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 stay on the page until your file has completely uploaded and until your collaborator appears. Your collaborator needs to stay on the page until the file has been completely downloaded.

See the “waiting for recipient” message in the bottom right corner? Once the file download is completed, it changes to “transfer complete!” The file will be in your recipient’s browser’s download folder.

That’s it.

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 if it’s more interesting that the task you’re currently working on, you click the popup and read the message. And then spend the next half hour crafting the perfect response to it, gleefully ignoring the less interesting task while still feeling like you’re working.

I finally just turned it off the notification.

In Outlook 2010, click “File”, then “Options”. Click “Mail” to bring up this screen:

In the message arrival section, uncheck the “Display a Desktop Alert” box. Done. If you want to get rid of the little envelope icon that appears in your taskbar (the row of icons in the lower right part of your screen), then uncheck the box right above that one, “Show and envelope icon in the taskbar.”

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 my computer within a few minutes.  The videos download as flv files.  If you’d like to convert the videos to a different file format, go to Zamzar.com, upload the file and choose the you’d like to convert it to.  This is going to be a great service!

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I have written before on how to download YouTube videos using ZamZar. For Dropbox users, downloading videos may get a whole lot easier. The key word is “may”. This product has a lot of potential, but it’s not ready for primetime.

Richard Byrne (Free Technology for Teachers) posted on his blog about a new service called Videodropper. (Word of warning. This Videodropper is at videodropper.ep.io. Videodropper.com is a porn site.)

When you visit the non-porn Videodropper, you’ll be asked to connect your Dropbox account to this service. (You can probably imagine what your options are when you visit the porn Videodropper. Let’s just say that that’s beyond the scope of this blog.) Following the link takes you to your Dropbox account where Dropbox asks if you’re okay letting the non-porn Videodropper add stuff to your Dropbox. Once you have granted permission you get bounced back to Videodropper.

Go to YouTube and choose the video you’d like to download. Copy the URL . Go back to to Videodropper and paste the URL into the box, and click “Send to Dropbox.” (Don’t use the link you get using the YouTube “Share” button. At this writing, Videodropper didn’t recognize the youtu.be URL.)

Videodropper will acknowledge your request with this message.

“Test Your Awareness: Whodunnit?” is the name of the video I want downloaded. That link is clickable on the Videodropper page.

The video will be put in your main Dropbox folder. Once there, you can move it wherever you’d like. For me, the video was available in my account at Dropbox.com, but it didn’t sync with my computer so it never appeared in my computer’s Dropbox folder. I had to download it from my Dropbox.com account, then move it from my downloads folder into Dropbox, where, weirdly, it automatically earned the Dropbox green checkmark, acting like it was there all along. I then uploaded an image file to Dropbox.com, just to see if I was having Dropbox issues, but that file synced into my computer’s Dropbox folder without incident.

Then I thought I’d try it again to see if it was a one-time issue. I went back to Videodropper, entered another YouTube URL and clicked “Send to Dropbox”. I was returned to the opening Videodropper page. Where I’m invited to log into Dropbox. So I click that again, and it takes me to where I just was, the screen that tells me my previous file was successfully added to my Dropbox account. I entered the URL again, and zing, back to the opening page I go. I was using Chrome to do this, so I thought maybe it’s a Chrome issue. Now I try Firefox, where I have the exact same experience.

One more browser: Internet Explorer.

I get some new options on the screen. Check out the “Download” and “Play Now” buttons. I’m hopeful.

I enter the new YouTube URL, cross my fingers, and click the partially-obscured “Send to Dropbox” button. And… back to the main Videodropper page I go.

In short, Videodropper only let me download a YouTube video to my Dropbox account once. Choose the video wisely. If you get it to work more than once, please let me know!

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.