Archive for July, 2006

Every once in a while you are looking for a journal, but it is not in the databases you typically search, or thought it was. For example say you were looking for the Oxford Literary Review, which is not in JSTOR or Project Muse. Rather than continue to check database after database for an elusive …..

Merlin at 43 Folders, an excellent site for tips on productivity and information management, has long been an advocate of Quicksilver. Now he has collected everything you need in one place to get started. While this is not specifically an academic application, learning to use it well saves more time than any other app and …..

Academic Commons reports that the US Patent Office has awarded a patent to Blackboard, which is unfortunately broad. This can only be bad news for Academics as Blackboard continues to consolidate and monopolize the industry. Academic Commons:After purchasing and killing Prometheus in 2002 and WebCT last year (and many other companies, though not strictly speaking …..

Another day, another useful web research tool: Scrutinize This. At this site you can type in a web address and check it for 152 “things.” While there is lots you can do here, the ones that strike me as useful are: accessibility and validation-you can check to make sure all your students can see the …..

Often when researching on the internet I come across a site which wants me to register to have access to the article I want to read (this happens way too much when trying to read newspaper articles). More often than not this registration is free, they are just collecting emails and data, but annoying (for …..

Yet another trick for making easy presentations. Again involving a flash drive. At times when I teach or present all I want to display is a serious of quotes, just text, or text with simple pictures. What I do in this case, is type out all the quotes in a large font, so they fit …..

This morning after having spent quite a bit of time outlining the .rtf piece below (why not to save as a .doc) I found this. This site outlines more reasons you should not send people .doc files, and suggests a few other alternatives. (Including the key one I forgot about differences in versions.) Via: Lifehacker

Since I got a few questions on this based on my rant about MSword I thought I would explain in more detail, and set up a series of screenshots to explain the .rtf (Rich Text Format) issue and help those who haven’t heard about this before.

Also of intrest in today’s news, via eSchool news: In Britain, it’s estimated that half of all classrooms will be outfitted with interactive electronic whiteboards by the end of this year. In Mexico, every fifth and sixth grade classroom is expected to have a computer, printer, interactive whiteboard, and projector by November.And here in the …..

You can see other posts on this site about Devon, and using it for studying. But, one of the drawbacks to Devon has been the steep learning curve. Because it is so powerful and useful it actually takes a while to learn how to mobilize it, and realize everything that can be done. Well now …..