One of the biggest efforts this semester has been to reduce the amount of paper involved in my teaching.  That has had some mixed results so far.

Keynote and Projecting off the Ipad

1. Keynote does NOT seamlessly open Powerpoint files and project them.  If you have animation, custom fonts or other quirky things in your powerpoint keynote chokes.  There are workarounds, the most important one to me so far being that I used a program to split all my animations into separate slides so that keynote can more easily handle them.  This involves some reviewing and modifying of the presentations on my side.
2. Keynote also screws up some of the size and spacing of text on slides and ends up requiring some massaging to make things look correct.  I kind of expected this, but it still irritated me.
3. Once I made these modifications I was able to project reasonably well off the Ipad.  The major remaining issue is that sometimes there is a delay between when I swipe to go to the next slide and when the screen actually changes.  So far that has been under 8 seconds, so I can mostly talk over it, but it remains less than perfect.

I recently got a Mac Mini and am in the process of getting it set up and files moved over.  I plan to spend some time this weekend moving things into Keynote on the Mac first, then save and move to the Ipad in the hopes of getting rid of the remaining lag.

Entering most assignments into Blackboard

On the one hand I LOVE not having to carry homework or problems or labs back and forth to class.  On the flip side, whenever you put technology into the picture you start to get random problems.  Blackboard is anything but seamless.

• Intermittent issues with blackboard assignments, where for whatever reason it seems that a student has already started work on an assignment but can’t access it.  I have to reset the assignment for the student, which while not difficult can still result in delays.
• Because students are answering the labs but NOT putting in the data, I can’t always tell if a mistake is a misreading or a data entry error.  I suppose it doesn’t matter, but I like to be able to point them in the right direction.
• Online systems require very specific input specifications, and 7.8% is not the same as 7.8 or .78 or 0.78, etc.  I am noting those as I go for correction for next semester, but for now I have to check every problem to look for those kinds of things being marked incorrect when the student got it right but didn’t match the format that the system expected.
• The online homework system (separate from the LMS) has had some timezone issues, and students who waited for the last minute to do their homework have found themselves cut off when they thought they had more time.  Something to be aware of when using hard stop times.

I have yet to test using polleverywhere.com to get in-class answers.  I need to do some planning for that and haven’t yet had the chance.

The first paper isn’t due for a couple more weeks, so it will be a bit longer before I can assess how well grading those online will work.

The biggest advice I can offer on this type of transition is to keep a list of the problems that come up.  Some things (like changing the valid answers to an online question) will have to wait until I set up next semester.  (Blackboard won’t let you change things like that after students have started the assignment.)  My hope is that by next semester I can work out some of the kinks and make teaching with less paper a seamless exercise.

Having run IT for a College, my first suggestion would be to ASK if you can have a Mac instead of a PC.  Some departments will comply.  If they won’t or it’s too late, you have three options:

1. Don’t use the Laptop.  Ask them to take it back and continue to use your Mac.  The bad thing here is that you will be responsible for your own support and if, for example, the machine can’t get on the network, you will have to figure out why.  No one will be able to help.  If you go this route, I suggest looking for grant money that will allow you to replace the Mac regularly and pay for good support contracts with Apple.
2. Use the Windows Laptop for all of your work stuff but keep the Mac for things you do at home.  There are very few programs that don’t have both Windows and Mac versions these days, even esoteric ones that academics often prefer for writing.  For example I have long heard mac-users sing the praises of Scrivener as a writing platform, but there is also a windows (and linux) version that, while still Beta, is expected to release in production this year.  You will have to learn SOME new skills, but you will have more support from the local help desk than you would going the other way.
3. Store your documents somewhere that they are backed up to a service such as Dropbox, SpiderOak or SugarSync so that you can access them from either machine.  (Both of these services have PC, Mac and Mobile clients.)  Set up your systems so that the files you work on the most are being synced with these services.  (If you are worried about security, either store your files in an encrypted vault using a product such as TrueCrypt or choose SpiderOak, which has the tightest security of the three.)  Once in place you can then work on whatever computer is at hand.  

If it were me, I would choose option number 3.  There are advantages on campus to being on the machine that they have provided, configured and support.  On the other hand, there are advantages to working in an environment with which I am familiar as well.  Being able to lock the laptop in my desk at night and walk out without it, knowing my key files and my other computer is at home, is wonderful.

I also am becoming convinced that the mode of the future is to manage most files in the cloud.  Yes, there are some big ones that you can’t easily do that with.  And as the owner of over 5 Terabytes of local hard drive space, I’m not there yet myself.  However throughout my dissertation and now as I teach I have taken to storing the files I need on a cloud service and not carrying anything bigger than an iPad with me when I go somewhere.  The day-to-day active files I use aren’t as big as I would have expected.  The bulk of that 5T is media files, most of which I haven’t looked at in years OR are already sitting on my 160G ipod.

One caveat: If you are a technologically impaired person who struggles to do even basic things with your computer and still doesn’t have a clue what their smart phone can do, stick with option 1.  It isn’t a good use of your time to learn a new operating system if that process is likely to take you the entire 1st year.  Efficiency says stick with what you know.

1. Lecture Notes:  I am now downloading my slides to my ipad and converting them into keynote.  The good is that this process is painless.  The bad is that keynote only shows the slide and the lecture notes on the same screen if you are using it to project.  The room is able to accommodate that, so I bought a $29.00 VGA adapter and will now use the ipad to project.
2. In-class Problems: After further consideration, I am putting the in-class problems into Blackboard.  Students will enter the answers before they leave each class.  I will then go over the problem at the beginning of the NEXT class so that they can go through their work and figure out what went wrong. 
3. Papers:  Our blackboard is integrated with SafeAssign, Blackboard’s answer to TurnItIn.  Students will be turning their papers in using that tool, then the tool reviews them for plagiarism.  I am then going to attempt to implement a grading program* to help make it all faster.  I’ve found several so far, many of which are for word 2003 or earlier.  The ones that aren’t so far are:
1. Annotate for Word – There is a free version I am testing, although already looking at it I am leaning toward buying it. $45
2. eMarking Assistant – also a Word plug-in. Less expensive at $20, but only a 30 day trial.  The demo made it look far less intuitive.
3. Essay Grader – slightly different idea – this one records your comments and creates a separate document.  Not really what I wanted.
4. Labs: I am going to go with putting the answer fields into blackboard.  By creating those forms I am able to grade those efforts online.
5. Homework: Already online.
6. Tests: Right now these will be the only paper items.  They need to show their work, and I have yet to find a tool that can make that work.
7. Articles:  The students have to turn in the articles they are using for their papers in advance.  (I have had all too many of them over the years call me the night before the paper was due because they couldn’t find what they were looking for.  It makes me angry.)  This item counts as homework and consists of a media article (something from the paper or an online source – they almost always go online) as well as the research study that goes with it.  My current thought is that I could have them put in the LINK to the media article and upload the study or have them print the media article to a PDF and upload both.  Undecided right now.

If you are keeping count, that is $74 out of pocket (plus the cost of the ipad, of course, but I bought that for other reasons).  I will, of course, be taking that as a deduction on my taxes this year.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Pointers to other software that might help me grade better?

I got through about half of the class (which ends up being a couple hundred double-sided pages) when it occurred to me that this was ridiculous.  I mean, this is 2011.  I own an Ipad (1st gen).  Why was I printing this stuff out so that I could carry it to class every week so that I would have the slides and notes in front of me when I could just carry the ipad instead? (The room has a computer and projector, but I use the notes section of my slides to hold things like practice problems, solutions, and notes to myself on things I want to make sure I explicitly mention, so I want that information with me and right there during class.

This led to thought two:  what do I need to do to not have to carry huge packages of paper back and forth.  The class involves 2 papers* (turnitin, here we come), 5 test, 1 in-class problem per lecture and 10 labs.  The tests I want on paper; I give students partial credit for the tests if they make a math error but otherwise follow through correctly.  (5 times 0 is ZERO people, not 5).  The in-class problems I want them to do on paper, but those should only be a single sheet per student, so that isn’t overwhelming.  Pedagogically the point of those is to also give them feedback on problems done the same way as the tests, done immediately after learning the material.

That leaves the labs and  I need to brainstorm on that one.  The point of these labs is to teach students to use SPSS to solve statistical problems.  Personally I think this is a waste of their time and mine.  Maybe 5 out of 20 will ever use it again, and most of those will be in the research methods class.  Then they will all forget it until the 1 out of that 5 actually gets to graduate school.  The labs were written by another faculty member and are the most dumb down way to earn a credit hour I have ever seen.  They don’t actually TEACH the tool itself OR anything about statistics.  I’m thinking I may move the answer sheets online and call it good.  I will still have to grade the short answer sections, but can do it much quicker online.

Regardless, I will be documenting this process and the new tools I adopt as I work through moving to a less paper-intensive process for both me and the students.  I will need to integrate this with my entire process, so it will also mean moving the lovely paper to do list onto the ipad and integrating it into my life better.  (Right now I mostly play games and read books on it, which makes it a seriously overpriced ereader or toy.)  My focus for now will be strictly on my teaching work; the day job and the rest of my life is going to be excluded until I get teaching sorted out.  (David Allen is screaming in frustration somewhere…)

* Yes, I assign not one but TWO papers to my stats students.  They have to find an article in the mainstream media that talks about a study, then find the study, then write a paper comparing the two and showing me they understood both the study and how it differs from the media coverage.  Surprising as it sounds, it’s one of their favorite assignments.

Seriously.  After some troubleshooting, it turned out that the raid controller built into my motherboard had committed suicide, making none of my 3 internal drives visible.

Now, a month and a half before graduation (knowing there would be at least one more round of revisions), this should have caused a panic.  It didn’t.  Why?

1. I have copies of all the key dissertation files in dropbox
2. I have copies of my entire Documents folder on the external backup drive, along with my itunes library
3. I have copies of my entire Documents folder backed up using crashplan

In a search for guidelines this afternoon I stumbled across something one step better.  Serenity Software makes a product called Editor.  Editor is a proofreading and copy-editing software product.  It reads your text/word document and makes suggestions about what to fix and what possible alternatives exist.

The tool is labor-intensive for the author.  You go through your document line by line with the programs output either right next to your text or in a pop-up box within word.  The program flags potential homonyms, usage errors, and wordy prose.  It provides suggestions for how to fix the problem, but doesn’t try to make the repairs.  This is important since many times the suggested fix doesn’t actually fit the sentence.  You make the repairs and decide which to skip.

I ran my first pass at this document through Editor.  Here is a sample of the output it produces:

SPELL2: <2>intend   POSSIBLE HOMONYM ERROR: intent?

SPELL1: <8> copy editing     COMPOUND EXPECTED

CONSIDER: <16> since  COMMONLY MISUSED TERM; unless you mean “after”, use “because”

TIGHTEN:<18> that particular   PROBABLE REDUNDANT EXPRESSION; delete “particular”

POLISH: <18> rather   PROBABLE VAGUE DICTION unless expressing a preference

The program found 36 items to be reviewed in a 20 sentence, 319 word blog post.  (Going through it with my dissertation is going to be time consuming but worth the effort.)

My only complaint is that it checks citations in MLA format AND there is no way to turn that feature off.  Since my dissertation is being done in APA, about half the items it flagged are MLA errors.  I would rather have that check as a separate library with a mechanism for disabling it OR, better yet, a choice of the 3 or 4 big formats (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc).

UPDATE:  I got an email from the maker of the software with the following instructions for turning of MLA and many other optional checks:

Here’s a tip: from Editor’s Main Menu, go to File > Preferences > Change USAGE Settings and click on D to disable it.  Presto! no more unwanted remarks about your APA citation style.

As you use the program, you’ll find other categories that you’d just as soon not have the program bother you about.  You can turn any of the nearly 50 analysis categories in Editor off, temporarily or permanently (until further notice).

Other useful ways to modify Editor’s behavior are detailed in the .doc file ”Using Editor Efficiently” in the installed Serenity Software folder.  The “exclude” list, easy to create and maintain, can be helpful to scholars using specialized vocabularies.

For $55 (or $75 with the word plug-in) this tool is cheaper than an editor for early drafts and can be reused.  Editor offers a 10 day trial to see how much your writing can be helped, but for me I already know it  is well worth the money and will be purchasing a license.

I ran into a couple of problems, and since I know that several of you use the software I would appreciate any suggestions.

1. The import from Zotero went relatively smoothly, but it put almost all of the items into the Needs Review folder.  When you click on an item that needs review, it lets you search google scholar and try to update/complete the item.  However there doesn’t appear to be a way to say “just take them as they are”, and google scholar‘s throttling won’t allow for sending all of them at once.  (Nor would you want to; I did a few and what came back was worse than what I had before in some cases.)  Not major but annoying.
2. I have a LOT of citations.  5 years worth of accumulated stuff, totaling several hundred citations.  They weren’t well organized, which I admit is my fault, but I am struggling with figuring out the best way to GET them organized now.  Anyone know if there is a search that will look at titles so that I can grab all the ones on specific topics to put into their own folders?
3. The biggest issue is with the citation generation.  it comes in two parts.
   • First, Mendeley does not appear to have been updated to APA 6th edition yet.  While I realize that it is hard to keep up with all the different formats, that is one of the core ones they support.  It’s important to get it right.
   • Second, I regularly used a Zotero feature to basically create the citation for a single item, copy it to my clipboard and then paste it into something else.  I needed that this weekend to put a citation for some data into my presentation.  When I tried it from Mendeley, the citation was wrong.  Specifically it was missing the title field.  I tried a few and they all had the same problem.  This is a big deal.

The sum results of this little trial are that I’m not sure I can use Mendeley for my dissertation.  Item 3 is a big deal when faced with the evil people who check dissertation formats, and if I have to spend a day cleaning up my library it may not be time I can spare.  My hope is that the folks from Mendeley are working on the APA issues and coming up with better tools for cleaning up existing citation libraries.  I can’t believe I’m the only one to have problems with dirty data being imported.

In the meantime, if you are curious about how to use a tool that catalogs pdfs, inserts citations and allows you to take notes all in one interface, check out these articles:

SXSWi discussion: Mendeley

Using Mendeley for Research Management

Using Mendeley to Manage Readings and Citations

Another reason I love Mendeley: Grading student projects!

If I decide to convert after the proposal review, I’ll write up my process.

Recently a chart came to my attention that lays out the competing capabilities and compatibilities of the top reference management software products out there.  It includes commercial products such as EndNote and RefWorks, Mac-specific products like Papers, as well as my favorite Zotero and runner-up Mendeley.  It also includes a couple I hadn’t heard of before, specifically Citavi and JabRef.

If you are unhappy with what you have now or don’t have one at all, I suggest taking a look at the chart.  The author has also made it available in a PDF at this link.

My only complaint about this chart is that I don’t feel the Search section does justice to Zotero’s (and possibly other products) ability to directly grab the bibliographic information off a web page from most major databases.  A click of a button and, without changing pages in your browser, Zotero can suck the citation information in so that you can move on with your work seamlessly. Of course I have no doubt that fans of other products can come up with areas in which they feel the chart doesn’t do their product justice. *** Update: And I was correct – that feature is available in the bookmarklet features listed for some of the other reference managers!

One interesting thought from looking at this chart; it appears that none of these products directly interfaces with Google docs.  That may be an opportunity for some ambitious programmer out there!

In addition to individual and group coaching, Gina started the Academic Writing Club.  The idea behind the club is that it is more important to write CONSISTENTLY and REGULARLY than in big chunks.  The goals of the club are to help you develop that habit.  Each day you have the opportunity to record what you did as far as writing and as far as research/reading.  The goal is to record at least a little bit every day in order to see steady progress.

You are set up in a group of around a dozen people who have a similar goal; for example my group is all grad students working on their dissertations (although there are also groups for people working toward tenure).  Each group session lasts for 4 weeks, during which you work with the same people.  My group has writing meetings during which we all meet in the chat room and agree to work for a period then meet up there for a break.  We have a superorganizer who has this set up for 6 days a week at times that work for the entire group.  (This last part is important, since we have people spread from Arizona to Europe to Australia.)

The group also has a message board and, most importantly, the progress page.  That is the page where you log what you worked on each day.  It provides accountability, but since everyone in the group can see it the tendency is also to provide support and encouragement.

You can log just comments, what you did or skip a day.  You can comment on other people’s accomplishments for the day and report on both your own and the entire groups achievements.

In addition to the group, you have access to all of the resources they have assembled over the years and to a coaching call to kickstart each 4 week block.

There is a monthly cost; $70 if you do one 4 week session at a time, $230 if you do 4 in a row paid all at once, and $610 if you do 12 in a row.  You also commit to an autorenew schedule, although their support is very responsive so if you decide it isn’t working for you canceling should be straightforward.  However this is far less than an actual one-on-one or even group coach would cost, and to me more useful.  Daily accountability is an important part of making consistent progress, and this provides it with a lot of positive reinforcement.

In all, I believe it is well worth the cost.  I know support is responsive because I changed from the 1 session membership to the 4 session membership once I determined it would be useful and they made the process painless.  A new session starts around the last week of each month, with the next one starting August 23rd, so I encourage you to consider joining!

Gina from Academic Writing Club has generously offered a $10 discount for readers of this blog who are interested in trying the club.  Just put the code PROTOSCHOLAR in the “coupon” field  of the cart and the discount should show up immediately.