English is so tricky!

I’ve had the pleasure of working with a few amazing instructors over the past year. Carl Strange teaches Latin 101 and 102. He writes the best announcements to encourage his students, tell them what’s coming up, and keep them interested in learning more. I’m excerpting part of last week’s announcement, with his permission, because we […]

Mendeley and more

At the Center for Distance Education, we have a reading group. We use Mendeley (https://www.mendeley.com) to corral materials. Even the proudest designer or highest ranking techie needs a how-to. These are my notes because I was so tech-whelmed last week, I did not get into Mendeley to tell staff what I would be covering today. […]

Light reading

Mountains near the Yukon

https://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/133310978/in-college-a-lack-of-rigor-leaves-students-adrift Or light listening… Last week I enjoyed listening to NPR on my laptop, vs light music. What’s the photo got to do with the book? Nothing really. Unless you count a desolate, alone feeling that the first two paragraphs bring to mind. Let’s not fail our youth. Let’s not fail our country.

Passive text

Did you know that passive text reduces the readability of your message? If you find yourself using passive text, and you don’t have a proofreader to help you out (few of us do) you can use MS Word to measure these elements. Find out more: https://corporategeek.info/Measure-Readability-Documents-Emails While I was reading this, readability became the real […]

day 7: tools

knitting hands and mid chest region displayed

Prepping for iTeach I came across beautifully illustrated and narrated examples of embedding video in Skip Via’s ED 329. I especially like the fact that he’s showing how to embed a VoiceThread project (in addition to YouTube) for GoogleSites and Blackboard. Skip Via’s explanation is clear; his use of images very supportive of learning the […]

day 3

Certainly I will not have day 3, day 17, day 293… I’d have to write a script for that. Instead you’ll see a, 2, finally–but only if I’m feeling disjointed. What’s a brand new designer to do? link checking find all the resources she will need to do her job begin collecting work Cross-polinate? Absolutely. […]