Tag Archives: from the archives

October 10, 2011, 3:00 pm

From the Archives: On Meetings

Love ’em or hate ’em, meetings are a fact of academic life. In a typical semester, most faculty participate in a variety of meetings, ranging from student thesis committees, departmental committees, college working groups, faculty senate meetings, or even campus or regional planning meetings. Here are some ideas and resources from the ProfHacker archives to make your next meeting just a little bit better.

How Do You Behave in a Meeting?

Complaining about meetings is a favorite academic pastime, but Jason’s salutary suggestions in Bad Meetings Are Your Fault remind us all that our individual actions contribute to the meeting culture in our departments or on our campuses. Although things like being on time and staying away from your smartphone during meetings might seem like obvious professional behaviors, many of us might be occasionally guilty of something on Jason’s list.
…

September 6, 2011, 3:00 pm

From the Archives: Being Social

By Natalie Houston

The start of the fall academic term often means meeting new people and refreshing your connection with colleagues, friends, and acquaintances. Although many of those meetings and conversations might take place in the hallways and coffeeshops of your campus, others might be entirely digital in nature. The timing, methods, and significance of interpersonal interaction continually change along with our uses of technology.

Define Your Boundaries

How you choose to set boundaries on the kinds of communication you have with colleagues and students will ultimately be a personal decision, albeit shaped by campus policy (on office hours or the use of email) and departmental culture (some departments expect your attendance at frequent social events, and others don’t).

Because the language of social media (following and friending) tends to blur boundaries, it’s very important that…

June 20, 2011, 3:00 pm

From the Archives: All About Android

By Natalie Houston

Early in the life of ProfHacker, Julie Meloni wrote about how her Droid helped her to be more productive and offered key advice for anyone considering purchasing a new smartphone:

I offer this piece of advice: go to the store and hold it. If the device has so much potential, the only way to tap that potential is to actually use it and be comfortable doing so. If you are uncomfortable with your phone, you won’t be as productive. It has to feel right.

It was almost a year ago that Amy wrote iPhone or Android? and explained her choice of the latter. In January, Heather explained I Purchased an Android Phone Just Before the iPhone was Announced (and why I don’t regret it).

Apps for Android

A good starting place is Mark’s Five Android Apps I Can’t Live Without and Why — a list he discovered by taking the radical step of performing a hard reset on his Android phone:

After…

May 9, 2011, 3:00 pm

From the Archives: Getting Through the End of Term

By Natalie Houston

Deadlines, committee meetings, and events pile up at the end of the spring semester. Almost everyone on campus, students, staff, and faculty alike, feel the pressure building up over the last weeks. There are papers to write or grade, thesis and dissertation defenses, final meetings of almost every administrative committee or panel, prize competitions to be judged, and graduation ceremonies to be planned, rehearsed, and performed.

It’s a lot. It’s stressful. But somehow or other, the spring term does end and we all get through it.

Depending on your institution’s calendar, your focus right now may either be on surviving these last few days or on closing out your academic term for the summer. Here are some posts from the ProfHacker archives to help.

Getting Through the Grading

Nels explains his grading process (not just the rubrics, but how he comments, what music he listens to…

April 11, 2011, 3:00 pm

From the Archives: Some Notes on Notes

By Natalie Houston

By and large, academics tend to make, take, and share notes: we mark up our books, compulsively annotate our own and other people’s writing, and jot down ideas wherever they occur to us. Inveterate note-takers find the simple act of writing notes itself is helpful, as Kathleen suggests in her note from an Evernote convert:

Notes are the key to remembering, for me. Or, more precisely: the act of taking notes is the key to remembering. Something about the act of taking notes helps make an idea, or an issue, or a plan more real to me.

Here are some posts from the ProfHacker archives about tools and strategies for taking notes and organizing them afterwards.

Note-Taking Tools

Guest author Shawn Miller explains Evernote’s features and offers good examples of how he uses it to jumpstart his writing process and corral different kinds of information. Evernote offers a web-based service …

March 14, 2011, 3:00 pm

From the Archives: Apple Edition

By Natalie Houston

Since several people on the ProfHacker team are regular users of Apple software and products, it’s no surprise that we’ve published a few related posts.

Software
Ethan’s 5 Lecturecasting Tools I Can’t Live Without includes discussions of Camtasia:Mac and Garageband. Guest author Cory Bohon’s Screencasting 101 focuses on Mac software like ScreenFlow and QuickTime.

Amy wrote about using DevonThink and WordPress together to search her draft writing alongside her research database. Ryan’s post on organizing and annotating PDFs focuses on Mac software like Preview, Skim, and DevonThink. Ryan’s Scrivener, Scrivening, Scriverastic explains in detail how he uses Scrivener to compose documents,

Ryan explained in Putting the THINGS in GTD how he organizes his life and information stream with the software Things.

iPod
Heather wrote about Recording Lectures with an iPod Touch. Jason…

February 14, 2011, 3:00 pm

From the Archives: On Blogging

By Natalie Houston

It’s probably no accident that we here at ProfHacker have written quite a bit about blogs. Several of us first met (virtually, that is) several years ago through the then-flourishing academic blogosphere; many of us currently maintain personal or professional blogs today; and several of us use blogs in various ways in our teaching.

We believe in blogging’s potential for reaching interested readers, building community, and fostering new kinds of creative collaborations. As a collaborative blog site, ProfHacker itself, both in its earliest form and as it resides here at the Chronicle, is committed to this vision of the medium’s promise and possibilities.

Why we blog
Amy’s discussion of how she got involved with Team ProfHacker and Julie’s discussion of her graduate school experience both demonstrate how academic blogging can facilitate connections outside your own institution, field…

January 17, 2011, 3:00 pm

From the Archives: 11 for ’11

By Natalie Houston

Happy New Year!

Here are 11 tips from the ProfHacker archives to help make 2011 a great year!

Figure out what worked well last semester and what you want to change this term.
Set aside the first half hour of the morning for your highest priority tasks.
Write 750 words each day.
Check out 11 Fast Syllabus Hacks.
Stock up on non-perishable items at the grocery store.
Improve meetings in your department or college.
Exercise.
Track your finances.
Go offline for 36 hours.
Breathe.
Don’t get stressed out by productivity tips such as these!

[CC licensed image by flickr user mscaprikell ]

Do you have another favorite tip from our archives? let us know in the comments!

November 29, 2010, 3:00 pm

From the Archives: A Picture is Worth…

By Natalie Houston

Here at ProfHacker, we’ve long believed in the power of images to engage, amuse, and instruct. In addition to the wide-ranging images attached to each post, we’ve written a few words about pictures, too.

To begin at the beginning: in Where all the Purty Pictures Come From: Flickr + Creative Commons Jason explains the basics of using Flickr and how its advanced search features can limit your results to Creative-Commons licensed items. Julie provided a more in-depth look at what that license entails in Using Creative Commons Licensed Material in Your Classroom. And don’t forget to check out the ProfHacker photo pool on Flickr.

(more…)

November 15, 2010, 3:00 pm

From the Archives: Take a Break

By Natalie Houston

All work and no play makes Prof Hacker a dull prof. And you don’t have to wait until the semester ends, either. Indeed, even short high-quality breaks have been shown to increase productivity and creativity. So, here are some suggestions from the ProfHacker archives on how, when, and why to take a break.

Get Some Physical Activity

As guest author Meagan Timney notes in her oft-cited Nurturing the Mind-Body Connection, “physical exercise increases brain function,” “exercise increases serotonin and dopamine production in the brain,” and “physical activity is fun.” Even a short break for a walk around your campus or neighborhood can loosen up your muscles and your mind so that you can return to your desk refreshed.

Erin wrote about the ways that walking her dog has helped her be more active: