Teachers Talking Technology

Mugshot Activity

Need an activity for the first day of class? For larger classes, I like to organize students into groups of 5 and make sure that at least one person in each group has a phone that they are willing to use to take pictures and send those pictures to me (never a problem). Students then engage in a […]

Create a shortcut for Gustavus profile searches

When a new student or colleague emails me, I like put a name with a face, so I search for them on the Gustavus website and navigate to their Profile page. If you find yourself doing this frequently too, you can speed up the process by creating a keyboard shortcut for a restricted search that […]

End the Tyranny of 24/7 Email

THIS Labor Day weekend, odds are you’ll peek at your work email on your “day off” — and then feel guilty about it. You might envy the serene workers at Daimler, the German automaker. On vacations, employees can set their corporate email to “holiday mode.” Anyone who emails them gets an auto-reply saying the employee isn’t in, […]

Syllabus as Manifesto: A Critical Approach to Classroom Culture

  Syllabi that reflect the mundane, bureaucratic requirements of the University are at risk of setting an equally banal classroom atmosphere. While administrative personnel may argue otherwise, the syllabus is not… The post Syllabus as Manifesto: A Critical Approach to Classroom Culture appeared first on Hybrid Pedagogy. from Hybrid Pedagogy http://ift.tt/1sGaMrH via IFTTT

Five Ways to Say No

Do you ever find yourself attending an event or participating in a project that you don’t really have time for, aren’t interested in, or won’t benefit from in some personal or professional way? It happens to all of us. It can usually be traced back to that moment when you agreed to do the project, […]

Making Games with GameCreator

I’ve never been a Mac user, so when I walked into my HILT 2014 workshop earlier this month and saw row upon row of Apple computers, I admit I panicked. Fast forward three weeks later and I’m writing this on a Mac laptop, thanks to my new university and their decidedly non-Windows campus. My biggest […]

Todoist

Todoist is a task/to-do list application that integrates with Google Calendar. Todoist is multi-platform with a stand alone desk top application for Mac and Windows, an iPhone and Android app, plus a nice Chrome browser extension. I like the fact that I can access it from any web-browser in addition to having easy access to the […]

My name is _______ and this is how I work.

Inspired by the Lifehacker series on how people work, I thought I would list the major computer applications I use and then follow up with a post about each in the coming weeks. I could group my applications into four clusters: 1) Productivity (Gmail, Google Calendar, Todoist, text expander) 2) Content management (Evernote) 3) Storage […]

Testing accommodations for students in Moodle 2.5

Previously, when Gustavus was using Moodle 1.9, I mentioned that testing accommodations could be made for students by creating a new group for those that requested extra time on quizzes or exams. Now that we are using Moodle 2.5, making accommodations has gotten easier. Instructors can use a quiz’s “User Overrides” option to setup up different […]

Re-thinking Email

I spend way too much time on email. It’s one of the biggest time consumers in my day-to-day life. I often talk about email with my students and my expectations for how they use email, but I realize that many of my colleagues and others could also benefit from some simple email rules. The first thing I […]