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As you know from previous posts, I’m a fan of Dropbox. If you’ve never heard of Dropbox, check out my blog post from a year ago. DROPitTOme is a web-based service that allows others, to whom you’ve given a password, to upload files to a DROPitTOme folder located inside your Dropbox folder. If you don’t want the hassle of students emailing you their assignments, you can have them upload their assignments directly to Dropbox where they will automatically be downloaded to your computer. Actually, they will be downloaded to all of your computers where you have Dropbox installed and to your smartphone if you’d like,Read More →

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When you stay at a hotel, do you remember how you used to request a wake-up call? Actually, maybe you still do that. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get a wake-up call for stuff you need to do? And that’s why I’m excited about NudgeMail, a company that just launched this fall. NudgeMail lets you send reminders to yourself at whatever future date or time you choose. No registration. No login. No software to download. No complicated commands to remember. They really couldn’t have made this any easier. Let’s say that I have an email exchange with you where we discuss working onRead More →

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UPDATE 9/5/2011 : Be sure to read an even more recent post on this tool. UPDATE  12/2/2010: Be sure to read my more recent post on this tool. It’s surprising how much of my email has to do with scheduling. Students or off-campus colleagues ask when they can meet with me in person or via a phone call. I ask when they’re available; they ask when I’m available. Five or six emails later we have a time. For my colleagues at my institution, they can just look at my Outlook calendar and suggest a time. Anyone else is stuck in the email spiral. If youRead More →

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A few days ago I was visiting with a colleague in his office.  He was trying to find the most recent version of a particular file.  He had one copy on his computer and one copy on his flashdrive, but he wasn’t sure which was the most recent.  And he didn’t seem convinced that those were the only two copies.  Did he have another copy on a different flashdrive?  Did he have yet another copy on his laptop? Dropbox lets you get rid of your flashdrive and keep all of your files synched.  Make a change to a Word document, and it’s changed everywhere elseRead More →

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As another academic year gets off the ground I’m shuttling more files around than I did all summer. I have folders, subfolders, and sub-subfolders on my C:\ drive and my college’s M:\ drive. I used to use the M:\ drive both as backup and to hold files not currently in use, like PowerPoints and handouts for courses I hadn’t taught in awhile. About a year ago I copied onto my new laptop my flash drive files that I carried around with me. I put them all in a folder called ‘flash drive files’ with the anticipation that I would sort it out later. I’ve foundRead More →

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Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to read to you? Like, that article you’ve been meaning to get to? Or student papers? What if you not only had someone to read it to you, but you could take the recording with you to listen to while you work out or on your daily commute? Check out Read The Words. Give it any text, either by typing it in, uploading a file, giving it a URL or the address of an RSS feed. The file will be converted to audio. There are several different avatars (voices) you can choose from including a British accent andRead More →

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One of the things I like about Outlook is the ability to flip through everyone’s schedule to find a likely meeting time. But when everyone isn’t in the same Outlook system, we end up having to find a time via email. You write, “When can you meet?” And the 7 people you’re trying to get together send you an email back some with when they’re available and some when they’re not available. You then have the fun and excitement of creating a matrix that will show the best time for everybody. Or perhaps you have students schedule time to meet with you one on one?Read More →

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I feel like I spend a lot of time typing the same phrases over and over again. For instance, when students send me an assignment via email, I send them back a ‘got it’ message. When I send them their graded assignment, I write a ‘your assignment is attached’ message. Isn’t there a keyboard shortcut that will do that for me? With PhraseExpress, there is. My preference in this blog goes to free programs and services, and this one technically is. However, if the program thinks you’re a business (by identifying certain business-like words) it will start to give you an annoying little popup promptingRead More →