Dictionary of American Regional English

Allen Metcalf promotes the release of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) in both print and online formats. The book's website is www.daredictionary.com.

-DD

 

Computer Game for Indentification

Mark Gibbs notes that the firm "Are You Human" has developed short computer games whose challenges can be answered far more quickly than a responding to a typical captcha. Responding to a game should also be more amusing.

-DD

Volunteering

Elaine Osborne wants her institution to properly value her time . She refuses to spend unpaid hours on committees or tutoring students.

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Wordflow

Amy Cavender recommends Wordflow as a simple word processor for the Chrome browser.

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College Access Technology Report

Hannah Winston reports on the availability of digital tools to assist students preparing for university admission . She bases her article on a released released by Get Schooled!

-DD

Solid State Drives and Flash Storage

Larry Freeman makes the case for using solid state drives in a computer network.

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Publication Rights

Jennifer Howard has written about authors signing away their future rights . If an author does not negotiate rights to distribute articles to other scholars, then the publisher who owns the article has full rights to article distribution. Authors ignorant of their legal rights and responsibilities may later find their articles removed from institutional or open access repositories where they posted them in violation of their print-publication contracts.

-DD

Convert Typed Text to Editable Documents with Google Drive

Nathan Hall reveals how simple it is to convert typed text to an editable document with Google Drive .

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Passwords Skit by Don Friesen

Don Friesen developed a skit that addresses computer passwords .

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Email Signature Design

Rex Weston shares tips on email signature design .

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Tablets

Steven Max Patterson reports why tablet sales will stall by 2017 . Patterson draws his predictions from an IDC report.

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Tech Toys

The ComputerWorld staff have developed a list of useful Christmas gifts for the technologically minded. The miniture wifi router (slide 6) seems to be a marvel of miniturization.

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Public Education

Marc Tucker observes that the United States continues to lag other nations in public education . The comments provide some suggestions for improving the US education system scores in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).

-DD

Microsoft Sharepoint

Jonathan Hassell reports that the future is murky for Microsoft's Sharepoint software .

-DD

USB Type-C Plug Nears Approval

Loek Essers reports that the USB Type-C plug standard is moving towards approval. The benefit of this small plug is that it shall plug either way up, resulting in less fumbling when charging phones and other devices.

-DD

 

MOOC Usage Statistics

Lawrence Biemiller cites Penn State statistics that the vast majority of MOOC registrants do not attend classes . Comments indicate that some MOOC users are emboldened to register for courses they question taking because there is no cost commitment.

The Penn State study shows that course completion varies from two to fourteen percent.

-DD

A Need for Signage

Paul MacNamara reports that Kaveh Kamooneh was arrested for using five cents worth of electricity to charge his electric car using a public school outlet without permission of the school. Kamooneh spent 15 hours in jail for his crime. This case indicates a need for a posted policy when an organization has unlocked exterior power outlets.

-DD

Flipped Instruction

Justin Reich promotes a PBS video which explains the benefits of a flipped classroom .

-DD

 

Social Media Use by CEOs

Sharon Gaudin reports that only 30% of technology company CEOs use social media . She suspects that the potential liability to their corporations exceeds the perceived rewards.

-DD

Internet Access

Jim Miller has posted several tips for obtaining inexpensive Internet access .

In looking at comments about FreedomPop (which seems to use the Sprint network) I read about another network on the Sprint Network, Republic Wireless, which offers forty-dollars-per-month plans that supposedly have unlimited data usage. Republic Wireless seems to be able to do this because they route calls through local wi-fi wherever possible - I expect that data in areas with no wi-fi will not be unlimited, or will be capped to low speeds.

-DD

Have I Been Pwned?

Lucian Constintin discovered that a new website, haveibeenpwned.com, allows a user of the site to discover if their personal login information has been compromised during security breaches at Yahoo and other major Internet firms. The only identifying information that the user of haveibeenpwned provides is their email address, so this is not a means for harvesting user information.

-DD

Web Tools Which Do Not Require Registration

Nathan Hall has collected links to an impressive number of web tools that do not require a registration process. As collecting data in a registration process is often off-putting (and in the case of some minor, illegal) these tools are especially useful to educators.

-DD

Office Communication Apps

Jon Gold has developed a slideshow presenting new Office Communication apps .

-DD

Google Calendar and Gmail Backups

According to Juan Carlos Perez, Google is now allowing users to download their gmail calendar file to their local machine. Google intends to release gmail downloading in January, 2014. More information on this new initiative is available on the gmail blog.

-DD

Training Exercises

Bruce Hodes shares the benefits of stupid games in corporate training.

-DD

Academic Readiness

Achieve.org has released reports on state standards dealing with readiness for college and vocational school.

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Simple Guide to Backing Up Your PC

Jon Jacobi shares backup and restore techniques and strategies for Windows and Apple computers. Jacobi considers his guide "absurdly simple", but the terminology will be confusing to many of the true novice users I meet day to day.

-DD

Steganographic Apps

Tim Greene and Michael Cooney provide a slideshow about steganographic apps for mobile devices. These allow text or messages to be concealed inside photos.

-DD

Productivity Killers

Peter Wayner lists fifteen productivity killers for programmers. The same deterrents to achieving mental focus afflict other knowledge workers (students, writers, etc.).

-DD

News Aggregators

Online News Aggregators Crayon and New Is Free have both been in existence a decade.   These services allow one to select news sources of interest, and then access these through a uniform interface.

-DD

Google Maps

Google Maps has a YouTube channel that shares dramatic uses of mapping.

-DD