Google Sites Success

Three academic years, three different tools and finally a web content creation tool that paralegals can use to make an online portfolio.
First, there was Weebly– extremely easy to use with it’s drag and drop formatting. The wide variety of themes appealed to the paralegal students (especially when compared with PBwiki 1.0– the other option [...]

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Educational technology is so not on their radar

From Gapers Block, a Chicago news blog:
Loyola University here in Chicago is using something called iclickers to track and increase students’ involvement in class.

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Shelfari is now all Amazony

From Shelfari this morning:
It’s an exciting week here at Shelfari. You may have already heard, but we were acquired by Amazon yesterday. Yeah!
Amazon has long been a supporter of Shelfari as we grew into a global community of book lovers. And now Shelfari and Amazon will work hand in hand to create innovative new ways [...]

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Beyond Beta

We’ve all become accustomed to seeing the BETA tag under the logo of our favorite websites and services.  The phrase “perpetual Beta” has entered our lexicon with ease and acceptance.  Things seem to work so well under Beta that we not only tolerate, but accept glitches and inconsistencies in the products we use and rely [...]

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Grabbing, Manipulating and Calling out

One of the first non-reference desk things I got to do when I started as Resident Librarian was to create animated tutorials for library services. Unlike any other library I’ve ever heard of, we use Qarbon ViewletBuilder instead of some other screen capture tool you may have heard of or used. The benefits [...]

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A/V Problems

Problem 1: A student has a cassette she has to listen to for class.
A cassette? Seriously? Seriously?! For a nursing class? You seriously have an instructor who is requiring you to listen to a cassette? For nursing? I mean, haven’t there been technological advances in science enough that instructional [...]

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Getting Wiki Buy-In

I’m getting better at this, but every now and then I think “what a great opportunity for a wiki”, I spend a lot of time setting it up, I share it with a group or team, and then it fails miserably because no one else seems to think the wiki is worth their time.
With any [...]

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No Blackboard app for you, young lady

Apparently there is now a Blackboard app for Facebook.  Naturally, as soon as I found out about it, I tried to add it to my Facebook page, but got this discouraging message:
Your Blackboard system is not configured for use with Blackboard Sync. Your Blackboard system administrator may need to adjust the Blackboard Sync [...]

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Podcasting in Plain English

Teaching Social Software to students and colleagues gets easier with every In Plain English video from the Common Craft Show. With the addition of Podcasting in Plain English I’ve got a full slate of excellent teaching tools.
I’m also a fan of the 7 Things You Should Know About… series from Educause. While the [...]

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Do technology upgrades have to be traumatic?

I recently got a new office PC from the kindly folks in IT. It’s faster than my old number, significantly slimmer. has a nice blue light that tells me when the power is on, and has caused me no end of troubles since it arrived.
I’ve never replaced a computer of my own before so [...]

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