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The “Type here to search” box in the lower left corner of Windows 10 is handy for searching all kinds of things. Except the Internet. Windows forces you to use their Bing search engine inside of their Edge browser. But I’d rather use Firefox as my browser and use Shortmarks (see this blog post) as my search engine. Thanks to the $1.99 Search Deflector available from the Microsoft Store, now I can. [Shout out to Ashwin at ghacks.net!] (There is an identical free version available via GitHub, but for such a useful tool, I’m happy to pony up a couple bucks.) After installing and runningRead More →

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This is a mishmash of stuff that I’ve been collecting. Enjoy! Be kind to your eyes: 20-20-20. We are all spending way more time in front of our computers than we did, say, in February 2020. I’ve heard from colleagues who have been struggling with eye strain, so I know I’m not alone. Be kind to your eyes and follow the ophthalmologist-recommended 20-20-20 rule. Every 20 minutes look at something 20+ feet away for 20+ seconds. The trick is in remembering to look away every 20 minutes. I use the “Tomato Clock” browser extension (Chrome/Firefox). Barring that, you know how to set an alarm onRead More →

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I taught my first online course in the late 1990s. I had done my homework, reading up on everything I could find about teaching online, attending conference sessions about teaching online. While the Internet was out of its infancy, it was still in toddlerhood, so there wasn’t a ton of information out there about teaching online. For that matter, there wasn’t a ton of information about the Internet itself. Some time in the mid-1990s, my wife, who was a reference librarian at the time, had a file folder labeled “Internet.” That pretty much sums up how little information there was. Anyway, I learned everything IRead More →

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I have been getting inquiries regarding my availability to present to faculty remotely. I am very happy to do this. Most commonly, I have given presentations on using the tech tools and tips covered in this blog to make your life as an academic easier. For example, if you’re not using a clipboard manager (e.g., Ditto for Windows, Copy Less 2 for Mac) and a text expander (e.g., PhraseExpress for both Windows and Mac), then your assignment grading is more time-consuming than it needs to be. I have also given presentations on interteaching. This teaching method works well for online, hybrid, virtual, and face-to-face courses.Read More →

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Faculty who have been around learning management systems (LMSs) for any amount of time know that sometimes gunk builds up in the browser cogs resulting in some page in the LMS not working as expected. If it’s something that worked before but is suddenly not working now, the first thing tech support will tell you to do is clear your browser’s cache. But why clear the cache for every website you’ve ever visited when it’s just this one particular LMS page that’s giving you fits? You can clear the cache of one Chrome or Firefox webpage with a keyboard shortcut. Windows and Linux users: CTRL+F5.Read More →

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Are you teaching remotely using Zoom? And you only have one monitor? Do you miss using PowerPoint presenter view in your classroom? PowerPoint presenter view This is what presenter view looks like. When you have a computer screen and a projector (or a second monitor), this is the view on your computer screen, and the slide alone shows on the projector (or second monitor). In this presenter view screen, you can see your next slide on the right, and right below that are any notes you’ve entered for the slide your audience is currently viewing. Under the currently-viewing slide are a few tools: pen/pointer, seeRead More →

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Is all of that bland text in your LMS starting to get to you? Do you wish you could jazz it up a bit? As far as web browsers are concerned, emojis and Unicode symbols are the same as text. This is module view in one of my Canvas courses. I put suns on either end of an announcement title, a red exclamation point and a blue-boxed 1 in the titles of modules, and a gold star in a text header. Once you fine Unicode/emojis you like, copy the image. Go to your LMS. Edit the text, and paste the image. Save. Done! Be aware,Read More →

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If you’re teaching and attending committee meetings remotely, you’re spending some serious quality time with your headphones. I had never found earbuds that didn’t irritate my ears after an hour or so. Over-the-ear headphones make my ears hot, and the pressure on my head bugs me. A year ago, I bought bone conduction headphones, and I am thrilled with them. Bone conduction headphones sit in front of your ears and transmit sound, not through your ear canal, but through the bones of your skull. Here’s a blog post I wrote in a different forum on how bone conduction headphones work. They take a little bitRead More →

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Faculty seem to always be thinking about the best way to communicate with our students. While most academics still live inside of our email, most of our students do not. Some instructors use Remind or Slack to message their students, and both are good solutions. Both also require students to install an app on their device, and then a bit of instruction on how to use it. As we’re about to start a new quarter here in the Pacific Northwest—a quarter that will be entirely online—the question of how best to contact students has risen to greater importance. A special shout out to my colleagueRead More →

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As my colleagues at semester institutions are trying to finish out their terms and those of us on quarters are gearing up for the start of the spring term during this time of coronavirus online education, email management is more important than ever. Much more of our communication with colleagues will be through email. And, more importantly, the primary way—or, in some cases, the only way—students will have to contact us, their professors, is through email. That means that it is more important than ever that we practice good email hygiene: responding to what needs responses, deleting what needs deleted, filing what needs filing, andRead More →

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