Now that the time for me to start teaching again is drawing nigh, I'm reading everything I come across with an eye toward future lectures. I have a habit of inundating my students with examples of everything I teach -- "Oh, and here's a news story that illustrates this phenomenon;" "Did any of you see the episode of that television sitcom in which x occured? This is what I'm talking about," etc. My lectures are very multimedia, just because I'm always coming across things I want to share with my students.
Problem is, I never really settled on an efficient means of keeping track of these examples when I come across them. My current (might I add inefficient?) method is to star the items in Google Reader when I see them. Then, for a while I was saving them to Delicious. Then I decided I liked Diigo better. Then I started using Evernote. And I briefly fiddled with Zotero. Sometimes I just blog them. Here lately, I've just been posting them all to Facebook (pity my poor Facebook friends who are not in academia - my contribution to their newsfeed must make them feel like they're taking a sociology class over Facebook).
Why just throw all my examples on Facebook? Because it's quick and easy. It will be cumbersome to retrieve all of them later, but that's beside the point. I want to capture these media morsels before I forget they exist. Those other sites can be quick and easy capturing tools--if you're on your home computer and have the fancy browser add-ons, Firefox extensions, and desktop publication tools and whatnot set up. But if I'm not on my personal computer, then I find it a lot more cumbersome.
So, I now have a host of examples, strewn about the web. I need to pick a method and stick with it. But which one? Any bright ideas, oh internet?
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Keeping Track of Your Examples for Teaching
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While I think if you stuck with Diigo it would be the most flexible, you might try Twine.
Ironically, I thought I hadn't heard of Twine, so I checked it out. Then I pulled up my neglected Diigo account, and lo - the last thing I bookmarked was Twine (back in February). Go figure.
I'm not adverse to using something I've already tried. I just need to figure out a way to make it stick...
No, but I am starring this in my Reader in case someone gives you a good answer:).
What would be nice is if something were integrated right into Google reader. So, you can star something, add a comment, and tag it or send it to a list.
Hmmm...you kind of can do that. You can add comments to things you share, then add tags....you can search your shared or starred items, or search by tag, pull up anything with a particular tag...I suppose if you had certain tags that were only used for shared/starred items, and not folder names, it could work...
The problem with Google reader is that everything would have to originate in you reader feeds. If you are sent a link or find one outside of reader you can't use it.
If you have a Gmail account you can always send a note to yourself, set up a filter and then have it.
To send a note to yourself address it to yourgmailaccount+note@gmail.com.
Then you can filter on any email from that address.
This way it does not mess with your email but still gets in.
Actually, that's not true. However, you run into the same problem of needing to be on your personal computer, since it requires a special bookmarklet.
The Gmail note idea is good for when away from home computer...
These ideas are probably all better than my "bookmark it into my 'Teaching' folder" method, though for news articles my "save a PDF in the folder designated for future class examples" works pretty well (presuming I remember that I have a relevant article when preparing for class). I just switched to Google Reader from Outlook today so I'll have to look into the starring and noting functions.
If you're a Google Reader user, you might also want to try Feedly, a Firefox extension that adds nice sharing capabilities (and a more appealing UI) to your Google Reader content. Of course, as with the GR bookmarklet, it doesn't do you any good when you're not on your own computer. But that's what a memory stick with Firefox portable is for!
have you considered using delicious.com? It's the method I use for exactly what you're doing, and it works pretty well.
Not especially user-friendly at the outset, it's effectively a social bookmarking site. try delicious.com/help/tools. And you can use your yahoo login (if you have one/would like to).
For those who use Diigo, there is a "sociology" group, though it has not been especially active.
@eric: Thanks for the feedly reference. I currently use igoogle, but feedly looks potentially better. I'll have to try it and see...
@peter: I have tried delicious.com. I just couldn't get past the user-unfriendliness. Or the lack of aesthetic sensibilities, rather. What I do like about delicious that I haven't really found elsewhere is the ability to have anything you save automatically be digested as a blog post, rather than as a widget in the sidebar. Since I do use a feedreader, I rarely visit people's sites, and therefore don't see their widget updates.
You should use DevonThink. ( ^ _ ^ )
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