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I feel like I spend a lot of time typing the same phrases over and over again. For instance, when students send me an assignment via email, I send them back a ‘got it’ message. When I send them their graded assignment, I write a ‘your assignment is attached’ message. Isn’t there a keyboard shortcut that will do that for me? With PhraseExpress, there is. My preference in this blog goes to free programs and services, and this one technically is. However, if the program thinks you’re a business (by identifying certain business-like words) it will start to give you an annoying little popup promptingRead More →

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You’re sitting at home, and you come across an amazing website that you think is perfect for your students.  How do you get it out to them? I wait and tell them in class. I email them. I add an announcement to my course management system. I add a link to my website. I just bookmark it and let Delicious do the rest. I mentioned in an earlier post that cloud computing is taking content off your computer and moving it up into the internet ‘cloud.’ You can take your bookmarks out of your browser and move them to where you can access them fromRead More →

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When most people think of blogs, they think of what you’re reading right now: An individual writing about a particular topic.  Blogs, however, have become so much more than that. For instance, I maintain a semi-private social networking site for my current and interested former students; that’s a blog post unto itself.  I blog there about psychology, and I ask my current students to do the same.  There, blogs are used to create a sense of community and foster intellectual curiosity. A number of people are moving their websites into blogging software (hosted on the server of a blog service provider or downloaded to theirRead More →

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Classroom Presenter is the coolest thing that’s happened to my teaching since I got a computer in my classroom. If all it did was allow me to present slides in a way that’s a whole lot easier than PowerPoint, it’d be worth it. This is what is displayed to the students in class through the projector. And this is what I see on my TabletPC. Classroom Presenter runs PPT slides, so I don’t have to do a lot to transition to this program.  (I do have to do a few things; see below.) To navigate I just tap on the slide I want.  As myRead More →

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[Update 3/29/2013: While the information in this post is still good, I’ve written a general post about RSS that uses Feedly for illustration. You can find it here.] [Update 3/17/2013: While Google Reader, discussed below, will be shut down July 1, 2013, RSS is still very much alive.  See this blog post to read about a couple other RSS feed readers.] How many websites do you visit a day?  When do you find time to go into your college library’s database to look at what’s new in your professional journals? Wouldn’t it be nice if you had your own personal web-butler?  You know, someone who couldRead More →

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For online collaboration, there are Google Docs and Zoho.  Both are tools that allow collaboration on word processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentation slides, among others.  This is ‘cloud’ computing — moving files off desktops and into the internet cloud.  Both seem to try to mimic as much of the desktop experience as possible. But if you want quick and easy (no logins, no ‘sharing’ of files and folders) click-a-link-and-go online collaboration, ScribLink and EtherPad TitanPad may be exactly what you’re looking for. Both of these are great for working with students during virtual office hours as well as collaborating with colleagues. If you’ve tried eitherRead More →

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Let me start with my ‘blog goal’ and a little bio. I have a minor addiction to new technology.  But not just any technology.  I’m looking for technology (ideally, free) that either makes my job easier or makes it easier for my students to learn. Yes, I have students. I started teaching college students in Kansas as a grad student back in 1989, and I’m still teaching college students, but now in the beautiful Pacific Northwest at Highline Community College.  If you’ve ever flown into Seattle, you’ve likely flown over my campus. The tools I’ll be talking about aren’t always ones I’ve tried with myRead More →

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