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Quick photo scanning: Google PhotoScan

Flatbed scanner and photoA good number of us here at ProfHacker try to minimize some of the clutter in our lives by (when possible) digitizing the paper that comes our way.

As we’ve found our way with scanning, we’ve shared what we’ve learned with readers. We’ve reviewed portable scanners such as the Doxie One, and taken a look at phone applications that can be used for document scanning (see, for instance, Lincoln’s post on DocScanner, or Natalie’s on CamScanner).

Those applications are good for working with text docum…

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Getting More Done with Emoji

worried raccoon

One of the great paradoxes of the communication tools that are designed to help folks work together is how poorly they scale: what seems like a convenient way to share information quickly turns into an avalanche of messages that one feels compelled to keep up-to-date with.

Over the past year or so, Lee, Maha, and I have written several times about the various ways we use or teach with Slack, a modern platform for communications that can often feel more or less like a modern ICQ chat environment…

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Sticky Notes and Small Groups: Digital Work in the Classroom

I’m one of those humanities professors who is increasingly introducing technology-intensive assignments and activities into what would otherwise be more conventional, analog courses on writing and literature. And if you teach a large or largish class that involves in-class, hands-on work with digital tools, you would do well to come up with teaching strategies appropriate for that particular situation.

I recently stumbled across a very useful post from Miriam Posner about this very topic: “A be…

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Weekend Reading: Post-Election Classroom Resources

The end of the semester is approaching slowly, and the holiday season is almost upon us. I for one am overwhelmed, and focusing a lot on working consistently in short bursts with dedicated time for wellness. But as we look towards next semester, here are a few readings and resources that might provide inspiration:

  • The Trump Syllabus 2.0 by N. D. B. Connolly and Keisha N. Blain is an impressive collection of readings grouped by weekly themes, syllabus-style. Each week addresses a larger issue …

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Help Defray Scott Eric Kaufman’s Medical Bills

batman coffee
For almost as long as there have been widely-read academic blogs, Scott Eric Kaufman’s has been a vital, funny, brilliant voice on it. For those of us who have been blogging for 10 years or more, it’s almost certain that you’ve run across him online, and probably come away better for it. And even though he’s long since left higher ed, he will always be an important part of our community.

As some of you may know, Scott is currently facing a profound health crisis, with multiple organ failures, a…

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Filenames and LaTeX and Pandoc, oh my!

Command-line arguments for batch-converting files from docx to pdfSometimes it happens: someone sends us a document in Word format, and we’d really rather it was a PDF. The reasons can vary. Maybe we need to post it on a website, and we’d rather users be able to view it in a browser, rather than being forced to download it. Maybe it’s an essay we need to grade, and, like Erin, we want to use iAnnotate or a similar application for that purpose.

When there are only a few documents involved, converting the files to PDF is simple enough; all that’s necessary is …

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6 Games for Talking About the Election

In the wake of the US presidential election, many of us are deciding what comes next in our classrooms and scholarship. There are no easy answers to this question, and the national divisions are echoed on campus with consequences we are only beginning to understand. However, if you do plan to address these topics in your classroom, games can provide a potentially less threatening opening for sharing experiences. Here are a few games with topics and commentary relevant to the election and curre…

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Stop The Spread of Fake News

Mark Zuckerburg might think that fake news on Facebook didn’t sway the election, but Associate Professor Zeynep Tufekci (and many others) aren’t buying it. In a piece for the New York Times (where she is a regular contributor and a must-read), Tufekci writes:

He is also contradicting Facebook’s own research.

In 2010, researchers working with Facebook conducted an experiment on 61 million users in the United States right before the midterm elections. One group was shown a “go vote” message…

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Election 2016: How Did Higher Ed Leaders Respond?

VOTE sticker on a sign

[This is a guest post by Robin DeRosa, Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. Her current research focuses on Open Pedagogy, and how learner-driven curriculum can reshape and reinvigorate the structures of public higher education. You can read more about her work at robinderosa.net.]

The morning after the U.S. election, reeling with the results and anxious to find guidance from organizations and thinkers that I trust, I went online to sort through v…

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Teach Access Tutorial: Best Practices for Digital Accessibility

I recently came across a solid teaching and learning resource devoted to giving designers, developers, and writers a better grounding in creating accessible content. The “Teach Access Portal” is a new-to-me tutorial that provides interactive lessons, much in the same way that Codecademy does. It’s a product of the Teach Access project, which (I have to admit) I don’t know much about.

From the introductory paragraph to the tutorial:

This resource is part of the Teach Access Initiative, and provi…

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