Teaching in Higher Ed

Five favorite iPhone apps for professors

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Iphoneapps

As busy as we faculty all are, it is wonderful having an iPhone to simplify our vocations somewhat. The following five iPhone applications have paid off in spades in terms of time saved and effectiveness gained.

 

 

Remember the Milk: This easy-to-use to do program can be accessed on the internet, on your iPhone application (it syncs), and it integrates with other services you may use such as Twitter and Jott. Start easy with entering tasks and entering due dates. As your skills grow, you can add tags to each task that associate it with specific classes and activity types (such as grading, meetings, and preparing). You can also set it up to text message your iPhone as far in advance of a task being due as you desire. COST: the application is free, but the $25 annual PRO membership is required. Well worth the expense.

 

 

Attendance: I discovered this application by reading about it in PC World. My hopes got quite high, as I thought about keeping attendance in real-time and not letting my sign-in sheets stack up quite so tall on my desk. This application has a slow learning curve and in no time, you’ll have your classes set up and can take roll with ease. I still use a sign-in sheet for the students, but immediately after the class can mark the entire roster as present and then one-by-one change the status of those students who were absent/late. COST: $3. No brainer in terms of time saved.

 

 

WorldCat: Type in an author, title, or category and find library resources nearby. The application uses your current location and when you type in what resource you’re searching for, it lets you know the closest libraries to you that have the item. COST: Free

 

 

Quick Checklists: This application is similar to Remember the Milk in that it tracks things, but it is better used for steps you go through on a frequent basis. Packing for a trip? Getting ready to speak at a conference? Have all the steps you’ll need to take or the things you’ll need to bring stored in a template and check the items off as you complete them. I create checklists for my first class (things I don’t want to forget to me ntion), as well as for the first day of school (until I’m back in the swing of things and remember the materials I’ll need for teaching). COST: $1

 

 

Evernote:This application can be accessed on your computer, on the web, and on your iPhone. It is a note-taking application that allows you to set up different notebooks and to have tags for each note you enter. Tags are similar to putting things in folders, only you can have the same item in multiple folders (if only we could do this with manila file folders without killing trees and taking up more space). My favorite feature on Evernote is the ability to take a picture of a whiteboard drawing that I’ve done. Evernote recognizes the text in photos and makes that content searchable, in addition to the content you’ve typed in. I prefer skipping meeting minutes for more informal meetings and storing the record of our conversations in Evernote. If I ever need to look back for when we discussed a particular issue, I can just type in the search box and it will search my white board verbiage, in addition to the rest of my notes. I don’t even have that good of penmanship and it does a superb job of recognizing the text. COST: Free

 

Let us know what other applications you have found useful as a college professor in the comments.

iPhone App perfect for faculty – take attendance with ease

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I'm getting ready for the new iPhone to [likely] be announced in June, but before then… not a day goes by that I don't think about the current iPhone's usefulness.

Attendance

Check out the Attendance application for the iPhone, which for $2.99 will make your attendance tracking much more streamlined. I still plan on having my students sign in (calling roll seems silly at their age and I teach classes of 45-50 most of the time). After each class, I can quickly update the information electronically and have it accessible on my iPhone anywhere and anytime.

Attendance also lets you email the information to yourself, making it that much easier to get the information into Excel for further number crunching. Each student can have a photo associated with their record, making learning names that much easier. The developer also regularly updates this application and is incredibly open to feedback.

Enjoy getting more efficient with the Attendance application. Let us know what other iPhone apps are helping you get more done.

For students: Five smart ways to manage your money

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Money

You can't watch the news today without some mention of the economic crisis. You may be experiencing financial troubles of your own. Here are five smart ways to manage your money, instead of letting it manage you.

  1. Know where you are. The easiest way to assess where you are is to use technology to help you track your money. We recently switched to the free online service www.mint.com and can't recommend it enough. How do they make their money? By recommending financial products that you would benefit from, based on your current situation (such as offering a credit card with a lower interest rate than what you're paying).
  2. Think about the future. Now that you know where you are, contemplate where you want to be… What are your long-term goals and how much money will it take to get there? CNN has a number of online calculators to help you figure out what it will take to achieve your long-term goals.
  3. Plan for the unexpected. It sounds like an oxymoron. How do you plan for things you aren't expecting? While we don't know whether our emergency will be a car accident, or a leaky toilet, there are always bound to be things that come up that we haven't budgeted for. Experts recommend six to nine months of liquid assets designated for emergencies. If you don't have any emergency funds, start today by putting a little aside at a time and you'll be surprised how quickly it will add up.
  4. Give [up] a little. If you add up how much your daily Starbucks costs, or your lunches out, you'll see that the little things quickly wind up as big expenses. Prioritize your spending and give up a few little things and reap the rewards of savings. Your coffee habit may be costing upwards of $2,000 a year that you could be putting toward meeting your long-term goals.
  5. Re-think what is important. When birthdays and special occassions come along, consider writing a heartfelt letter instead of purchasing a gift. Your words will be much more meaningful than whatever the gift you would buy might symbolize and you can start having deeper relationships that are based on more than traditional exchanges. I've started writing a list of things I'm thankful for about a particular person when it is his or her birthday. My list is as long as the number of years they've been on the earth.

If you only have time for one of the five, get started with www.mint.com. After that, you can come back and tackle two through five, based on what is most relevant to you and your current financial condition.

Let us know what other personal finance tips you have in the comments.

A lifetime of influence

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It is that time in the semester when most college freshmen forget about their professors' feelings (if they ever remembered them at all) and they begin openly discussing how much pain we are all causing in their lives, even if all we're doing is engaging them in dialog in class. They're overwhelmed… exhausted… sleep deprived… and lacking perspective…

I find it encouraging at this point to remember the professors who taught me in college and the impact they still have on me today. I went to Chapman University from 1989 – 1993 and still vividly remember so many of the faculty from my university years.

Drbooth

Dr. Booth is one of those memorable teachers. He just celebrated his 50 year anniversary at Chapman and has stuck in the minds of my parents, who also attended Chapman for their undergraduate years in the late '60s. I wish I could tell you I was a brilliant economics student, but that was hardly the case. I ended up with a C in his class and that was only after getting some help from a roommate and from Dr. Booth, himself.

What I can tell you is that he had an impact on me that goes well beyond the subject of economics.

DISCIPLINE

I remember being scared to death of being late to Dr. Booth's class. He was one of the professors who would lock the door prior to starting class – and if you ended up catching him on a day when he neglected to lock the door and thought you would slip in un-noticed, you were in for an unfortunate surprise.

Despite my lack of economics knowledge, I knew how to get myself places on time, thanks to my Mom's influence. However, there have been many times when I have thought back to the discipline Dr. Booth commanded and that he most likely gave all who encountered him during their college life a gift that went well beyond knowing who Adam Smith is or how supply and demand work together to set prices in perfect competition.

He gave us the gift of self-discipline.

ENCOURAGEMENT

Dr. Booth was not without encouragement, however. I went to see him during his office hours once and remember being really intimidated. He asked me my last name at one point and looked off in the distance for a few minutes. Suddenly, he rose from his chair, walked across the room, and opened a dusty file cabinet that appeared to have been decades old.

His eyes squinted at the old grade book he removed from the cabinet. Then, they lit up and he said, “Ah ha. I thought so… Follow me!”

He took me to a wall full of plaques and awards. Hanging on the wall was a plaque for business students of the year from the 1960s. There in 1967 was my Dad's name: Jim Frazee, hanging on a gold-colored name plate. My Dad never had told me about being awarded such an honor. I'll always be so grateful to Dr. Booth for giving me this glimpse into my Dad's college experience and for showing me how much care was behind his tough exterior. That he remembered my Dad from more than twenty years prior to my coming to Chapman meant so much to me.

He gave us the gift of encouragement

Legacy

I've only been teaching in a university setting for five years now, so I'm not sure the kind of impact I'll have on my students decades after they graduate. However, Dr. Booth gives me the hope that it is possible to have a life-long influence over our students' lives, even if they are quick to remind us at this point in the semester of how much grief we're inflicting on them now.

Thank you Dr. Booth.