Today's ProfHacker post will provide scenarios about how the "Disrepecters"—David, Debbie, Donald, and Desiree—can challenge your authority in a classroom and impede learning for others. You've certainly had a student or two who have exhibited disrespectful behavior in the classroom. You know the ones: students who ask questions that are supposed to put you in your place? Yes, those students.

Maybe these students don't realize how disrespectful (and downright rude) they come across. Maybe they do realize this and that's their aim. Maybe they are asking sincere questions. Then again, maybe they aren't. In context, however, you understand by tone, inflection, and body language that the students mean disrespect. (Or for the sake of this post, let's believe they do.)

How do you deal with these questions and with these students when you encounter disrespectful behavior? At...

Whiteboard HD, by Avici, is an app that does exactly what its name promises: It captures the experience of writing on a whiteboard--even better, the results are legible! The app can also be used to create flowcharts.

Whiteboard HD offers flexible and precise drawing tools, and the ability to import images and diagrams from iPhoto. It supports freehand drawing, but it also gives you the ability to manipulate text and standard flowchart-type objects with the iPad's multitouch interface. Here's a sample screenshot:

You can also do quicker, ad hoc images:

(I actually use Whiteboard HD this way all the time, sketching out drills and formations for my Little League and U-10 soccer teams. (Um, at home—I'm not demented enough to break it out for this purpose at practice. The only time I've ever taken the iPad to practice was to show Landon Donovan's goal [YouTube] to the soccer team, ...

Back in June Ethan began an informal series on ProfHacker with his 5 Applications I Simply Can't Live Without (and Why). He followed that 5 WordPress Plugins I Simply Can't Live Without (and Why), and the popular 5 iPad Applications I Simply Can't...well, you get the idea.

The idea of 5 [Insert Cool Software Here] I Can't Live Without (and Why) has endless, useful variations, such as Brian's list of 5 essential iPod Touch apps, and now, my own contribution to the series, in which I'll shift the focus onto the Android operating system. With a mere 50,000 or so applications, the Android Market pales in comparison to Apple's App Store, but it can nonetheless be difficult to find the perfect app to fit your needs. So I'll run through 5 essential Android apps that work for me. As with the other 5 [Insert Cool Software Here] posts, I am not recommending any specific applications so much as I ...

[Each week at ProfHacker, George Williams hosts "Open Thread Wednesday," a discussion forum in which readers are invited to share their answers to a particular question. The Commenting and Community Guidelines still apply.

You can suggest topics or ask us questions via email: ProfHackerCHE@gmail.com. —Ed.]

It's not exactly news that the academic job market has been very competitive for some time now. And if you finally land the kind of position you've been looking for, everyone congratulates you, and you can't help but feel pretty lucky. But what do you do if, for whatever reason, you decide this isn't the job for you? Alternatively, what if you've been working in the same job for a number of years and are now considering a change of employers? It happens.

Maybe you're extremely unhappy with the part of the world where you're now living. Maybe your colleagues aren't as collegial as...

Here at ProfHacker, we devote about one-third of our posts (and our time) to teaching-related issues and activities. Our posts have covered, among other things, pedagogy, students, colleagues, tips, tricks, books, and lectures. We understand the importance of teaching in higher education. Nevertheless, we are not the only ones who understand it. At ProfHacker, we believe in collaboration in and the sharing of knowledge.

Back in April, George Williams (re)introduced ProfHacker readers to the Teaching Carnival, a round-up containing teaching related posts from around the blogosphere, or, what George has termed, "a traveling collection of constantly updated links to blog entries about teaching in higher education." From 2005 to 2009, academics from all ranks and disciplines hosted the Teaching Carnival on their personal blogs. To peruse previous carnivals, head on over the Teaching...

[This is a guest post by Dr. Bethany Nowviskie, Director of Digital Research & Scholarship at the University of Virginia Library. (That's the Scholars' Lab to you and me.) Bethany blogs and can be found on Twitter. She's currently editing an open-access collection of essays by #alt-ac professionals and serving as both associate director of the Scholarly Communication Institute and vice president of the Association for Computers and the Humanities.]

By now, avid ProfHacker readers will have encountered the cipher "#alt-ac:" a neologism and Twitter hashtag that marks conversations about "alternate academic" careers for humanities scholars. Here, "alternate" typically denotes neither adjunct teaching positions nor wholly non-academic (what-color-is-your-parachute, maybe-should-have-gotten-an-MBA) jobs—about which, in comparison, advice is easy to find.

Instead, the #alt-ac label speaks to...

If you're as devoted to all things Google as many of us on Team ProfHacker, you might find yourself using many different free services that Google provides, including its email, calendar, RSS reader, and more. So it might be logical for you to look to Google's services if you find yourself organizing an event or representing an organization but don't want to go through the trouble of hosting your own website. After all, Google's tools are pretty simple, powerful, and—did I mention this?—free. Google makes it easy to create a new account in just a few minutes, giving your conference its own email address. You might even choose to create different accounts for work- and hobby-related calendaring and email.

Although it's been easy to create multiple Google accounts, there's been a pretty significant downside until recently: you could only be signed into one account at a time within your...

Last week, in discussing my new (academic) year's resolutions, I mentioned that one of my goals for the year is to run three times a week. It's relatively easy for me to promise myself something like that right now, as I'm on leave, and aside from some travel and some project meetings, my only real time commitments are to myself.

Personally, I've found that maintaining a regular exercise program is way more difficult than that during a regular semester. I always start out with all kinds of good intentions, and feel great as long as I'm still working out regularly. But school-oriented commitments inevitably start creeping in: that one meeting that has to be scheduled during my usual gym time; that article that I'm not finding enough time to work on; that class that isn't quite as prepared as I'd like. And almost invariably, when I start feeling pressed for time, the first thing that ...

I use small groups quite often in my teaching, primarily for in-class activities rather than for projects requiring collaboration among group members outside of class time. Most of my undergraduate courses are lecture/discussion courses, so I use small group activities either early in the class hour in order to prepare students for the day's discussion, or as a way of changing pace midway through a class period.

Give the Groups Clear Instructions

Giving students clear, focused tasks to accomplish in a group of 3-4 people is an excellent way to prepare them for class discussion. For instance, I might have them discuss an open-ended question like "who is the protagonist in this novel" first in small groups, before the class as a whole tackles it—this always helps to engage a larger number of people in the discussion.

I sometimes assign each group a particular task, usually to practice a...

[This is a guest post by Louisa A. Burnham, Associate Professor of History at Middlebury College.]

I am an academic medievalist, and I have spent six weeks traveling this summer with no other computer than my iPad. Here are some thoughts about my experience. First off, the technical details: I have the 64g WiFi iPad, and I traveled in Israel, Jordan, Cyprus, Spain and Andorra. I was mostly on the road for two weeks (Israel, Jordan and Cyprus), and mostly in one place (Barcelona) for a month.

Connectivity

I had to rely on WiFi, and mostly did just fine on the road, with the usual "this hotel's WiFi sucks" kinds of problems.

For Barcelona, however, I brought along a travel router, since I knew that I could get an ethernet connection in my room but not WiFi. This was brilliant. I had my own little WiFi zone just for me! Email, internet, no problem. I didn't Skype at all, so I can't tell...