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TOW: Sharing a work space using Office 365 Groups
Assigned to a staff or faculty committee that needs to produce collaborative documents? Tired of emailing competing versions of files back and forth? One strategy is to start using the power of Microsoft’s Office 365 Groups. Groups creates a workspace where you can set up meetings for your committee using the Outlook calendar, monitor a shared discussion board, and perhaps most importantly, collaborate on shared documents in a browser. Groups can be public so that anyone can join, or private by invitation only. Invites can also be sent to non-Trinity collaborators at other institutions. The Groups functionality is part of a suite of apps available through Microsoft Office 365. To…
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ToW: Make Everything More Accessible with SensusAccess
Keeping up with reading is a critical part of college success, and so making sure course materials are available in a variety of accessible formats is important. For example, some faculty and students with low vision use screen readers to navigate the web and read documents. Others need documents in Braille. Anyone can require accommodations at different points–for example, students with concussion often can’t look at a screen, but need to be able to keep up with coursework. To respond to this need, Trinity has subscribed to a software service called SensusAccess, which converts files from less accessible formats into more accessible ones. To take only the handiest example: SensusAccess…
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TOW: Get organized with Evernote
Evernote is a free productivity tool that allows you to gather all of those scraps of paper, to-do lists, Web clippings, notes, etc. and put them in one, searchable online notebook. Notes can be organized by tags, and are stored on the Web, so they will sync between all your devices. You can easily share your notes with others: students, faculty, colleagues at other institutions, and invite them to collaborate on documents if you wish. Potential uses: Collect research notes as you discover articles or Web sites. Evernote will let you take a snapshot of the Web site, file it in a particular notebook, and make a comment for your…
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TOW: Never lose a password again!
We all have a dizzying array of passwords for the Web-based tools we use: Amazon, the bank, your Twitter account, email, your newspaper subscriptions, it’s endless. The passwords we use are the keys to valuable information in our lives, yet too often we fall into bad habits like storing passwords on post-its, or recycling the same password for multiple sites. Fortunately, several companies provide an easy solution to this problem. Password managers keep track of all of your accounts and automatically fill in your credentials when you need to login to a Web site, so that you don’t have to go hunting for that post-it note or rely on your memory!…
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TOW: Adding library articles to your Moodle course
Trinity’s Library provides access to a rich collection of online journal articles and other materials you may want to assign to your students. Most of the databases in which these articles are found provide a handy URL that you can easily plug into your Moodle course. This method of providing course readings can eliminate the hassle of uploading pdf files, and it also leads students directly to the journal database where they can browse further. The terms databases commonly use are Stable URL, Permanent URL, or Permalink. The example below is taken from an article record in JSTOR, which uses the first term. Just copy the URL link, and add it to your Moodle course…