Productivity for Professors: Part Six, Reading Blogs Efficiently

This is the sixth posting in a series of 7 blog postings, in which I explain some of the productivity tools that I use (or have used) and would recommend to university faculty members.

These are the other items in the series:
Email | Calendar | Collaborative Editing | To-Do Lists | Blogging for Professors | Reading Blogs | Exercise and Nutrition

PART 6: Reading Blogs Efficiently

I am a voracious reader, and fairly fast, but I don't have time to individually visit every web site that I want to read each day. The solution to reading blogs efficiently for me was to use a blog aggregator called Bloglines. Here are the features of Bloglines that I like:

1. Bloglines allows me to read all my blogs and web sites in one central location. I tell Bloglines which web site I'm interested in, it adds that to my list, and then tells me when there is an update to that site, and provides me the ability to read the new postings.


2. I can add, remove, and organize the sites within Bloglines. I like to create different folders for the different topics I'm interested in.


3. You can make all or part of your list public/private, and share links to blogs with friends.


4. You can click a box for "keep posting unread" and you can also "clip" postings into a notebook for later reading.

Here is a screenshot showing how Bloglines looks to me:

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Note that my various blogs are organized into folders. The new postings are shown in bold, and when the blog name or folder is clicked in the left-hand pane, the postings are opened in the right-hand pane.

With Bloglines, I am able to efficiently read up to 80 feeds each day. If I don't feel like reading all the posts on a given day, I'll either skim them, or just click "Mark All Read" and start fresh again the next day.

Productivity for Professors: Part Five, Blogging for Professors

This is the fifth posting in a series of 7 blog postings, in which I explain some of the productivity tools that I use (or have used) and would recommend to university faculty members.

These are the other items in the series:
Email | Calendar | Collaborative Editing | To-Do Lists | Blogging for Professors | Reading Blogs | Exercise and Nutrition

PART 5: Blogging for Professors

Topics in this Part:
5.a. How to use blogs to organize your classes
5.b. How to use blogs for your research

There is a ton of information on "how to use blogs in general" available in books and on the internet itself, or just ask your cousin/niece/mailman/anyone-with-a-computer. This posting, therefore, focuses on uses of blogs FOR PROFESSORS. Well, specifically, I tell you how I've used blogs myself for two purposes: my classes and my research.

5.a. How to use blogs to organize your classes

Here is the way I use blogs for my classes:

1. I have a main Elon web site (this is the site you're on right now). I use Blogger (free service, owned by Google) to create this site. The site has two areas: the sidebar and the main content area, used as follows:


1. Sidebar: Contact info, CV, Calendar, links to my individual course blogs


2. Main content area: Messages to the public that are of general interest to my students (office hours, interesting or funny things I have read online, research announcements, etc.)


2. I have course web sites for each of my courses - these are separate blogs, one per course. I use Blogger to manage these sites. These course blogs also have two areas: the sidebar and the main content area, used as follows:


1. Sidebar: Links to home, blackboard, syllabus (electronic only), assignment documents (i.e. PDFs of the homeworks, etc), my calendar, any other course-specific links


2. Main content area: This is where I put our daily agenda and lab descriptions. There ALWAYS an entry for every single day of class. Students are trained on Day One to visit the web site daily to see what we are doing in class. Here is a screenshot of a sample web page from one of my classes:

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Students like the "one stop shop" for class material. The only thing I use Blackboard for are quizzes/tests and the online gradebook. I remove all other features from Blackboard so that the students are not overwhelmed with useless links when they do go there. Here is a screenshot of how Blackboard looks with the useless content removed:



Note that I keep a link on Blackboard to my own web site and to their own course web site. Some students prefer to NOT remember my course web URL and they prefer instead to get there by logging into Blackboard each day.

5.a. How to use blogs in your research

There are a million ways to use blogs in your research, but one way that I want to highlight here is to use a blog as a "public research notebook" on the progress of a particular research project.

For instance, I have a project that I have been working on for several years called the Steampunk Project. I use Blogger and a custom template to control this site.

Using a blog to track my progress on this project serves several purposes:

1. It gives me a central place to post notes, ideas, links I stumble on, graphics, etc


2. It gives me a publicly-available place to show the work I've done. The people who fund/care about this project sometimes feel good when they know that I've been very transparent about my progress.


3. Because the details about the project are Google-accessible on the public internet, this means that I can sometimes (purposely or accidentally) start a conversation with someone who stumbles across my site and might have ideas for me. This can be very interesting. I can also polish my ideas for an audience without the high bar of publication.


4. Because the blogging software (for example, Blogger or Wordpress) handles the nuts and bolts of the publication process, it is very fast and consistent for me to publish my stuff.

Productivity for Professors: Part Four, To-Do Lists

This is the fourth posting in a series of 7 blog postings, in which I explain some of the productivity tools that I use (or have used) and would recommend to university faculty members.

These are the other items in the series:
Email | Calendar | Collaborative Editing | To-Do Lists | Blogging for Professors | Reading Blogs | Exercise and Nutrition

PART 4: To-Do Lists

Topics in this Part:
4.a. How to use Toodledo for to-do lists
4.b. How to make the most of Your Amazon Wishlists

4.a. How to Use Toodledo for To-Do Lists

Toodledo is a free service that is designed to help you take control of your to-do lists. I used to use Google calendar and email only for my to-do lists. Sometimes this was not enough though to really stay on top of my tasks. For example, I discussed in Part One of this series that I typically keep my important tasks in email inbox until done with them. However, what about tasks that don't have an email associated with them? I also discussed in Part Two how I use my Google calendar to track tasks that are coming up. But do I want every little phone call on my Google calendar? Then, for a while I was using Dashboard to keep sticky notes with to-do items on it, but I found that because Dashboard is so passive on my machine, I wasn't "seeing" the messages that I'd left for myself. Here is an example of how a Dashboard sticky note looks:

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I spend most of my time in email and in a browser, so a tool that integrated with one of these would be ideal.

The solution: Toodledo. Here is a screenshot of Toodledo in action:

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With Toodledo, you can change the order of the tasks by priority, date, folder, etc. You can share tasks between users, and see a history of your tasks. You can also set up alerts. And finally, most gloriously, you can synchronize your Toodledo list with your Google calendar with a single click.

I still use Dashboard, but it's more for long-term ideas or sticky notes that I want to store for a long time to think about.

4.a. How to Make the Most of Your Amazon Wishlists

Our library here at Elon takes faculty book orders via email. I find that it is helpful to keep two Amazon.com wishlists: one for books that I need to order, and one for books that I have ordered.

ASIDE: I suppose you could create a wishlist (bibliography) for your course, and make it public and then link to it from your course web site. This would be an interesting replacement for the long lists of books that many professors put on their syllabi but that no students actually would click on. (You could also accomplish this same thing by using an Amazon Listmania list as well.)

To make an Amazon wishlist:

1. Log in to Amazon and navigate to the "Wish List" area.


2. Choose to "create a new wishlist"


3. The list will be created as "private" by default, and it will be named "New Wish List" by default. To change this name, click on "Edit List Information". I changed my lists to be called "Elon, Wanted" and "Elon, Ordered". I add books to the Wanted list, and then periodically send them to the library for ordering. At that point, I move them onto the "Ordered" list.


4. Why do I bother with an "Ordered" list? Couple of reasons: (1) sometimes I forget that I already ordered a book for the library (2) Sometimes I have a slow weekend, and I want to see "what books did I think a year ago that I would want to read, and did I read them yet?"


5. To move books from one list to another, just click "Move/Copy" next to the book you want to move. You'll be presented with a list of your wishlists and the ability to choose multiple books and move them all at once.

Productivity for Professors: Part Three, Collaborative Editing

This is the third posting in a series of 7 blog postings, in which I explain some of the productivity tools that I use (or have used) and would recommend to university faculty members.

These are the other items in the series:
Email | Calendar | Collaborative Editing | To-Do Lists | Blogging for Professors | Reading Blogs | Exercise and Nutrition

PART 3: Collaborative Editing

Topics in this Part:
3.a. Using Google Docs (and Spreadsheets, and Presentations)
3.b. How to stop whining about Wikipedia and make it better

3.a. Using Google Docs

Google docs is another free service from Google. Google docs is a collection of simple, web-based office productivity tools, including a word processor (i.e. Word), spreadsheet (i.e. Excel), and presentation tool (i.e. Powerpoint).

The advantages of using these tools over typical desktop-based tools in some situations are as follows:

• You can create a document and share it with multiple people. These people all access the document over the web, using a browser, so no desktop software is required.


• You can see each other's changes, and you can see a history of changes to the document. If multiple people are editing at once, you can watch each other make changes. In Google Spreadsheets, you can actually turn on a live, real-time chat feature and discuss the document as you edit it.


• You can keep your documents (relatively) private. The default settings for a document are to NOT have it published to the web. However, if you choose to turn on publishing, you can have your document searchable by Google.

Ways that I have used Google Docs in an academic setting are as follows:

• I have used it to write papers and grant applications (including budgets) with colleagues, or to brainstorm about new ideas


• Students can use it to create reports, presentations, and spreadsheets for group projects without having to send emails all over the place. They can sometimes be disorganized and frustrated with the organizational mechanics of group work.


• To create a long-term bibliography or collection of links that I need other people to be able to access, but I don't want to store on a public service like del.icio.us

3.b. How to stop whining about Wikipedia and make it better

Many professors despise Wikipedia. There is no faster way to get professors into an argument than to drop the wiki-bomb in the middle of a lunch meeting. (Try either, "So I've banned wikipedia from all student work this semester" or "So I've got students editing Wikipedia entries in class" for fun.) Some professors hate it, some love it.

Regardless of whether you love or hate the site, the fact is that students (and regular people too!) use it. It has great Google search placement for most terms, and it's not going away anytime soon.

So how can we make the content on the site better? How can we make the pages refer to actual facts and outside resources and not just on Some Random Dude's Opinion? Easy. Sign up for an account, and edit the site when you find a problem there.

Well, I said that was "easy", and it turns out it is a little harder than that. (Like life, huh?) Here's what to do:

1. Go to Wikipedia and click on "create an account".


2. Find the page you want to edit and click "edit this page" at the top, or BETTER YET, click "edit" on the right-hand side of the page, near the section you want to make the changes to. Start with making textual changes (i.e. removing spam, correcting spelling, making the writing more clear, etc), and move up to adding links and adding new headings later as you get more familiar with the service.


3. If you're wondering about the changes that have been made to a page, or if you find yourself asking, "who added this garbage to this page?", click "history" and scroll down the list of changes. You can often pinpoint who the perpetrator was, either by username or by IP address.


4. If you're concerned about the content on a particular page, say you make a bunch of changes to a page on a topic for which you are the world's #1 leading expert and you want to see who else is making changes so that they don't contradict yours, click "watch" at the top of the page you're interested in. (Make sure you're logged in first.) This will add the page to your watchlist, and you'll be able to see recent changes to these pages all in one place.

Productivity for Professors: Part Two, Calendar

This is the second posting in a series of 7 blog postings, in which I explain some of the productivity tools that I use (or have used) and would recommend to university faculty members.

These are the other items in the series:
Email | Calendar | Collaborative Editing | To-Do Lists | Blogging for Professors | Reading Blogs | Exercise and Nutrition

PART 2: Calendar

Topics in this Part:
2.a. Using Google Calendar
2.b. Using "When Is Good?" for meeting planning

2.a. Using Google Calendar

I use numerous Google calendars to organize my various tasks. If you have a Google ID (such as the one you used if you use Gmail as explained in Part One of this series, you can set up a Google calendar very easily. Some of the advantages of Google calendar are as follows:

1. Your calendar can be viewable by the public using a simple browser - no desktop software is required. I put the link to my calendar on my public web site and encourage students to use the calendar to find good meeting times.


2. You can make meetings and appointments public or private, even on a public calendar. You can show private times as "busy" or you can leave them off the calendar entirely.


3. You can share permissions on your calendar with other Google users, allowing them to add items to your calendar, etc.


4. You can create multiple calendars and view/manage them from a single calendar window. These multiple calendars can have completely separate settings. Below is shown the calendar turn-on/turn-off area:




And here is the example showing two calendars at once:




5. You can add external, non-Google calendars, such as other people's .mac or ical calendars just by knowing the public address of that other calendar.

2.b. Using "When Is Good?" for meeting planning

When is Good? is an interesting tool for meeting planning. It is in beta right now, so some features are missing, but it's a good start on something for which there is a definite need.

What this tool does is allow a meeting planner (say, me) to set up a series of times that are good for me to hold a meeting. Then I invite all the other meeting attendees to click on the times that are good for them to meet. The web application determines the times that are good for everyone to meet.

Here is a screenshot of the process AFTER 4 people were done choosing times for a conference call. The green times are those that we were all in agreement about. (The 3 other names are listed under the calendar.)

Productivity for Professors: Part One, Email

In this series of 7 blog postings, I'll be explaining some of the productivity tools that I use (or have used) and would recommend to university faculty members.

These are the items in the series:
Email | Calendar | Collaborative Editing | To-Do Lists | Blogging for Professors | Reading Blogs | Exercise and Nutrition

PART 1: EMAIL

Topics in this Part:
1.a. Using Thunderbird for one POP account and multiple SMTP accounts
1.b. Organizing my mail
1.c. Using Gmail to integrate multiple email accounts

1.a. Using Thunderbird for one POP account and multiple SMTP accounts

I use two email clients: the Thunderbird email client for my work mail and the Gmail client for my personal email accounts.

Thunderbird is a free email program made by the folks that make the Mozilla/Firefox web browser. You can download Thunderbird from the Mozilla web site.

I use Thunderbird to download my mail from the Elon email server, and I keep the mail on my own machine. (I have Thunderbird configured right now to leave mail on the server until I delete it, but I will probably configure it soon to just delete all mail off the remote server as soon as it is "popped" into my local machine.)

I have Thunderbird configured so that I can send mail from either home or work. (Some people use the web-based Exchange client to access their Elon mail. I'm not so fond of the Web-based mail client, so I do this instead.) Here is a screen shot of the setup area of Thunderbird:

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In the account that I named "Send From Home", I have entered the name of the email server at Elon setup to fetch my mail from. And to send my mail, I have configured another ISP's mail server to route my mail for me. I use a login and password to send mail remotely through Earthlink. (Earthlink isn't actually my ISP, but I do have a mail account on there, so that's good enough for them to route my mail for me. You'll probably want to configure your own ISP info here. For example, if you're using Roadrunner, or whatever, you'll put in the name of their mail server and your Roadrunner login ID there.)

Under "outgoing server (SMTP)", in Thunderbird, set up your various email accounts (server name, login, password). Then, give each account setting a name. (I've set up mine to be called "Send from Home" and "Send from Work".) For each account, choose one of the outgoing email servers that you set up already.

In my "Send from Home" account profile, I have set up my Earthlink account. In my "Send from Work" I use the Elon email servers, as shown below:

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In either case, I have the same POP server set up (my elon account) to fetch my inbound mail, and I have the same "reply-to" address set up and the same name set up. That way, even if I physically send mail from home, it will look to the other person like it's coming from my work account.

When I'm composing an email from home or from work, I just choose which account to send from like so:

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By the way, the "send from home" profile works for any location, not just home. So, this is the profile I use to send mail when I'm at home, on travel, or even when I'm at work and can't access the mail servers for some reason!

1.b. Organizing my mail

To organize my email in Thunderbird, I do the following:

1. All email stays in inbox until I have "dealt" with it. Target inbox size is < 20 messages at a given time. After I deal with a message, I move it promptly by either deleting it or moving it to a folder.


2. I am very liberal with the "delete" button. I hit "delete" a lot! I have Thunderbird set up to "really" delete messages only after being in the Delete folder LONGER than 6 months. This practice allows me to delete things without fear of actually losing them if I should need them again (within 6 months).


3. I use folders to organize my email. My folder system looks something like the following picture. Note the folders called "old" in which I can stick old messages and old projects that I no longer use.


4. Sent items are never deleted. Sometimes, if it's a particularly tricky or important thread, I will move the Sent item into the appropriate folder. I rely heavily on the "Search" feature within the "sent"

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1.c. Using Gmail to integrate multiple email accounts

I set up an account on gmail (see the Calendar and Collaborative Editing parts of this productivity series for other great Google tools you can use too) for my personal email. Gmail can also check other accounts and integrate all the email into a single client.

Here is a screenshot of the area in Gmail where you can ask it to check your other email accounts:

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I'm not crazy about the interface for Gmail and the way they show threaded messages, so I don't use Gmail as my primary mail reader, but in general it is a good secondary mail client.