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Everyone who writes needs a solid pdf and reference manager. I’m a big fan of Zotero. Zotero is free, and you can back up 300 MB worth of stuff on their servers for free. If you want more space (and I do), it’s $20/year for two GB, $60/year for six GB, or $120/year for unlimited back up space. While I could go on and on about Zotero’s features (and I have in workshops), in this blog post, I want to focus on how Zotero handles article titles. When we import article data into Zotero—through a doi search or by dragging a pdf into Zotero—the titleRead More →

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Windows users have a built-in screenshot app: Snipping Tool. The Snipping Tool got an upgrade. You can now use it to extract text from an image. After taking your screenshot (shout out to LearningScientists.org), look for the text extraction icon. Clicking the text extraction icon causes Snipping Tool to identify and spotlight everything that looks like text. When it finishes, it will give you two new options: Copy all text and Quick redact. Clicking the down arrow next to Quick redact allows you to choose auto redaction for phone numbers and email addresses. After clicking “Copy all text,” I pasted it here: Cientista LEARN TORead More →

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Anyone who does research writing needs a pdf and citation manager. I had been a fan of Mendeley until they were bought by Elsevier who changed the code in a way that made it no longer usable for me. Those issues may be fixed now, but it’s too late. I’ve thrown my lot in with Zotero. Every research writer needs a place to store and annotate their pdfs. Writers also need a way to quickly add properly formatted citations to a text. Zotero does both. Are you collaborating with a co-author? Zotero can handle your shared resources. We would need a two-hour workshop to coverRead More →

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For those of you who use Zotero as your go-to pdf and reference manager, you may have encountered problems with citing advance online publications as needed in APA style. I’ve learned the secret. Here’s the citation I am aiming to create using Zotero Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2022). A little good goes an unexpectedly long way: Underestimating the positive impact of kindness on recipients. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001271 To get that “Advance online publication” inserted before the doi, find the Extra field in your Zotero citation. In that field, copy/paste this text: {:status: Advance online publication} Click off theRead More →

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If you have updated Windows 11 recently, you have a new feature that will make your life a little easier. It comes without fanfare and therefore is easy to miss. File explorer tabs Open file explorer—that’s what you use to see your files and folders. At the very top of your file explorer window, you now have tabs. In this screenshot, you can see that I have one tab open: Dropbox. Clicking the plus sign to the right of that tab will open a new tab. When I clicked the plus sign to open a new tab, I navigated to my Downloads folder. Dropbox isRead 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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In spring of 2022, I wrote about some of the very cool features in MS PowerToys for Windows 10 and 11, such as highlighting the mouse pointer (very handy with three screens) and creating fixed zones on the desktop to drop windows into (also very handy with three screens). The good folks at Microsoft have just released a PowerToys update with three new features: text extractor, quick accent, and screen ruler. I’m particularly excited about the first two. Get PowerToys here. It’s free. No ads. No annual fees. It really is free. If you already have PowerToys, to get the update, launch PowerToys from yourRead More →

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In the years before the Internet, at the first college I worked at as faculty, the library had a table of contents service. You could tell them what journals you were interested in, and when a new print copy of the journal arrived, they would photocopy the table of contents and drop it into intracampus mail to you. If there were articles you wanted, you could highlight them on the table of contents copy and send it back to the library. The awesome library staff would photocopy the articles and send them to you, again, through intracampus mail. It was a fantastic service. And itRead More →

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There are many reasons your technology may not be working. If you’ve cleared your web browser’s cache and rebooted, and your technology is still not working, sacrificing a digital goat to the tech gods may help. It certainly can’t hurt. As a service to the readers of this blog, I have provided a digital goat suitable for sacrifice. Visit this page and bookmark it. Sacrifice as often as needed.Read More →

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For all of you Google Drive fans and everyone else who is forced to use Google Drive against your will, take some time today to color code your folders. Perhaps you want to more easily see which Google Drive account you are in. You can make the first folder in your work account the color “pool” (light blue) and make the first folder in your personal Google Drive account “toy eggplant.” (Pool? Toy eggplant??). I suspect that someone who used to work for Crayola now works for Google. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe the color-namer at Google is taking this opportunity toRead More →