Sparking Innovation

Nicholas Evans describes how to foster innovation in a workshop.

-DD

Storybook Creation

Shelley Terrell shares "Storybook Creation Tools and Apps."

-DD

Email Privacy

Jake New reports that "Harvard’s Search of Staff E-Mail Sparks Questions About Policies Nationwide. He reports that legal opinion confirms that an employer has a right (perhaps even a responsibility) to review the use of its coporate network. The article then discusses the Freedom of Information Act, which requires that information maintained by public employers, including public universities, be released to members of the public upon request, unless exempted by laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

-DD

Digital Humanities

Blackwell Publishing has made freely available A Companion To Digital Humanities, an academic work edited by Schreibman, Siemens, and Unsworth.

Digital humanities deals with using technology to produce humanities content. For example, article 36 of A Companion To Digital Humanities is Howard Besser's "The Past, Present and Future of Digital Libraries."

A Companion To Digital Humanities was recommended as an introduction to the field in a 2011 Chronicle of Higher Education post by William Pannapacker, "Big Tent Digital Humanities." I was led to Pannapacker's post by his March 4, 2013 article Stop Calling It "Digital Humanities" - And 9 Other Strategies to Help Liberal-Arts Colleges Join the Movement. In his recent article, Pannapacker propounds that nimble Liberal Arts schools can be more innovative in this field of digital humanities than traditional research universities, as the faculty in research universities have more of a focus on article publication.

-DD

Learnable, W3Schools

I observe that Learnable offers web development resources for $17 per month. I usually get the information I need by going to a free site like W3schools.com. But then, I use Notepad for my Web page creation, so I am definately not one to spend money on tools....

-DD

Text (SMS) Phishing

Linda Musthaler writes on How to Avoid Becoming a Victim of SMiShing (SMS phishing) . According to Musthaler "SMS spam campaigns in the U.S. grew by 400 percent in the first half of 2012, and about one-third of all SMS spam includes SMiShing attempts."

According to Michael Cooney's March 7 report in NetworkWorld, the FTC has charged eight companies with sending millions of phishing messages through text messaging.

Joan Goodchild recently wrote an article providing examples of phishing attempts.   Kenneth van Wyk offers some specific advice for avoiding threats in his article "Staying out of the Belly of Internet Beasts" (registration may be required to access this free article).

-DD

The Geography of Time

Philip Zimbardo shares insights from the book The Geography of Time.

-DD

Windows Start Button Workaround

Tim Greene shares work arounds for the lack of a Start Button in Windows 8 - "How to Solve the Start Button Dilemma."

-DD

Twitter Use

J. Robinson provides a post on using Twitter

-DD

Credit Card Security

Darlene Storm shares that " Texas cops report victims of electronic pickpocketing suffer credit card losses." It appears that the theives have obtained the technology to "use RFID readers to lift the sensitive info from contactless credit cards or biometric passports."

-DD

 

New Media Consortium Higher Education Report

The New Media Consortium has released its 2013 "Higher Education Report." Disruptive technologies currently being deployed include MOOCs, tablets, wearable computing and educational games.

-DD

Planning an App

Kyle Sanders suggests Five Essential Elements that must be considered in planning an application [or Web site].

-DD

Xerox Small Business Tips

Xerox provides "Small Business Tips" on document management, document layout, and other topics of interest to knowledge handlers.

-DD

Performance Management

Tony DiRomualdo wrote for the American Management Association about performance management.

-DD

Google Toolbox

Daniel Ionescu shares tips from his "Google Toolbox," including how to make searching Google more private, how to search multiple gmail accounts, etc.

-DD

Computing's Historical Records May Be Lost

Michael Conney reports that Minitel's history is in danger of being lost . Minitel was a French data network that was a precursor of the current Internet technology.

-DD

QR Codes

Meredith Farkas discusses the value of QR codes to help library users discover electronic resources.

The problem with such device-centered technology is that a code that links to a database is, to the naked eye, indistinguishable from a code that leads to a security threat. Farkas calls QR codes a "stop gap solution" (para. 6), and I would be hesitant to spend much time deploying this technology.

-DD

LaTeX Word Processor

Heather Whitney describes Web versions of the academic word processor LaTeX, with pricing and links for those who need this product to format their knowledge for distribution.

-DD

Javascript Libraries for Data Display

Sharon Machlis shares new javascript libraries for displaying data. These allow vidual learners to see in graphic form the quantities or trends buried in data -- provided the web designer has the skill to use the toolset.

-DD

ShareMyLesson.com

ShareMyLesson.com offers over a quarter-million lesson plans, prompts and images developed and shared by educators in the American Federation of Teachers.

-DD

Open Access

The Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI) is heralded by Jason Mittell as being "The Real Digital Change Agent," with potentially far more influence over academe than MOOCs. Chronicle commentators Jeff Young and Warren Arbogast interviewed David Parry about his belief that there is a "Moral Imperative" for Open Access".

-DD

Pockets

Erez Zukerman praises an iPhone/Android app called Pockets, which allows the creation of temporary bookmarks. He says it is a great tool for returning to a site or resource you do not have time to view or read. The links are not permanent, so Pocket curtails the clutter of outdated bookmarks.

-DD

Common Education Data Standards

The US Department of Education is establishing "Common Education Data Standards" for education in the United States.

-DD

Cloud Uptime

Juan Carlos Perez reports that Google Drive was inaccessible by a third of its users for about three hours. Perez mentioned that Microsoft had a similar problem in recent weeks. Such reports may slow the rush to move applications from the local disc to the cloud.

-DD

Just Me Training

Meredith Farkas notes in American Libraries that librarians offer training when students are responsive - that is, at their time of need. She observes that students frequently do not remember bibliographic instruction unless a graded assignment is obviously connected with the instruction. And my own observation is that instruction must be relevant to interest adult learners.

-DD

Google Hangout For Information Sharing

Denise Wright and Will Deyamport demonstrate Google Hangout, comparing its functionality with Skype.

-DD

 

 

Presenteeism

Amy Paturel shares important tips for success in "Are You Operating on Autopilot? Tips to Stay Present at Work." Inability to focus in the workplace is being labelled "Presenteeism," and is commonly caused by depression, exhuastion, or chronic illness. A presentation for managers on presenteeism is available from CIO.

-DD

Global Training

Tips for Global Training Instructors were provided by Jennifer Lawrence.

-DD

Email Is Not Used By Current High School Students

Educator Carl Hooker reports that the majority of his communication is via email, but that most tech-savvy students do not normally check their email. Thus he penned an article titled, "Why Email Should Die."

-DD

Online Dictionaries

Jennifer Howard talks about the growth of online dictionaries. She notes that while online dictionaries can be instantly updated, the paper version still offers its own advantages.

-DD

Is Yahoo's telework ban shortsighted or savvy?

Ann Bednarz reports the cons and pros of telecommuting in her article Is Yahoo's telework ban shortsighted or savvy? Data says both.

Jason Fried (below) says that different people work best in different locations. He says that an office building is a poor place to work because interruptions prevent getting creative work done.

-DD

Search Is Still In Its Infancy

Zach Miners reports on pronouncements by Google executives.

-DD

Easy Ways to Build an Email List

Nathan Segal shares 5 Easy Ways to Build an Email List for Your Small Business.

-DD

Book and Document Preservation

HeritagePreservation.org is the website for the National Institute for Conservation. This has valuable information on preserving old (or important) documents for future generations.

-DD

Voice Recognition In HTML5

Glenn Shires reports that HTML5 will allow voice recognition by Web pages. His page includes a brief demo video.

-DD

Internet of Things -- Network Concerns

Jon Gold reports that MIT panel warns of challenges of hyper-networked world. Problems include the exhaustion of IP4 addresses and TCP with wireless technology.

-DD

Data Management

Sharon Machlis shares tips for managing large amount of data.

-DD

College Completion Data

Funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has allowed the Chronicle to post College Completion data. In a cursory examination, this data seems skewed for private colleges with a large online student population. For example, it seemed to depress the "Educational spending per completion" for Indiana Wesleyan University.

-DD

Bitcoin, A Virtual Currency

Jeremy Kirk reports that BitCoin is gaining acceptance as a virtual currency. The value of one BitCoin is high -- Kirk reports the current exchange rate for one BitCoin is approximately $27.

-DD

Do You Share Teaching Materials Online with Students?

George Williams obtained comments from readers on the topic "Do You Share Teaching Materials Online with Students?" Based on the comments, sharing knowledge online with students occurs less often than it should....

-DD

Phones In An Academic Environment

Natalie Houston provides a compilation of Chronicle articles about using cell phones in an academic environment.

-DD

LinkedIn

Kristin Burnham shares ten new features of LinkedIn, as a follow up to her earlier Guide.

-DD

Google's News Ranking

Google has revised its algorythm for ranking the display of news.

-DD

Graphic Design Apps

Gabrielle shares "Eighteen Handy Graphic Design Apps for Android Owners." She offers a similar set of Twenty-two Creative and Useful iPhone Apps.

-DD

Game Consoles as Web Browsers

Anna Debenham has developed a nifty index of Game Console Browsers.

-DD

Face to Face

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey note that there are occasions where face time is more important than Facebook presence.

-DD

Internet of Everything

Grant Gross shares CISCO's valuation estimate for the coming Internet of Everything. -DD

W3C 2013 Conference for Web Professionals

SitePoint.com is streaming videos taken at the World Wide Web Consortium's 2013 Annual Conference for Web Professionals.

-DD

Disruptive Technology Podcast Clayton Christensen

Harvard professor Clayton Christensen talks about disruptive technology in this American Management Association podcast.

-DD

Task Management Web Apps

Heather Whitney shares several web-based list management programs. This article focuses on ToDoist.

-DD

Online Learning and Data Caps

Benjamin Lennett and Danielle Kehl note that Data Caps Could Dim Online Learning's Bright Future.

-DD

University of Regensburg's Electronic Journals Library

The Electronic Journals Library is a listing of open access academic journals developed by the University of Regensburg.

-DD

Fourth Amendment Protection Against Search and Seizure

Darlene Storm reports that 200 million Americans live in areas that lost fourth amendment protection against search and seizure, thanks to a judical ruling in favor of the Department of Homeland Security.

-DD

Techology Use in Schools

A recent Pew research study "How Teachers Are Using Technology at Home and in Their Classrooms" reports that Internet resources are having a tremendous influence on teaching and learning, especially among higher-income popultations.

-DD

Graphic Design Principles

James George reviews principles of design which govern printed information as well as Web pages.

-DD

The Coming Internet Video Crash

Glenn Gruman suggests in this InfoWorld article that increasing data access fees will prevent the wide acceptance of higher defination video technologies.

-DD

Art Talks on Google+

Google's blog reports the company is sponsoring a series of art talks for Google+ users.

-DD

Privacy In Hotels

Peter Lindberg shares What Your Hotel Knows About You.

-DD

University Network Bandwidth

Jake New reports that digital devices are consuming so much bandwidth that university networks are being brought to their knees. The comment stream offers suggestions such as charging for bandwidth used. Jeff Young, a Chronicle staff writer, notes that some students cannot afford or obtain Internet connectivity at home, resulting in a bandwidth divide among online students. The poorer students are forced to use onsite facilities to conduct research and write their papers.

-DD

Millennial Stereotypes

Molly Meyer comments on stereotypes about the personality and work ethic of theMillennial age cohort.

-DD

Office 365 Gotchas

Brad Chacos suggests "Why Office 365 and Office 2013 may not be right for you ." His warning is that "the new-look Office suite comes correct with handy tools and wonderful extras. But it also has a handful of potentially disastrous gotchas."

-DD

High School Student's Research Tendancies

Turnitin reports that about half of high school student Internet use is research using databases, news and research sites, and online encyclopedias. The company also reports 18% are using paper mills.

-DD

Digital Library of America

Jennifer Howard notes that Daniel J. Cohen shall be the Director of the Digital Public Library of America. The library website is visible, but the collection still under construction.

-DD

Educational iOS Apps

David Kapuler provides links to "100 Educational iOS Apps

-DD

Ergonomics and Standing Desks

Ryan Cordell reports on his experiences using a "standing desk rather than a traditional seated posture. I wonder if those put-off by the $500-plus pricetag for standing desks might be able to acheive some of the benefits by using a laptop on a podium in an empty classroom. At my university we have sophisticated teaching stations which are used from a standing position, and there are periods during the day when these are unused.

-DD

Training Magazine

Training Magazine offers insights into the thinking of successful trainers.

-DD

Skype Multiuser Is Now Free For Educators

Kathy Isizuka reports for School Library Journal Microsoft's announcement of free group video calling for teachers using Skype technology. As the comments indicate, this is probably to compete with Google Hangouts, which also offer free service for up to ten users.

-DD

Synergy Software Allows Sharing A Clipboard Between Computers

Linoln Mullen reports that Synergy Software allows one to share a clipboard between multiple networked computers.

-DD

Intellectual Property

Stacey Hollenbeck raises the question of who owns the intellectual property created by student work. This question was raised when the Prince George County Board of Education considered claiming ownership of all student and faculty generated intellectual property. An energetic comment stream results to Hollenbeck's post.

-DD

Grammar and Behavior

Geoffrey Pullum reports on Keith Chen's assertion that grammar influences behavior. A report on his talk is available in print or his TED talk may be viewed below.

Thought: Will English teachers someday qualify for Homeland Security funding?

-DD

Moving to the Cloud: Myths and Facts

Tech and Learning posted an article titled "Moving to the Cloud: Myths and Facts."

-DD

Google Books' Ngram Viewer

Mark Perry reports Peter Turchin did a numerical analysis of the history of citations to the term "quantitative history." Turchin appears to have used Google's Ngram viewer to quickly discover trends in the terms used in books.

-DD

International Broadband Price Comparison

Grant Gross reports that "U.S. Broadband Service Is Competitive with Other Nations."

-DD

Webmail Services Compared

Serdar Yegulalp is credited with writing a comparison of Gmail vs. Outlook.com vs. YahooMail.

-DD

The Adjunct Project

The Chronicle of Higher Education has started The Adjunct Project, offering tips and salary comparisons to part-time faculty.

-DD

Hack Education Blog

Audry Watters has produced a blog that takes a critical look at the fads in US education. She is very critical of certain claims espoused in TED talks by Sugata Mitra (creater of the "hole in the wall" computer) and Dale Stephens (blogger and author of Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will). Watters evaluation of educational technology products is based an what appears to be a reasonable set of criteria. Her annual report on Ed-Tech trends seems to be well researched.

The comment stream also had active dialog from educators. One did defend Surgata Mitra by providing a link to an hour long program of Mitra's talk at MoodleMootUK 2010, where he provides background information on his Hole in the Wall teaching efforts (video clip may display below). Mitra's research provides several insights:

1. Mitra left unsupervised computers in remote or impoverished locations in housings sized for children 7-14. The open locations provided community pressure that kept kids from going to improper sites.
2. When these new resources were left in a village, at first the bullies fought over them, but soon tired of the equipment. Then the studious children started to use the equipment. To complete the sequence, older girls (ages 12-14) would start to administer computer access, establishing community rules for use of this educational resource.
3. Students assigned to learn a topic would learn about 30% of the knowledge needed to pass an exam. To learn enough to pass an exam requires interaction with an encouraging adult who gives regular feedback.

An implication of this third point is that people stop learning short of mastery unless they are encouraged or induced to go further. This causes me to think that Dale Stephens' educational success was an outlier, and not a model for common replication.

-DD

 

source: MoodleMootUK2010 http://moodlemootuk2010.org.uk/videos

HTML Tutorial

George Williams has developed a series of posts that clearly describe the basic theory of HTML. This is very helpful for people who wonder how web documents work. He also offers suggestions for free tools for creating HTML documents.

-DD

Text Messaging and Language

Anne Curzan shares how text messaging is changing our language in her post: texting rules.

-DD

Twitter As A Japanese Yellow Pages

Jay Alabaster reports that DoCoMo has launched Twitter based yellow pages. He sayes that "Twitter has become popular in Japan, especially since the earthquake and tsunami that devastated a large swath of the country's northeastern coast two years ago, when it became a key tool for sharing information on stricken areas. But the service's increasingly popularity makes it harder for users to find relevant information" (para. 4).

-DD

Who Owns A Workplace Twitter Account?

Zach Miners muses on ownership rights to a social media persona developed in the workplace. If one blogs in one's personal name, does the company own the blog when you quit?

-DD

Omeka Archival Data Server

Konrad Larson wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education a review of Omeka, an open source server for archival products.

-DD

Facebook's Graph Search

Facebook has developed a new search tool for mining the data posted on Facebook, christened "graph search." As with most search tools, a phrase search is indicated by enclosing (with quotation marks) the words being searched as a phrase.

-DD

Web App Development

Ericka Chickowski prepared a slideshow demonstrating that the three reasons for developing platform specific apps are:

1. To make the app available when offline;
2. To take advantage of device hardware;
3. Speed requirements (native apps run faster).

Otherwise, she provides seven reasons for using HTML5 to create or prototype the app.

-DD

Linux Podcasts

Nine Linux Podcasts You Should Folow was penned by Bryan Lunduke, who was involved with establishing two of the podcasts.

-DD

Change Is Possible

Thorton May considers "The Future As A Verb. That "change is possible" is a powerful concept.

-DD

Academic Communication

Nigel Thrift reports on "The Changing Landscape of Global Academic Communication." -DD

Librarian Sued for Libel by a Publisher

Jake Mellon reports that Librarian Dale Askey was sued for libel. A follow-up indicates widespread support for the librarian's right to evaluate resources.

-DD

Glogster

Glogster offers a simple way to create web posters. These web posters can be used like blog entries with audiovisual content, which I assume would be good for posting announcements, etc. I have not used this tool, but the publisher provides this (anonymous) testimonial about the use of Glogster in education.

-DD

Student Computer Skills

George Williams shares basic tech advice for students, including a handout with links to specific tools or skills that will help a student who is not a digital native.

-DD

Why They Don't Apply What They Learn

James Lang muses on why students do not readily apply concepts from one course in another course. Lang says faculty should model making the connections between courses, and encouraged students to take control of their own education (citing Ken Bain's book, What the Best College Students Do).

-DD

Brain Research Initiative Proposed

President Obama plans a major research initiative on brain science. This could provide new insights into the transfer of knowledge.

-DD

Is Training a Boondoggle?

NetworkWorld recently published a debate between two experts on whether user training was a good return on investment.

-DD