Technology Thoughts for Spring 2020

Adding in the "browser tune-up" is something new for this semester, and I hope people will find it helpful. One of my own goals for this semester is to do a clean-up of the Tech Tips in order to make room for some new tips specifically about writing tools for browsers and also more image tools. The way I'm going to do that is by removing the bookmarking tips about Pinterest and Diigo; those have just never really caught on much with students, and even Pinterest does not seem to be of much interest anymore (it used to be that there were quite a few students who wanted to learn about how to use Pinterest as a tool for school, but not so much in the past year or two...?).

So, later today I'll "retire" those Pinterest and Diigo tips to the Tech Tips graveyard; it's kind of weird and fun to look back through all the different tools that have ended up there over the years! Then I'll do some reorganizing, and I'll use this blog here as a way to try out some different Tech Tips. Once I get rid of those tips it will feel like there is room for more/new tips.

One I'm pretty sure I want to add, even though it is really preliminary, is this spreadsheet approach for tracking the class. I saw someone mentioned using a spreadsheet as advice, and I know that I find it really useful too. I've got a spreadsheet up and running now to keep track of my work this semester as a student since I cannot use Canvas for that myself, so I'll set this up as a Tech Tip, creating a generic version of the spreadsheet that people can copy and use for themselves. Here's a screenshot:

It's not the fancy version with the tracking week by week; I'll use this semester to get people's feedback on this basic recordkeeping version and then build something fancier based on that over the summer. I love spreadsheets. :-)

I'll keep a list here of Tech Tips I'd like to do:

more image items: free collage maker, wordart.com, Canva
revive old newspaper generator?
Google Sites: navigation, layout tips, more?
Google Image search
Wikimedia search for images
embedding Vimeo videos
embedding NPR audio
JStor search tools
Canvas pronouns
writing/word stat analysis
Lulu.com for book publishing
OpenOffice alternative to Word