Online Learning Today… and Tomorrow

• a free eight-week course from the University of Illinois at Springfield, beginning Monday, June 27, 2011
• the discussions will continue in their Google Group and on Twitter with the hashtag #edumooc

Next Generation Summer Learning Series

• free weekly webcasts mostly on Tuesdays, featuring different guest speakers
• see the schedule on their website

1. Educause’s Mobile Computing 5-Day Spring

http://www.educause.edu/resources/mobile

Monday to Friday, April 25^th to 29^th, online

Different speakers everyday – the recorded archive will be available each afternoon around 3pm.

Follow the ongoing conversation on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#%21/search/%23EDUSprint

2. Apple’s Academix 2011

http://www.apple.com/education/academix/

Friday, April 29^th from 10am to 3pm; stop and go in Heelan 143 to see the presentations streaming live

Featuring 8 different speakers from different universities, presenting their findings in using iPads and other technologies in the classroom.

Merry Spring, everyone!

The library just added the book Take back your life: using Microsoft Outlook to get organized and stay organized.  This book was written with examples from Outlook 2007, but almost all of the recommendations apply just as well to Outlook 2010.  Many of the methods described are inspired by David Allen’s classic book Getting things done: the art of stress-free productivity.

This is oversimplifying, but the basic recommendation for handing your inbox is this…

Step 1: Identify all of your “in buckets” — email, voicemail, papermail, newspapers, etc. — and consolidate where you can.  For example, cancel catalogs or subscriptions you don’t use and receive news updates in your email, if that works for you.

Step 2: When you’re dealing with your in buckets, make the following decisions quickly and immediately so that you don’t deal with the same items repeatedly and unnecessarily:

Decision 1:  Do I need to take action on this?

• If No = trash it or file it right away.
• If Yes = see Decision 2.

Decision 2:  Can I do this action in less than 2 minutes?

• If Yes = do it right away.
• If No = delegate it to someone else or schedule it on your calendar… right away!

By forming these habits, you can get into a flow when sifting through the demands on your attention and, hopefully, reduce the amount of time needed to control the info tide.

How can Outlook help in this process?   Prof. Hazlett had a great recommendation — using Rules on your email.  When looking at your inbox in Outlook 2007, go to the Tools menu and select “Rules and Alerts” then click on “New Rule…”.  In the window that opens, you’ll see suggestions for creating rules – or filters – that will automatically sort your email into folders, or flag messages from certain people, or delete email from retailers.

If you’re already using Outlook 2010, make sure you’re looking at the Home ribbon, then click on Rules.  The email message you have highlighted at the moment will serve as a template for the new rule you’re creating, or you can select “Create from scratch…”.

Another important element of the “Getting Things Done” system is having a filing system in which you can easily and quickly retrieve archived items.  The key is knowing how to search your mail. Outlook does have excellent searching tools but they’re not intuitive.  See these tips on searching Outlook 2007, or browse through these search guides for Outlook 2010 and perhaps you’ll be able to whittle your Outlook folders down to just one archive folder.

Last but not least, one of the most frequently asked questions about Outlook is “Can I see my mail and my calendar at the same time?” And the answer is … Yes!  Just right-click on either Mail or Calendar in the left sidebar and choose “Open in New Window” … especially helpful if you have two monitors to work on.

Do you have tips you’d like to share?  Are you a whiz with the Tasks, Notes, and Journal features in Outlook?  Let’s hear all about it in the comments!

Some of the resources mentioned include:

• choose “Foxit Phantom” as your printer and you’ll create a PDF of your document/email/web page instead of paper; if you don’t see Foxit as a printer option, just ask IT to install it for you.
• use Google Docs to collaborate with colleagues on spreadsheets, presentations or documents
• use Evernote to keep all your notes, to do lists, and scribblings; it even recognizes handwriting!

Some of the gadgets that made appearances included cell phones, iPod Touches, cameras, and iPads.

The conversation went all over the place, which is exactly what Let’s Talk was designed for.  Here are some of the tips and resources mentioned this week:

• Don’t have a data plan?  You can send a search to Google via text message using the number 466-453 — yep, that’s the whole number.  Text something like “weather 51104″ and you’ll receive a text message back in just a minute with the forecast and current conditions.  Keep in mind, these text messages will cost the same as any other text.
• Prof. Tom Kleen talked briefly about Prezi - an online presentation tool that creates non-linear, mindmapping-style graphic presentations.  They have a short explanation video on their home page – check it out and see what you think.
• In an earlier conversation, Fred had mentioned the website StumbleUpon – for anyone who wishes there was a way to combine the serendipity of discovering books in the stacks with the chaotic nature of the web, try out this free online tool to discover other websites similar to the ones you frequently use.
• A couple offices on campus are using textPlus to keep in touch with their work study students and student club members.  There are free options and paid options, as well as apps for mobile devices.
• A very important topic — Back Ups!  Do you back up your home computer?  Can you afford not to?  We’ve mentioned Dropbox before here on Let’s Talk, but another service that comes highly recommended by our discussion group is Carbonite.  It has unlimited off-site back-up for $55 a year.  It syncs your files automatically so you don’t have to worry about it.  The website has a quick 2-minute video overview.
• We also talked about textbooks on the iPad.  CourseSmart is offering many ebook editions of popular textbooks for roughly half the price of the paper equivalent.  Inkling is another e-textbook company that is trying out some innovative interactive features in their titles, such as Music Appreciation.
• Last, but not least, we looked at iTunes U — free educational content from universities such as Stanford, Oxford, and many many others.   According to the website, they have “more than 350,000 free lectures, videos, films, and other resources…”.   An amazing warehouse of excellent educational materials.

Facebook and Twitter …

Here is a PDF about Facebook privacy settings.  It’s a short cheat sheet to setting and checking how exposed your information might be, with screenshots and instructions for creating customized friend lists.

We also have a brief PDF about Twitter – giving a couple examples of how Twitter is used as a communication and information-gathering tool.

For more ideas, see this blog post on 100 Ways to Teach with Twitter.

Social Locations…

We had quite a bit of interest generated in the location-based social sites FourSquare and GoWalla.  Here are two articles about using these tools in education:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/location-based-gaming-for/26720

http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog/2010/30-ways-to-use-foursquare-in-education/

Lastly, what kind of librarian would I be if I didn’t mention a social site for booklovers?  To keep track of what you’re reading and see reviews from others, try GoodReads or LibraryThing.

You can find the library out there in the wild on Twitter and see some of our new books at GoodReads or check out our book lists on WorldCat.

We’d love to hear about your questions / suggestions / ideas in the comments!

The four main tools we looked at were:

• iGoogle (mainly just boxes of headlines on a Google page)
• Google Reader (much more control over your feeds and articles; allows you to share articles)
• Feedly (using Google Reader settings, turns your feeds into a beautiful magazine-like experience)
• Reeder (app on the iPod / iPad, using Google Reader information)

To begin:  what is RSS? …

A great explanation is available in this 3-minute video, “RSS in Plain English” from Common Craft.

Examples of RSS feeds: the New York Times offers a lot of RSS feeds for various sections of the newspaper.

The Chronicle of Higher Education also has RSS feeds for sections of its website, including the excellent Prof Hacker blog, in which several instructors share their tips and tools for technology in the classroom.

You can also get an RSS feed for most of the journals in our library databases. This way, you’ll be notified as soon as a new issue is available, with all the article titles listed. MIT Libraries has a great page about academic RSS feeds.

Huh?

If you’re still scratching your head, don’t worry.  This is just a different kind of workflow.  Imagine this scenario:

You get up in the morning, make a cup of coffee and sit down at your computer to check the weather and news.  Since you have set your RSS reader (see list above) as the home page on your web browser, the newest articles show up automatically. Just like skimming through headlines in a newspaper, many people just skim through the headlines in their RSS reader.  When you see an article of interest, you can star it, bookmark it, email it – whatever seems appropriate.  You can also “share” an article, which means it will appear in the headlines for any of your friends or colleagues who are using the same RSS reader.

When you get to work, one of your colleagues mentions an article that you shared and talks with you about how to start a project using that information.  Later in the day, you see a cool recipe come up on a food blog you follow and you email it to your spouse with a “Let’s try this!” note.

Caveat Lector

For many of us, we already feel overwhelmed with information and the idea of adding more seems discouraging.  Using RSS readers is NOT about adding to info flow, it’s about managing your info flow.  So instead of surfing around or digging through Google search results for hours, trying to find little scraps of information, you invest a little time at the beginning to set up the RSS sources you trust, then let the information come to you. Making your RSS reader your browser home page helps keep this info flow at a trickle instead of a deluge. Sharing with friends and colleagues helps expose us to fields outside our usual purview.

Still have questions?  Want a one-on-one explanation?  Stop by the library and we’ll be happy to help.

Faculty at the Chroncile’s Prof Hacker blog gave several examples of how they’re using online tools in the classroom.

Archaeologists at Pompeii are using mobile apps on their iPads to take field notes and share information across the dig.

Uses on campus …

Some file sharing already happens on the local network at Briar Cliff, using programs like OneNote, which is included in the Microsoft Office package.  One office here, for example, shares to do lists in OneNote then moves completed projects into a running document for quarterly reports.

Prof. Tom Kleen has been using Google Spreadsheets for the campus football pool, using the summary tool to easily get charts and graphs based on data entered by participants into a public web form. The library has been using delicious.com to share bookmarks on their website and wordpress.com to post news announcements to their new home page.  Other departments on campus are training their students to use WordPress for their online portfolios.

Other bookmark or link sharing tools include diigo.com, where users can add notes and highlighting to webpages they want to remember. ReadItLater is a slightly different service that helps you keep track of online articles, blog posts or webpages that you want to get back to when you have more time.

For automatic online back-ups and file syncing across computers, we looked at Dropbox.com, which gives users 2 GB for free.  Other tools that were brought up included Windows Live, Carbonite, and Mozy.

Dropbox has been used in the library for sharing notes, articles, and collaborating on documents.  If you put your Dropbox folder on your laptop’s local hard drive, it can function as a mobile network space – even when you’re on the road.

For photos, we looked at Flickr and Google’s Picasa.  The library has a Flickr album for our Validation Day tours and screenshots of featured resources.

Are you using collaboration tools in your department?  Do you have some great workflows in place with the tools mentioned above?  Let us know in the comments!

The market for e-books and e-textbooks is in a little bit of chaos, it seems.  Some of the concerns brought up at the discussion included the portability of e-book formats so that students and faculty wouldn’t be locked into one device, as well as the longevity of e-book files, especially since some are only available on a leasing basis.

Ebooks in Universities…There has been a lot of online discussion about ebooks in classrooms.

The change in medium is also bringing a big change in format.  Vendors like FlatWorld Knowledge are allowing faculty to build their own textbooks by mixing and matching articles or chapters.  McGraw-Hill has a similar service.  In other hands, such as Enhanced Editions, ebooks are becoming multimedia-rich experiences that include video and audio with the book’s text.

For some links on e-book sources and articles, check out Sara’s bookmarks:

http://www.delicious.com/librarienne/ebooks

Sara has been bookmarking examples of iPads in education here:
http://www.delicious.com/librarienne/ipad+education

The apps available on the library iPads can be seen in a PDF hand-out here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10100860/iPadScreens.pdf