Author Archives: Erin E. Templeton
February 17, 2012, 8:00 am
By Erin E. Templeton
TGIF. It’s been one of those weeks. Classes are in full swing. Committees are meeting regularly. Papers are coming due. Deadlines loom. And we’re smack-dab in the middle of cold and flu season.
It may seem like for every item we cross off our to-do list, two more spring up in its place like some kind of task-based Hydra. Most of us, no matter where we find ourselves on the academic ladder can feel overwhelmed from time to time. There’s always another batch of essays to grade, another class to prep, another student to meet, another email to answer.
It’s okay to give yourself a time out.
In fact, it’s not only okay, but it can often help you be more productive and efficient, not to mention happier and healthier to take a break every once in a while. We cannot function at 110% all the time, and if we try we can end up doing more harm than good. We might push ourselves to…
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February 13, 2012, 8:00 am
By Erin E. Templeton
Last summer, Jason introduced us to Flipboard, an iOS app which gathers content from a variety of social media feeds, including Facebook and Twitter (if you choose to link your accounts). Since then, Flipboard has become one of my favorite apps, both on the iPad and iPhone, because it allows me to see what other people in my circles are reading without having to visit all the different individual sites. It’s a kind of social media one-stop media shop.
So when I learned about Zite, a new reader app that “gets to know you,” in order “to deliver your personal slice of the Zeitgeist,” I was skeptical. The idea that social media adapts itself to user needs and preferences is enough to make many of us a bit nervous: “Gets to know me how, exactly?” I wondered. “And why?”
My curiosity was piqued, in no small part because a tiny corner of my brain still mourns the loss of Tivo, the DVR…
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February 6, 2012, 8:00 am
By Erin E. Templeton
ProfHacker first wrote about Wordle back in October 2009, when Julie Meloni called it “the gateway drug to textual analysis.” George Williams followed her post with another in November of 2009 that further considered ways to “[Use] Wordle in the classroom.”
Inspired by a Twitter conversation last week with Caleb McDaniel (@wcaleb), I decided to revisit it here.
I recently used Wordle in an assignment for my January Intersession class (on F. Scott Fitzgerald) and found it very useful for introducing students to close-reading and the basics of textual analysis. As an English professor, textual analysis is one of the most fundamental skills that I teach, and as a result, it can feel like the bane of my existence. The source of my frustration (and that of my students) is trying to get from summary and/or description to analysis. Students are often very good at describing what is…
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January 20, 2012, 8:00 am
By Erin E. Templeton
Back in 2009, ProfHacker colleague, Billie Hara wrote about grade keeping programs such as GradeKeeper that might help you to track and manage your assessment of student work. Some of you might prefer to go at it old-school with a paper grade book that you manage by hand. Others might devise spread sheets in Excel or Numbers or a GoogleDoc. Still others might use the software provided by your college or university, be it BlackBoard, WebCT, Moodle, or the like. Last semester, partly inspired by Mark Sample’s post on “Going Paperless in the Classroom,” I bit the bullet and purchased GradeBook Pro for my iPad.
GradeBook Pro isn’t cheap by my standards–I prefer my apps to be free, but on occasion, I’ll cough up the $.99 if something comes recommended by a friend or colleague. GradeBook, priced at $9.99, then was a bit of a tough sell for me at the time, especially because I didn’t…
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November 10, 2011, 11:00 am
By Erin E. Templeton
It shouldn’t be news to our regular readers that many of us at ProfHacker are proponents of exercise fitness, and wellness. Guest author Meagan Timney has encouraged Nurturing the Mind-Body Connection, Kathleen Fitzparick has written about the importance of Prioritizing Exercise, and Brian Croxall has discussed the benefits of Losing Five Pounds. In addition, readers have weighed in on their Favorite Fitness Tracking Tools, and whether or not they Take Advantage of the Campus Gym.
In my most recent post on the topic, The Rule of 200: Fitness Edition, I talked about the difficulty of maintaining an fitness routine once the semester hit its stride with the typical whirlwind of obligations, responsibilities, and unanticipated crises. As I mentioned in that post, I resolved to try something different this semester: I registered for a half-marathon thinking that having a fixed goal…
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September 23, 2011, 3:00 pm
By Erin E. Templeton
Despite the fact that for many of us at ProfHacker, the fall semester started weeks ago, the season officially began this morning at 5:05 AM (Eastern Time). Hopefully the last few weeks of summer have been productive ones for you as you have gotten into the swing of the semester and settled into your classes and committees and research.
While Mother Nature seems to have eased up on tropical storms for the time being (knock on wooden surface now, please), it’s been a busy week for us on a number of fronts: the week opened for many of us with a bizarre email from Jeff Reed announcing Qwikster, developments in Google+, the Kindle Library Lending possibilities, ever-continuing changes in Facebook protocols and settings, persistant rumblings about the iPhone 5 . . .
On to the links:
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September 15, 2011, 3:00 pm
By Erin E. Templeton
Long-time ProfHacker readers know that we like Interfolio. We’ve written about it several times over the last three years: Julie Meloni wrote “Using Interfolio to Manage Your Professional Documents“; Brian mentions it when advising readers about “Preparing Now for Next Year’s Job Market,” and I included it in “Five Things That Helped Me Survive the Job Market.”
The MLA job list went live yesterday, and with it the cycle of hope and anxiety has begun anew for academic jobseekers, from ABDs venturing out into the market for the first time to seasoned pros who might be looking for a change of venue to everyone else in between.
One of the questions that job-seekers frequently ask is whether or not to use a dossier service, whether Interfolio or something similar provided by their university. The answer to this question: Maybe. Or to put it another way, the answer here is not near…
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September 9, 2011, 8:00 am
By Erin E. Templeton
A while back, I introduced ProfHacker readers to my “Rule of 200.” In a nutshell, the Rule of 200 is my way of maintaining writing momentum when life gets busy by writing 200 words a day, every single day. I figured that even if I couldn’t begin my writing session until 11:00PM after a full day of teaching, I could still produce 200 words. They don’t have 200 words of unadulterated genius, or remotely close to genius; my word count simply needs to be 200 words higher when I am finished.
Recently, I have adapted this principle to my fitness routine. I try to stay active and exercise throughout the year, but I have a tendency to let things slide as the pace of the semester picks up and the demands on my time from students, advisees, and committee chairs multiply. Those demands on their own aren’t generally what breaks my habit. There is one more ingredient, however, which is both…
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August 19, 2011, 8:00 am
By Erin E. Templeton
As promised earlier this week, today I’ll introduce you to Amazon’s (other) new service, the Amazon Cloud Reader. The Cloud Reader was unveiled on August 10, and unlike Kindle.Amazon.com, this service is one that actually has gotten some stage time on the Amazon homepage. But stage time is about all it has gotten. By this, I mean that while Amazon features the Cloud Reader prominently on its homepage, you actually ge surprisingly little information about it until after you’ve installed it. After writing one post on a subterranean Kindle service, I’m not sure why I was surprised, but I was surprised nevertheless. Basically, if users click on the “Read Now” link, they are taken to an installation page, rather than an information page. Call me skeptical if you will, but I want to know what I’ll be installing before I make such a decision, but such was not an option (unless…
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August 15, 2011, 11:00 am
By Erin E. Templeton
A little over a week ago, I received a curious message from Amazon.com. I was confused at first because I had not placed an order, and unlike many other retailers, Amazon doesn’t send me random “sale-mail.” My uncertainty grew when I opened the message to learn that one of my Twitter followers was now following me on Kindle. Following me on Kindle? Huh?
Many of us at ProfHacker are fans of the e-reader. Kindles and Nooks have made appearances on both of our Holiday Gift Guides (2009 and 2010). Amy has written about Calibre, as have I). I am a Kindle devotee and have been for years. In fact, over the two plus years that I have been “Kindling,” I have sworn allegiance to my electronic love both in ProfHacker (see “Kindling the Classroom ?” and elsewhere). The device (I use a second generation Kindle 2) has changed my life for the better. For example, despite the…
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