24 January 2010
Prezi
I have discovered a wonderful online tool to replace the snooze-inducing powerpoint: Prezi. It's awesome. After a small learning curve, I managed to make a pretty snazzy presentation on rhetorical analysis, based on the EA text. There is essentially an unlimited screen area, and you can drag and drop and move about objects and whatnot. This is my first stab at a Prezi, and I know I will be working with this tool a lot more for class. There are some wonderful tutorials on the website to help you get started - I am truly a geek, because this is how I spent my Saturday night.
16 January 2010
Helpful Software
I am a software/online/GTD/organizational geek. I am terribly excited by the concept of a store full of empty boxes, and think that whoever dreamed up an organizer for a drawer of socks is overdue for that Nobel Peace Prize. I might add, however, that this fascination with all things organizational does not carry over to my real life as much as I would like. There are, though, a few things which I have run across recently that caused me to think SERIOUS FROG FODDER.
I am attempting to be more tree-friendly, and really want to cut back on my wild and unchecked printing practices. I am, though, one of those who likes to write on my reading material - even if I just want to appear to have read the articles assigned for class versus making any intelligent commentary in the margins. My habit of noting things in the margin, highlighting, and otherwise marking up my texts was at odds with my desire to avoid being the Dick Cheney of the woodlands, and this caused me great pain. Fortunately, there is Skim. From the website: "Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file." Why they specify the papers must be scientific, I don't know - as I am learning in Carrie's "Writing for the Professions" class, we literary types can get pretty crazy with our marginalia.
Another really handy and excellent tool that I have run across is called Free Mind and is mind mapping software. I played around with it thinking that I would use it as I worked on a paper last semester, but as is typical, I ran out of time and was forced to just woman up and write the paper already.
Finally, here's a free file converter that I have used when my students insist on sending me documents with the dreaded ".wth" extension. The online file converter has been a godsend for me many times. It will even translate a .pdf into .doc if you ask it nicely.
I am hoping that my spring semester is well organized, neatly highlighted and well mind-mapped out, and I hope yours is as well.save
I am attempting to be more tree-friendly, and really want to cut back on my wild and unchecked printing practices. I am, though, one of those who likes to write on my reading material - even if I just want to appear to have read the articles assigned for class versus making any intelligent commentary in the margins. My habit of noting things in the margin, highlighting, and otherwise marking up my texts was at odds with my desire to avoid being the Dick Cheney of the woodlands, and this caused me great pain. Fortunately, there is Skim. From the website: "Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file." Why they specify the papers must be scientific, I don't know - as I am learning in Carrie's "Writing for the Professions" class, we literary types can get pretty crazy with our marginalia.
Another really handy and excellent tool that I have run across is called Free Mind and is mind mapping software. I played around with it thinking that I would use it as I worked on a paper last semester, but as is typical, I ran out of time and was forced to just woman up and write the paper already.
Finally, here's a free file converter that I have used when my students insist on sending me documents with the dreaded ".wth" extension. The online file converter has been a godsend for me many times. It will even translate a .pdf into .doc if you ask it nicely.
I am hoping that my spring semester is well organized, neatly highlighted and well mind-mapped out, and I hope yours is as well.save
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