Tech in the Classroom

Teaching is an intensive process. Between planning lessons, preparing assignments, and grading, there is no shortage of hours spent behind the scenes for an hour of class time. Thankfully there are some tech solutions that might help enhance all that effort and bolster your lessons.

Nearpod is a slideshow application that allows the audience to follow along with you and interact with your presentation. You can embed questions they can answer or links for them to follow. It facilitates instructive lessons where a bit of hands-on practice is best. 

Visualizing Data

When I was in the Army, there was a surprising amount of focus on the presentation of the intelligence we gathered. In the beginning, I was frustrated. I was young and could not imagine why it mattered so much that our presentation to the higher-ups had to be as clear and simplified as possible. It seemed like a waste of valuable time. I remained skeptical until I started comparing our work to that of some of the other units. It became blatantly obvious how well-manicured presentation of information can help inform the reader quickly and effectively. Since then, I fell in love with the process of synthesizing information into presentable formats.

Early infographic I made on censorship.

Cryptojacking

It has been a while, I know. For that I am sorry. Dee is taking a short break, and I was at a loss on what to talk about next. There is no shortage of tech and tools, but I haven’t had the chance to tinker with many new ones. Interesting developments like the Ethereum fork in response to a Parity hack had plenty of coverage by individuals who are more knowledgeable than I. Also, debates abound about how deeply librarians really need to understand blockchain. I think it is uncontroversial to say* that librarians need to at least have it on their radar. So, this post is going to cover cryptojacking.

Keep it private

As part of starting my new job, I had to set up my new computer. Doing this always reminds me of the things I take for granted. The set up of my desktop, the icons pinned to my taskbar, and the extensions on my browser. However, the shake up in my complacency also made me reevaluate what privacy measures I’m taking. I did some research, and while not a ton has changed, there are some new developments. So, for this short post, I give you a annotated list of privacy extensions, apps, and programs you should know about if you don’t already.

Privacy badger – A browser extension created by EFF that blocks third party cookies.

HTTPS: Everywhere – Another browser extension created by the good folks at EFF. This one makes sure that your communication with major sites is encrypted using https regardless of whether the site defaults to http.

Librarian Lightning Round

For the next few weeks, we will interrupt our regular posting schedule for what I’m referring to as a series of lightning posts, which is short posts published more often. A bit of context first. I recently attended the American Association of Law Libraries Annual Conference. Different talks highlighted a number of tools and programs that don’t warrant long elaborate posts. I have convinced Dee to join me in posting short evaluations/explanations of these tools on a weekly basis until we cover them all. Then it will be back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

Some of these tools you may know already, some you may not. You’ll find a list of what we plan to cover below, in no particular order. Could you go out and research them all on your own? Of course. But why spend all your valuable time when we can do the work for you.

ReadClearly, WriteClearly, BeelineReader, Compressor.io, Wave Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool, The Noun Project, PermaCC, Page Vault, Kahoot!, & Slack.

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-Cas