Zotero is a great research tool for students and academics. I find it immensely easier and more intuitive to use than EndNote, RefWorks, and other sorts of similar packages. If by chance you’ve been missing out on all the fun, you can get a quick overview here. Their latest and greatest effort is a standalone version that would work with browsers beyond the ever-extensible Firefox.
One thing Zotero makes easy to do is sharing. It’s drop-dead easy to create groups ( essentially, click the group folder icon and send email invitations). One thing I’ve noticed with Group libraries though is the lack of a search function within a specific group’s bibliographic library. This isn’t a big deal if the group doesn’t have a lot of cites that they’re sharing, but if there are a bunch of cites being stored there (e.g., more than 50), searching for them becomes a little unwieldy because you’re going to have manually click through multiple screens. I don’t know how widely the Groups feature is used among the Zotero community, but if it’s a feature under consideration, I’d vote for it in a heartbeat.
Looking for a list of qualitative research tools? Looking for a tool to collect data? Analyze data? Dynamic mapping? Transcribing? The Digital Research Tools wiki (DiRT) is definitely a good addition to the academic researcher’s toolbox. In my web perusals, I haven’t been able to find anything that comes close to its scope and comprehensiveness – kind of a research tool headquarters. Lisa Spiro of Rice University does an excellent job as the wiki’s editor, and true to the wiki spirit, it thrives on contributions from others. Check out the guidelines for the details.
Screencasts are a popular alternative to documentation since most people would rather see how something works than search through a manual. Still, some screencasts can be awfully boring (e.g., monotone); others can go over the top with trying to be too funny or sarcastic. The screencast for the task manager Teudeux strikes a nice balance.
I’ve been using Omni Focus for several months as my project/task manager. It’s a Mac software that nicely covers all the bases such as adding start dates, due dates, reminders, project notes, and multiple sorting configurations. One of my favorite features is its integration with Mac Mail where you can convert email items to tasks by forwarding them to your Focus inbox. However, every once in while, I have problems forwarding through one of my email accounts due to firewalls or some other related security measure. Today, though, I inadvertently discovered a work-around for this. If you highlight part of a message and then press CTRL-Click, you’ll see an option to add it to your Focus inbox. It even gives you the option of adding the due date from within your mail message. Pretty nifty.
I’ve been experimenting with another one of those highly addictive Firefox extensions; this one is called Feedly and I like it quite a bit. It’s got a snazzy, light UI and makes it easy to get a quick snapshot of some of the most active feeds in your news aggregator by pulling from your Google Reader and Twitter accounts. It also comes with various modules that allow you to configure Twitter posts, YouTube, and Flickr. You can even enter hexadecimal values if you want to customize the background color and link colors (read and unread). There are, of course, lots more options under the Preferences section.
When it comes to technology and the classroom, it’s hard not to hear at least one person mention Twitter. Among higher ed faculty, you can find your Twitter aficionados and your detractors. Mashaable Mashable reports on Purdue University’s development of their own customized application (Hotseat) that combines both Twitter and Facebook. After looking at the intro video [scroll to the bottom of the post to see it], they’ve configured it with the same 140-character limit, but have added a voting feature. So, for example, a professor could see how voting patterns identify specific content areas that need further elaboration. In theory, this would help faculty more quickly get a read on confusion. Another possible advantage is that unlike clickers, the language and terms of the communication is being determined directly by the students.
What’s interesting from a research standpoint is how this isn’t a story of one early-adopter faculty who has a techie-fondness for Twitter, but rather one of a school and its broader, more systematic effort to see if this technology actually resonates with students.
Not a lot of men have to wear neckties these days and so when those special occasions warrant one, it’s easy to forget the 9 variations of knots. Well, fortunately, there is at least one instructional designer out there who sees no task as too trivial and accordingly, has developed a video tutorial, iTie.
This computer-based tutorial capitalizes on the webcam that comes with most laptops so that an animated necktie (produced by the software) is superimposed over the physical necktie (generated via the webcam). One particularly interesting detail is the contrasting colors (blue, yellow) that help to more clearly show which end of the tie to manipulate.
I’ve been working on an collaborative instructional design project for the last few weeks and we’ve been using Google Docs for most of our work as well as a little bit of Zotero for bibliographic stuff. As we’ve been compiling our various bits of information from readings, meetings, email, chats, and video, I’ve been thinking how nice it would be if we had something like Basecamp or DeskAway that’s priced for educational use. While Deskaway has a free option, it limits you to 25MB in storage and as most quickly discover, it doesn’t take long for a big project to exceed that cap. That said, both DeskAway and Basecamp sport slick, intuitive interfaces and do a nice job of creating one central web-based workplace where everyone on the team can store (e.g., docs, images), communicate, and coordinate logistics.
Very interesting post in the Programmable Web by Daniel Jacobson on Create Once, Publish Everywhere (COPE). Two big standouts for me are how it foregrounds portability (e.g., to mobile platforms) and feasibility for organizations with limited staff and money (e.g., schools). He also includes a presentation on it.
In an earlier post, I mentioned that I would try and jot down some more thoughts on the very writer-friendly tool, Scrivener.
Today, I had an opportunity to try out the Compilation feature and was very pleased with the results. Essentially, the Compilation feature functions like a publication tool where you can select all sorts of finishing options, and Scrivener makes it really easy. It gives the feeling of a major desktop publishing platform without all the layers of complexity; it’s just a matter of checking or unchecking boxes.
One hidden gem I noticed in today’s initial run was the Load button. With this, you can save your publishing settings by simply clicking it. Very handy if you need or plan to publish with a very specific set of formatting options more than once.