WordPress Export

This is a script I wrote to accompany a short video I created for users of our campus’ WordPress installation, which I set up and managed until it was shut down at the end of January 2021. The video was intended to help users migrate their content prior to the

Some thoughts on Austin Kleon’s -Show Your Work!

Date: September 1, 2021 Tags: reading Some thoughts on Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work! I recently read Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work!. Two passages in particular stood out for me: “…if you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader first.” (Kindle edition, loc. 511)

Adding Google Fonts to a Ghost Theme

If you’ve found a theme you like for your Ghost site, but you want to change the typography to better suit your branding or personal style, you can easily customize your site with Google Fonts. Choosing your font(s) Head over to the Google Fonts page. There are a

An unexpected use for a Raspberry Pi

Several months ago, I purchased a Raspberry Pi. I had three principal uses for it. I wanted to use it as a Plex server. I was also interested in a Homebridge server, to enable some of my smart devices to work together more effectively. Finally, I wanted to see if

A course planning template

A course planning template I’ve been experimenting with Notion on and off for quite a while, and during the Fall 2020 semester I began exploring how I might use it for course planning. Could I use it to see how the various parts of a course fit together as

One year ago…

What a difference a year makes. In mid-February last year, I expressed some doubt to a colleague about my campus’s decision to recall our students from Italy. Don’t misunderstand — I knew that there was a Level 3 travel advisory for Italy at that point, and I would certainly

Paperless Handwritten Feedback

This is a script I wrote to accompany a short video I created for my colleagues a couple of years ago. The video is available on YouTube: I’d like to demonstrate a way of providing handwritten feedback to students in a paperless environment. To provide such feedback, you’ll

Sabbatical Diary- Thinking about Grades

This blog post originally appeared on the ProfHacker blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education on October 4, 2012. This semester, I’m in an enviable position. I get to take courses I’m really enjoying, simply because I want to learn what’s being taught in them. There’s

Collecting Student Work with Google Forms

This blog post originally appeared on the ProfHacker blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education on January 10, 2017. A good number of us here at ProfHacker prefer to avoid paper whenever possible. When I teach my writing course each fall, I have my students use Google Documents so that

Filenames and LaTeX and Pandoc, Oh My!

This blog post originally appeared on the ProfHacker blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education on November 17, 2016. Sometimes it happens: someone sends us a document in Word format, and we’d really rather it was a PDF. The reasons can vary. Maybe we need to post it on