Tag Archives: paperless

November 29, 2012, 8:25 am

Portable Scanning with the Doxie One

While a paperless university remains a fantasy, it’s certainly the case that there has been increased interest in paperless workflows. We’ve had a series of posts on paperless apps and devices here at ProfHacker, and David Sparks’s excellent e-book, Paperless galvanized many workflow discussions. (A recent good one is Chris Holscher‘s.)

One of the devices we looked at last year is the Doxie Go, a portable scanner by Apparent that tries to unbundle scanning from computers. You could scan anywhere, saving the scans either to internal memory or to an SD card, and then sync later. You could even use an Eye-Fi card to sync wirelessly to your computer. I liked the device, but Konrad, who travels to archives a bit more than I do, didn’t like the fact that the device doesn’t work while it’s charging.

This year, Apparent is back with a new model of Doxie Scanner: the Doxie One, which…

September 5, 2012, 11:00 am

Paperless Promotion and Tenure Process?

By George Williams

Anyone who works in higher education here in the second decade of the 21st century knows that the late-20th-century idea of the “paperless office” is still a long way from reality. In particular, whenever materials need to be reviewed for an award or for promotion & tenure, print is still the medium by which those materials need to be shared–on many campuses, not all of them. Having had to generate these kinds of materials a number of different times, I can testify to the expense and tedium that characterizes the process: buying the right quality 3-ring-binders, punching holes in all of my documents, buying divider sheets and carefully adding labels to them, printing and printing and printing and printing… Replacing the toner cartridge, then printing and printing and printing and printing…

And now that I’m on a few peer review committees, I’m seeing things from the other side:…

June 19, 2012, 8:00 am

Grading with Voice on an iPad

By Prof. Hacker

[This is a guest post by Doug Ward, an associate professor of journalism and the Budig Professor of Writing at the University of Kansas. You can find him online at www.kuediting.com and www.journalismtech.com, and follow him on Twitter @kuediting. Doug's previous posts have looked at finding iOS apps, what to do if your Twitter account is hacked, using iPads in the classroom (one, two) and engaging students with music.--@jbj]

One of the frustrating things I found in teaching online last semester was the lack of direct contact with students. The class felt impersonal, despite my efforts to give it life.

I found that especially frustrating when I graded assignments. The feedback seemed cold and distant, even as I as I tried to point out strong areas of writing and multimedia projects.

I overcame this in part by using my iPad to add audio comments to grading. This was a…

December 12, 2011, 8:00 am

The Doxie Go Lets You Scan Anywhere

By Jason B. Jones

Decades into the paperless revolution, higher education continues to be awash in paper. Student assignments, accessibility notices, memos from HR, reports from publishers–over the course of a semester, the amount of paper that can accumulate is well and truly astonishing. (The ubiquity of printers probably doesn’t help matters, either.)

Scanners can help, but they often take up valuable space, or have clunky software that makes you hate them a little, or are expensive. Even portable scanners typically require a laptop, meaning that it’s Yet. Another. Thing. to lug around campus, with another cord to keep track of.

The Doxie Go scanner (from Apparent) addresses many of these issues, in a stylish, ultra-portable form factor.

(more…)

August 3, 2011, 8:00 am

Using DocScanner to Scan on the Go

By Prof. Hacker

[This post is by Lincoln Mullen, a PhD student at Brandeis University and a historian of religion and early America. Lincoln is ProfHacker's newest contributor; follow him on Twitter at @lincolnmullen.--@jbj]

If you’re an academic, a lot of paper goes through your hands: books, journals, notes, committee reports, tests, papers. Previous ProfHacker posts have suggested ways you can reduce the amount of paper documents that you or your students create. Mark told us how he went paperless at a conference and how he runs a paperless classroom. Natalie explained how she does paperless grading. Heather wrote about digitizing lab submissions. And Jason even pointed out how going paperless can limit the spread of disease.

But a lot of the paper that passes through my hands I don’t create. It’s given to me by other people, usually with some obligation attached. Whatever I can, I recycle …

April 13, 2011, 3:00 pm

HelloFax Makes Faxing Painless (Even for Profs. Hacker)

By Ryan Cordell

The very idea of faxing a document seems outdated to me. I suspect that many ProfHacker readers wouldn’t willingly fax something were there any option to submit it electronically. Nevertheless, I find myself needing a fax machine several times a year. What’s more, the things that must be faxed are, inevitably, essential documents: often tied to my finances or academic records.

So I was thrilled when Lifehacker recently posted (yes, Lifehacker again!) about HelloFax, a service that allows you to fax documents straight from your computer. Once you register for an account with HelloFax, you simply type in the destination fax number, upload your document, sign it electronically (if you want to), and send it. HelloFax sends you an email when the fax is delivered (or if the delivery fails). When you log into HelloFax, you can see the status of all of your faxes, and resend faxes that failed…

March 1, 2011, 3:00 pm

Going Paperless in the Classroom

By Mark Sample

Last week I highlighted a few of the ways I’ve gone paperless at conferences. Continuing on that theme, I want to share a few tips for going paperless in the classroom. Or at least for using less paper in the classroom.

Course Documents

When it comes to syllabi and assignments, it’s a simple matter to distribute these documents to students electronically. Because I use class blogs as the central platform for all of my courses, I simply incorporate these documents directly into the structure of the blog. But it’s also just as easy to distribute them to students as PDFs (through email or Blackboard, for example).

Note that you should check with your institution before you stop distributing paper copies of your syllabus to your students. Up until last year I was required by my university to have paper copies of the syllabus at the beginning of the semester. That rule has changed now, a…