Academic Technology

Digital Tools for Academic Research - John Sidiropoulos

http://www.organognosi.com/ - : Hyperlinks, MediaWiki, DEVONthink, hypertext, Skim, Calibre, Script Debugger

Google API Guide for Automatically Creating Google Homework Sites - Tom Smith

The Academic Librarian - Wayne Bivens

http://blogs.princeton.edu/librarian/category/technology/ - Organizing My Research Life LibX Toolbar. Zotero, Mendeley, Dropbox, Calibre,

Why I Ignore Gurus, Sherpas, Ninjas, Mavens, and Other Sages

Josh Penman's KM System - Claremont / KnowledgeWorkx

As yet unpublished work consisting of: Project Maps in Google Drawings, embedded in a Google Site template with a drop-down list menubar (mouse over one of the tabs above).

  • Advantages compared to MediaWiki:

      1. Fewer scary words (like MAMP, WAMP, LAMP)

      2. More WYSIWYG (though not completely so)

    1. Consumer-friendly

    2. Keyboard Commands for most functions

    3. Close Integration with Google Docs

    4. Copy and Paste rich text while preserving

    5. Auto-Saving pages every 5 minutes or so; Autosaving Google Docs on a per-second scale.

    • Disadvantages compared to MediaWiki:

      • Creating new pages is much more difficult

      • Not Open-Source (Though it does come with a Transferability clause)

A Stab at Evaluating Technology In Response to Bivens' "Gurus & Sherpas"

*Items in bold below should be linked to Definitions in the future

  • Values

    • How much new information does the person have to hold?

      • What types? (Memorization with no hints (Code); Memorization with hints (Cheat Sheets); Spacial memorization (GUI - Dropdowns),

  • Why not coding apart from the natural language we learn in grade-school?

      • Shared resource / Adoption Curve: The more shared something is, the more useful. Even if it is not "optimal"

        • The Context sensitivity of evolved language allows for ambiguity and gaining fuzzy, or "good enough" understandings of what we do.

        • "Good enough" contains the idea that the accuracy of language can be greater for a given task: mores within professions, academic disciplines, etc. all tend towards more specialized definitions and jargon to improve specificity of communication

        • Prediction: shared solutions are a product of:

          • Previous Knowledge / Learning

          • "Intuitiveness" for people (which includes previous knowledge

          • Social learning & teaching systems (are they mostly informal?)

  • Brainstorm for ways to chart "previous Knowledge" - Previous Knowledge seems to trump innovation: look at how Google and Prezi shifted away from new, arguably more functional ways of organizing and creating content towards ways that would be more familiar to MS Office and MS Windows users: are these ways truly more functional, or simply the lowest common denominator, or simply a function of Previous Knowledge? I predict it is the Previous Knowledge, but that there will be lessons about the functionality that need to not be thrown out with the bathwater.

    • Ask people to do tasks at different levels of "expertise" and chart each activity they do; then categorize.

      • Categories are ways to organize information that is pertinent; therefore as life evolves categories will continually shift.