Tips, tutorials, and commentary on pedagogy, productivity, and technology in higher education.

Author Archives: Ethan Watrall

5 Easy Steps (and One Completely Crazy Step) for Surviving a Grant Proposal

February 8, 2010 in How-To, Productivity by Ethan Watrall

Now, to be clear, these strategies aren't about writing a successful grant, they are about managing the grant proposal process so that you don't end up in a mental institution. Because, and let's be completely honest here, successful grants are as much about organizing and managing the actual process as they are about the proposal itself.

Tips & Tricks for Effective Lecturecasting

January 25, 2010 in How-To, Productivity by Ethan Watrall

Lecturecasting is all the rage these days. And whether you are lecturecasting specifically for a class (either online, face-to-face, or any combination thereof), or are putting your lectures out to the wider public on a platform such as iTunes U, it takes a lot of work to get your lecturecasts to the point where they are effective vehicles for your content.

ProfHacker Holiday Gift Guide

December 17, 2009 in ProfHacker by Ethan Watrall

What a perfect time of year for us each to share an item or two...or three or four...off of our own holiday wish lists--or one or two items that we already own and get a lot of use out of--in the hopes that they might help all of you, our loyal readers, in your profhacking endeavors of 2010 and beyond.

End of Semester Checklist

December 17, 2009 in Life, Productivity by Ethan Watrall

The end of the semester is the best time to do one or two little things that will have a big impact down the line, either in the long term or the short term. So, here are a few items on my end-of-the-semester checklist.

Podcasting Your Lectures 101: Editing

October 8, 2009 in ProfHacker 101 by Ethan Watrall

Last time around in this here little series about podcasting your lecture, we covered the first step in the process: recording (you can read the article here). This time around, we’re going to have a look at what you do after you’ve got your raw audio recorded - the editing process.

Podcasting Your Lectures 101: Recording

September 24, 2009 in ProfHacker 101 by Ethan Watrall
There are lots of reasons why you might want to podcast your lectures.  You might be teaching an online class or providing supplementary lecture material for students in one of your regular (face-to-face) classes.  Or, even better, maybe you are embracing the open courseware movement, and making your course material available to people both inside [...]

What To Do When Your Course Management System Goes Down

September 15, 2009 in Pedagogy, Productivity by Ethan Watrall

What do you do if your university's course management system goes down? Run around, waving your hands in the air like its the zombie apocalypse? No! If you stay calm, cool, and collected (and check out the suggestions in this post), you will have no problem either preparing for or mitigating the damage caused by a protracted outage of your course management system.

Finding the Best WordPress Themes for your Academic Needs

August 27, 2009 in How-To by Ethan Watrall
For a number of years, WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org) has been enjoyed increasing attention in the academic community.  It is open source, has an incredibly easy install process (especially for a server side app), is remarkably flexible, and has a great development community behind it.  Part of the allure of WordPress is that it has a very [...]

Challenging the Presentation Paradigm: Bee Docs Timeline

August 27, 2009 in Pedagogy, ProfHacker 101, Reviews by Ethan Watrall

A couple of weeks ago, Prof. Hacker kicked off a series called "Challenging the Presentation Paradigm" with a look at Prezi. This week, we're going to look at Bee Docs Timeline as an alternative (or a supplement) to presenting lecture content with a more traditional, linear slide program (such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote).

Challenging the Presentation Paradigm: Prezi

August 19, 2009 in Pedagogy, ProfHacker 101, Reviews by Ethan Watrall
With the semester creeping closer and closer and many of us frantically prepping new classes (or doing vital updates to existing classes), the topic of lecture slides invariably crops up.  Are my slides really that useful to my students, or are they just a crutch for me? Should I use my old slides (with necessary [...]

Backing up Your Social Network

August 14, 2009 in How-To by Ethan Watrall
Social network apps and platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have revolutionized the way academics maintain existing social & professional connections, renew those connections, and forge new connections within and across disciplines.  In particular, Twitter has transformed the the ways in which many scholars (especially those in the digital humanities) connect and share ideas.  But [...]