Academic Services

I first stumbled upon Wordle about a month ago and planned to do a write-up on it to see if anyone out there was interested in this type of textual analysis.  Last week though Prof. Hacker, one of my favorite blogs and one I've referenced here before, posted part one of two on Using Wordle in the Classroom.  There's some great analysis accompanied by incredibly helpful how-to instructions.  Today I'm simply going to refer you to their post.  So have a look if you like, and let us know how you might use this either now of in the future.

How many times have you asked, "Where in the world is that?" Or "If only I could show you a map, this story would make much more sense."  Let's face it, maps are valuable commodities, and the print maps in the back of the Bible are great but seldom enough, especially if you're looking to do a presentation.  Enter Bible Mapper.  It's free, it's customizable to locations and time periods, it's free, provides various terrain options, and oh, it's FREE!  The only negative is that it's a Windows only program; sorry Mac folks.  So when you want to incorporate maps to your paper, lesson, lecture, whatever, remember Bible Mapper.  Version 3 remains completely free, and version 4 offers some advanced features for a nominal fee.

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On Wiggio, you can share and edit files, manage a group calendar, poll your group, post links, set up conference calls, chat online and send mass text, voice and email messages to your group members.  Each group member can define how they want to keep informed of group activity, all in one simple and free tool - not five different tools for each function.

It is easy to add people to your group by pulling them in from your email or Facebook contacts.  They never need to sign up.  As soon as you add, you can start communicating.  You can text message and email to your group, and receive group communications to your cell phone, email and Facbook.

Collaboration is increasingly the name of the game in academia.  The question is not "should we collaborate on this project?" but rather, "How in the world do we effectively work together on this endeavor?"  It's a fair question.  The old rigmarole of sending documents as attachments via email is a bit outdated and I find far too tedious.  Tools like Google Documents have improved this process a great deal but remain imperfect and limited.  Enter Dropbox.  It's primary purpose is to sync files across computers, so you can easily sync your home and work computers without having to setup a network.  But it also has a share feature where you choose who else can view that folder, which allows you to share your work with a group of colleagues leading to a more seamless interactive process.  Your files are also available online giving you access to them anywhere you can hop on the web.  Like a lot of new tools, it's free to a point before the costs kick-in.  The free version allows you to store up to 2GB.  Dropbox Pro 50 gives you 50GB of space at $9.99/month, and Pro 100 gives you 100 GB of space at $19.99/month.  I think this is quite a nifty tool and will prove to be time saver.

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I'm always on the look-out for new tools to improve the research and writing in hopes of becoming more efficient.  What I like all the more is when someone else from PTS shares a new tool with me, which happened last Friday thanks to Blair Bertrand, a PhD student and Graduate Assistant in Dr. Gordon Mikoski's EF3366 Curriculum and Methods of Teaching.  The tool is called Anki, "a spaced repetition system (SRS).  It helps you remember things by intelligently scheduling flashcards, so that you can learn a lot of information with a minimum amount of effort."  You have the option to download pre-existing "decks" (there are a couple for Biblical Hebrew and Greek already) or create your own (my personal favorite!).  This tool can be used for more than purely academic pursuits as you can upload images - good for you art historians out there and for learning new faces when you take a new position with lots of new people.  Anki can also sync with a mobile phone that has internet service, so you can take your flash cards anywhere.  It is free and open source, but you can donate to the project if you wish.  I'm not saying you'll never purchase a pack of flash cards again, but I know I could have certainly benefited from Anki in the past.  Thanks Blair!

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The Chronicle of Higher Education's Tech Therapy team hosts an ongoing series of discussions on issues relating to technology and higher ed.  In the most recent audio file, the Tech Therapists discuss the use of incentives that some colleges and universities have used to get professors to experiment and adopt technology in their teaching and research.  They speak with Marsha Marinich, an adjunct professor in the business school at Marymount University, and John McFadden, retired chief information officer at Loyola University Maryland. 

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I just finished a brief presentation to the PhD students during lunch and thought I should share one of the tools I highlighted.  There's a lot of new software out there, and while it's really hard to keep up with all of it, one to keep an eye on is Mendeley.  It's a great tool to manage and share research papers and increases the likelihood of online collaboration between scholars.  It's being sold as a Last.fm for research and does a marvelous job organizing and handling PDF's.  It's important to note that there are some pretty big guns at Mendeley including Stefan Glaenzer, previously the chairman at Last.fm befire it was sold to CBS, so it appears to have some lasting power.  This seems to be a great team of talented thinkers, software engineers, entrepreneurs, and academics.

Mendeley is geared more towards the sciences for now but there are a number of humanities scholars using it, too.  It also comes with some nifty citation management features (Windows only for now; Mac tools are currently being developed), although these are somewhat lacking compared to Zotero, EndNote, and others.  Regardless, Mendeley is still quite young and regularly improving.  It's currently in beta and is free (they will eventually also a premium features for a reasonable price) so take a look and share your thoughts.  Any chance this can make your academic pursuits easier?

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To commemorate the week that is wrapping up, it seems fitting to address the question, "What do you read?" And by this I am specifically referring to blogs (call them online resources if that word makes your stomach queasy) with a technology and education bent. Frankly, there is a lot our there, and at times it can be overwhelming to narrow it down to a few good sites to follow. So here are three that I think are worth the effort.

Prof Hacker - This is led by a couple English professors and focuses on pedagogy, tutorials, productivity, and technology. It's fairly new (official launch was only last month), has a large following, and covers a wide array of topics.

AcademHack - The manifesto says it all, "Tech should make teaching easier and more effective, not harder and more frustrating." By chronicling the journey of an academic using technology to further teaching and scholarship, this blog is remarkably practical in nature and can benefit students and faculty.

The Wired Campus - A blog from The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired is a great source for technology news as it impacts higher education. While it primarily targets faculty and administrators, Wired is useful to anyone interested in keeping up with the academic and technology landscape.

Maybe you'll find one or two of those interesting. So......what do you read?

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Just an early heads-up that the Seminary's Blackboard system will be moving to the new Version 9 next academic year (AY 2010-11). The new version will feature a new, customizable user interface, drag-and-drop functionality, contextual menus, and lots more. Check out a product overview.

Needless to say, you will be hearing much more about this in the coming months!

Image from Flicr user Rainer Ebert / CC licensed.

I'm leading a BibleWorks workshop on Thursday and thought it might be helpful to show one specific task BibleWorks can do.  (There are still a few seats available if you're interested.) A recent post in a user forum requested how to find all the Hebrew verbs that occur in the niphal but not the qal. If you're an Accordance user, refer to David Lang’s excellent post on this very topic from a while back.

I saw this and then wanted to make sure that BibleWorks users among us could perform the same task.  If you’ve never used the Word List Manager (WLM), then this will be a great introduction.  Go to Tools > Analyzing the text > World List Manager.  The WLM will appear in a new window form where we will compose our lists.  In the Main Word List, select Load or Generate Word List.  Use the WTM, load words from the WTM, and construct your filter as *@vn* (which means all words tagged as a verb in the niphal stem as any part of speech).  BibleWorks will generate your list once you click Create list.

Now we’ll create a Secondary Word List with all the qal verbs by changing the filter option to *@vq*. 

By now we’ve created two word lists - one of the all the niphal verbs and one of the qal verbs. 

Of course the challenge is to cross check these words and see what remains.  The default setting for the list is to appear in order of frequency (highest to lowest), but I find it more helpful to arrange the lists alphabetically.  To do this, select Sort alphabetically from the Sort menu bar.  Now from Select, click Select words not common to both lists.  This will highlight all the words in the niphal column that do not appear in the qal form, and all the words in the qal column that do not appear in the niphal column.  To copy those words, go to Edit > Copy selected items to clipboard.  Paste this list wherever you wish and now begin the real work of analyzing.

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