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Since I posted about Dot cards a couple weeks ago, they’ve added a new feature called dot.Exchange. If you’re not already familiar with Dot cards, please read that previous blog post first. The rest of this will make much more sense. After you tap your Dot card on the back of someone’s phone, and they launch their phone’s browser to view your Dot card profile page, they’ll see this double-arrow button. Tapping the double-arrow button generates this pop-up. Your new friend can enter their contact information. When they press the Exchange button, they’ll be asked if they want Dot cards to use their phone’s gpsRead More →

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I want to pronounce the names of others how they want them pronounced, and I assume that others feel the same way about my name—that they want to pronounce it as I pronounce it. Let’s make it easy for everyone and put a “hear my name” badge in our email signatures, in our learning management systems, and on our dot cards. The free service called NameCoach makes this easy. This is what my NameCoach icon looks like in my email signature. I’ve embedded the clickable button in this blog post. Click on it. My NameCoach webpage will open. Click the speaker icon next to myRead More →

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Are you ready to stop carrying around business cards? Or, perhaps more accurately, are you ready to stop forgetting your business cards at home? I just got back from the American Psychological Association’s 2023 convention where I made liberal use of my business card replacement. A Dot card is the size and thickness of a credit card and has a one-time cost of $20. When you want someone to have your contact information, you place your Dot card against the back of the other person’s unlocked phone. If their phone is NFC-compatible and if NFC is enabled, a pop-up will appear on their phone. (OnRead More →

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Using AI to detect AI feels like a little like the start of the robot wars. Yet here we are. The makers of GPTZero—the ChatGPT/AI detector—have released a Chrome extension (from your Chrome browser, download it here). Once you have added Origin by GPTZero extension to Chrome, visit any webpage, such as an assignment in your course management system. Highlight the text you want to check for the likelihood the text was written by AI. You need to highlight at least 250 characters. Right click on the text, and select “Scan text with Origin.” GPTZero’s Origin extension will generate a popup that will produce itsRead More →

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There is no shortage of screen/webcam recording tools. It occurred to someone at Dropbox that if so many people are uploading their recordings to Dropbox and sharing links to those recordings, wouldn’t it be easier if recordings were automatically saved to Dropbox? Enter the newest recording tool: Dropbox Capture. Those of us on Dropbox Basic, Plus, and Family plans get 120 minutes of total recording time. Once you record something using Dropbox Capture, a folder called “Capture” will be added to your Dropbox folder. Once I’ve recorded 120 minutes, I’ll need to delete or move recordings to be able to record more. It’s better thoughtRead More →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →