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In: 08. Memory & Cognition, Technology for Academics (archive)

A group of psychological scientists have identified 25 principles of learning. Of those 25, this group identified 9 to explore in greater depth as they relate to instruction. In this series of posts, I’ll look at each in turn, discussing some of the relevant technologies that can be used to take advantage of those principles. The first in the list: “The single most important variable in promoting long-term retention and transfer is ‘practice at retrieval’—learners generate responses, with minimal retrieval cues, repeatedly, over time.” In short, if students are going to be able to retrieve what they learned later they have to practice retrieving now (theRead More →

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[Update 2/27/2012 :  Grab is a similar utility for Mac users.  Go to Applications and look in the Utilities folder. — Thanks, Steve!] Well, you already have this screen capture tool if you’re a Windows 7 user. Click the start button, select “all programs”, and in your accessories folder you’ll find “Snipping Tool”. Now that you’ve found it, right-click on it, and select “pin to start menu” so it will be easily accessible. When you run Snipping Tool, this little window pops up. Click the little down arrow next to “New” to decide how you’d like to take a snapshot of your computer’s desktop. WhateverRead More →

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My students submit their assignments to me primarily as an email attachment. I have ways of quickly filing the email messages in Outlook (see the SimplyFile blog post), and then quickly saving the attachments all at once to my “student papers” folder while appending the students’ names and email addresses to the filename (see the EZDetach blog post). Once the papers are graded, I move them to my “graded” folder. Once I send them back to students, I move them to my “sent” folder where they sit until the end of the term when I move them into a folder named for that quarter. AndRead More →

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During winter break I spent most of my computer time on my personal laptop. When I got back on my (older) work laptop this week, I found that it was moving at a crawl. The sensation was undoubtedly amplified by the, by comparison, rocket ship I had been using. After some trial and error, I identified the culprit: Chrome. Or more specifically, one webpage I had open in Chrome. Chrome is designed in such a way that each tab is essentially another instance of the program running. The advantage is that if a web page causes a crash, only that tab crashes; the rest ofRead More →

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Scientific American asked their “board of advisers to choose the technologies that they could not live without.” Read their answers here. Having recently read Unbroken, Louis Zamperini’s surviving 47 days on a raft in the Pacific followed by a couple years in a Japanese POW camp, and currently reading The Unconquered, an expedition to find the last uncontacted Indians of the Amazon, I’ve concluded that there is a lot of stuff one can live without. People around the world, not just deep in the Amazon, live without a lot of what we have here in the States. And you know, our ancestors did just fineRead More →

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As the term comes to a close and you slide into the break for a bit of a breather, consider checking out these tech tools. I know you probably don’t have time now to look at these, although if you’re looking for a good excuse to do something besides grade papers… If you don’t want to take the time now, bookmark this webpage, and take a look at these when you need a break from your visiting in-laws. (Yes, I know you love them, but that doesn’t mean that you have to spend the entire week with them.) Here they are (the tools, not yourRead More →

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Dropbox.com provides you with 2GB free space out of the box. If other people who are invited by you join, Dropbox will increase your allotted space by either 500MB (edu accounts) or 250MB (everyone else) up to an additional 16GB for a total of 18GB. I was recently asked how exactly one gets that additional space. Share a folder with someone who doesn’t have a Dropbox.com account yet. If they join Dropbox.com as a result of your invitation, more MBs for you. Or Send your friends, family, and colleagues a link. Go to the Dropbox.com referrals page. Here you have a few options. Log intoRead More →

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My friends over at the Teaching High School Psychology blog, just posted about the 60 Minutes segment on the flavorists which they describe as “a nice piece on the flavor industry and their attempt to create ‘addictive flavors’ to woo consumers.” If you use Chrome and want to show 60 Minutes episodes during class, go over to the Chrome web app store, and download the free 60 Minutes app. When you open a new tab in your Chrome browser, you’ll see the 60 Minutes icon. Clicking the 60 Minutes icon calls up the most recent episode. The segments for the episode are on the left.Read More →

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[Update 6/20/2013: Sandglaz converted all of the grids to infinity grids.  This added a whole new complexity to Sandglaz that I don’t need, so I’m no longer using Sandglaz.) I feel like I’m continually on a search for a good task management solution. I use FollowUp.cc to send reminders to myself via email. That works, but I’d really like something that works like paper. Sandglaz (sandglass, presumably) is the closest thing to that I’ve seen. Here’s an example of what a to-do list looks like. (When you create a new account with Sandglaz, they’ll give you a grid of tasks that serves as a tutorial. ExcellentRead More →