Outlook notifications are the little popups that appear in the bottom right corner of your screen that scream “PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!” There are a couple very good reasons to turn them off. First, every time they appear, what we are doing is interrupted. If we are in the middle of a thought, our attention goes to the notification, and then we need a few seconds to refocus on what we were doing to begin with. Every. @&%#$^. Time. Consider how many messages you receive in a day. Those seconds add up. The second very good reason to turn them off is if you happenRead More →

As frequent readers of this blog know, I’m a fan of everyone who has the skill to create scripts that make Canvas better. This post will feature another James Jones script (thank you, James!). Like other scripts, this one uses the Tampermonkey add-on for your browser. If you don’t yet have Tampermonkey installed, visit the Tampermonkey website and click the first download button, not the beta version. What the “add color course border” script does Since all Canvas courses look the same, it can be hard to tell at first glance which course you are in. The “add color course border” script provides a handyRead More →

Here are some handy features in the latest Canvas update. Some of these features needs to be turned on by your Canvas administrator. If you don’t see this feature in your instance of Canvas, ask your Canvas administrator to flip the switch. Apply score to ungraded While we’ve been able to mark all ungraded work with a default grade by clicking the 3-dot kebab icon for each Canvas gradebook entry, we now have the power to do that across the entire gradebook in one fell swoop. Click the 3-dot kebab icon next to Total in the Canvas gradebook. Use your new-found power only for good.Read More →

If you have had students who have submitted particularly good work or work that illustrates common errors, you may want to share the work with your current students. Since the students’ names are not on their files—or you have removed them—you think you are sharing the work is anonymous. It may not be, but you can make it so. Metadata Most files have metadata—data that is attached to the file but is not visible. For example, PDFs of journal articles contain metadata about the article. PDF managers, like Mendeley and Zotero, pull that metadata into their own databases. Those programs then rearrange the data howeverRead More →

I wish it would have occurred to someone to call whiteboards “snowboards.” That sounds way more fun. Zoom has had a rudimentary whiteboard as part of its Screenshare menu. For those of you who find that that whiteboard serves your purposes, keep using it. For those of you have wished that the Zoom whiteboard had a little more functionality, check out the new Zoom whiteboards. In your Zoom meeting room, you can find the new Whiteboards button in the bottom toolbar. You can also access your whiteboards—and create new ones—by logging into the Zoom.us website. Have you created a whiteboard you want to use asRead More →

Zoom released its latest update today, Monday, April 18, 2022. Below, I’ve listed some of the features that I find particularly useful. You can find the full list here. This update is a manual download. The easiest way to get it is to visit the Zoom download page and click the Download button. The installer will download to your computer’s download folder. Run the installer to get the updated version of Zoom. Polls/Quizzes: New Central Library For those who use polls/quizzes, you know that the questions you had for your personal meeting room were separate from the questions you had for your other meeting rooms.Read More →

I’ve written before about using Tampermonkey scripts for adding functionality to Canvas. If you’re not familiar with Tampermonkey scripts for Canvas, please read that post first. I have another one for my fellow intrepid Canvas users. This one comes from Ben Fisher of Crean Lutheran High School, known as fisher1 in the Canvas Community forums. Read his post here. What the “Set Canvas Default Due Times” script does Everywhere you can add a time for when an assignment, quiz, or discussion is due, you will have time buttons to choose from. Yes, you can decide what those times are. All of my course stuff isRead More →

Why do these webcam videos appear in this particular order? [Source: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362323-Adjusting-your-video-layout-during-a-virtual-meeting] The good folks at the MIT Teaching and Learning Lab have taken serious consideration of the algorithm Zoom uses to determine the order of webcams in Zoom’s gallery view (Rankin & MacDowell, n.d.). The initial video placement is determined by order of arrival, with the most recent arrivals first. Those with their webcams on will be first; those with webcams off will be last.   Every time a person speaks, their video pops to the top left of the screen. The MIT Teaching and Learning Lab staff ask us to consider these threeRead More →

I have a colleague who emailed recently needing a transcript from a podcast episode. How could she get one? It’s surprisingly easy. If you do not already have the file (mp3/m4a/wav—or mp4 if it’s a video), you’ll need to get it. Step 1: Download the recording’s file I use a Firefox browser add-on called Video DownloadHelper. For Chrome, try CocoCut. Visit the website that hosts the recording. The browser add-on icon will change when it detects a file it can download. The Video DownloadHelper and CocoCut icons will go from black and white to color. If the add-on doesn’t turn color, try playing the recordingRead More →

In Zoom 5.10.0 (released March 21, 2022), we have some new features that instructors and their students might appreciate. This release is a manual download. Get it here. First, animal avatars. You can find the menu next to virtual backgrounds and video filters. Mouse over each avatar to see what the Zoom developers think it is. I’m pretty sure that what they call a grizzly bear (last one in the second row and first in the third row) is a groundhog. If you’ve used Zoom’s video filters to, for example, wear a virtual hat or glasses, you’ve experienced Zoom’s facial detection software. They’re using theRead More →

image_print