Author Archives: Amy Cavender

Sabbatical Diary: Reflections on the First Semester

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ReflectionAs regular readers know, I’m on sabbatical this year, and spending the time as a non-degree student in Loyola University Chicago’s MA program in Digital Humanities.

Being a student again (it’s been a very long time!) has been a great experience. I’ve learned a lot and have some new things to think about for when I return to Saint Mary’s.

Here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve gained from the first semester:

  • a better understanding of and appreciation for the scope and methods of the digital humanities
  • an introductory understanding of computing (not just as an end user)
  • an introduction to some of the potential legal issues surrounding digital work

I’ve also had the chance to rekindle a desire to read more of the works of Vacláv Havel, who warranted passing mention in my dissertation. Though I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll actually follow up on that desire — and if so, what I’ll do with the fruits of my reading — I’m grateful that the interest has been stirred up again. I’m also glad that I can easily imagine ways to bring DH methods to bear on the study of Havel’s works.

Time will tell what the second semester brings. . .

If you’ve had a sabbatical, what was your experience of it? Did it rekindle any forgotten interests, or generate some new ones?

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by proudfoott]

A Quick Look at Penultimate 4

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PenultimateEvernote released Penultimate 4 late last week. (Unfortunately, it’s only available for iOS 6 at the moment, though support for iOS 5 is expected in the next update. Penultimate is currently not available for Android, though they’re apparently working on that.)

Heather and Ethan have mentioned Penultimate in this space before, and we’ve spilled a lot of digital ink over Evernote itself.

There are two major features to this release of Penultimate:

  • Automatic synchronization with Evernote (to which the user must deliberately opt in; it isn’t forced) and
  • Handwriting recognition within the application itself, not just within Evernote (though this feature does require Evernote sync).

The app is free, so it’s definitely worth checking out. As I experimented with it, though, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t going to work well for me.

The automatic synchronization with Evernote works flawlessly. If you make quick freehand sketches or take short handwritten notes that you want to be searchable and backed up automatically, Penultimate may be just what you’re looking for (and you certainly can’t beat the price tag).

In my case, the problem is that I take lengthy notes that are handwritten — quite a lot of them. Handwriting recognition seems to work best (at least in my experience) with printed letters. I write longhand. My penmanship is decent, but Evernote doesn’t seem to recognize it very well. Handwriting recognition, though nice, isn’t an essential for me, so that in itself isn’t a deal-breaker. But there are two other difficulties that mean Penultimate isn’t the app for me to use on a regular basis:

  • The application doesn’t have continuous scrolling. To add a new page when the current one is full, you need to tap the lower right corner (or upper right, if you’ve moved the toolbar to the top of the page — which I’d recommend doing to avoid accidentally selecting tools you don’t want while you’re writing).
  • There’s no zoom/focus that enables you to write normally in a window at the bottom of the screen, while what you write appears in smaller form above the area where you’re actually writing (Notes Plus and Notability both have this feature; neither is free, but neither is high-priced, either). It makes writing more difficult than it needs to be, and results in filling each page very quickly.

Penultimate may not be particularly useful for me, but for other usage scenarios it may work very well. So let us know in the comments: What kinds of things do (or would) you use an application like Penultimate for? If you’ve tried it, how well did it work for you? If you’ve tried other applications, what did you think of them?

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by deburca]

Updates to Evernote

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Elephant slide

That members of the team here at ProfHacker are fans of Evernote is hardly a secret; we’ve mentioned it on numerous occasions. It’s very useful for storing and searching whatever information you want to keep track of, and it syncs across platforms, so all your notes are available to you, no matter what device you’re using.

Within the last few weeks, Evernote has released updates to the Mac and iOS versions of its client software. I won’t bore you with a list of the features; the posts linked in this paragraph (with their accompanying videos) provide a good overview for those who want it.

What I’d like to do instead is point out two of the new features that I find useful for my own work:

  • The new sidebar in the Mac version. I have a lot of notebooks, and a lot of tags, but there are only a few that I use with any great frequency. The ability to add them to the sidebar as shortcuts makes it very easy to get to them very quickly—even more quickly than using the search function. Being able to show or hide the Notebooks list, and otherwise customize the sidebar, is a nice touch. (An aside: the Atlas view available from the sidebar is interesting. I don’t expect I’ll use it much, but I can see it being very useful for someone who travels a lot.)
  • The tabbed view in the iOS version. This way of viewing one’s content makes it easy to find things quickly by notebook, tag, or place. That’s good, because while the search function is there in the iOS app, it isn’t particularly easy to find (you have to pull down on the grey bar between the green header and the notes list—but it’s not obvious, nor, I suspect, all that easy for someone with large thumbs). The app functions quickly and smoothly, even on an aging iPhone 3GS.

The Mac version runs on 10.6.6 and above; for the mobile version, you’ll need to be running at least iOS 5.0.

Have you given either of these new versions a try? If so, let us know what you think of them in the comments.


[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by sabotrax]

A Quick Look at Pocket for Mac

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Reading BunnyWe’ve all had it happen: while browsing the web, we come across something really interesting. Or someone in our Twitter stream posts a link to an intriguing article. The problem is, we don’t have time to read it just then. But we don’t want to forget about it, and we’d like to have a nicely-formatted version to come back to.

Fortunately, there are services like Instapaper and Pocket (formerly called Read it Later, which Brian first wrote about a few years ago) to help us keep track of those links.

Lincoln updated us on Read it Later in April, when it rebranded itself as Pocket. It’s been available for mobile devices and as a web app for some time; toward the end of October, a native Mac app was released.

I’ve been using the iOS client for a while and liked it, so I thought I’d give the new Mac app a try. (I’d previously been using the now discontinued Read Later, whose developer worked with Pocket to develop the new app.)

Thus far, I like the Mac app—a lot. It has the same clean, attractive interface iOS users will be familiar with, but takes advantage of the Mac’s screen size to allow you to view an article and the article list simultaneously:

Pocket

(I think it would be a nice touch if Pocket would add this feature for the iPad in landscape mode.)

As you’d expect, it’s easy to switch between your current articles, favorites, and archive. As with the iOS app, it’s easy to share articles via Twitter, Facebook, Buffer, or email. It’s also possible to send articles to your Evernote account. That last feature is really handy for me, since one of the (many) things I use Evernote for is to save articles that I want to keep, but that I don’t think belong in my Zotero library.

Thus far, I’m impressed.

What about you? If you’ve tried Pocket’s Mac client, what do you think of it? If you use a different client that you like—whether for Pocket or a similar service—let us know about it in the comments!

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by toms]

Sabbatical Diary: The Light Goes On

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ItworksIn one of my classes recently, we started getting some hands-on experience with PHP programming. I was happy enough about my first (very simple) script actually working that I tweeted about it. After class, I got to thinking about whether I could extend what we’d learned that evening and write a different (though very basic) script. When I had some time a few days later, I did a little searching for some information I needed, then gave it a try.

To my surprise and delight, it worked. That fact left me grinning the rest of the evening.

It also left me pondering how I might help my students have that same kind of “aha!” experience. I’d like my students—at least occasionally!—to have the satisfaction of learning something new and interesting, and really knowing that they’ve learned it. I’m in an enviable position at the moment: I’m in the class in question specifically because I want to learn what’s being taught in it. My students don’t always have the luxury of being in my particular class because they’ve chosen it (sometimes they have, but often they’re there because the course fulfills a general education requirement, or is required for the major, or fits their schedule, or . . . ).

Even in such a situation, though, I think it’s possible to help students have the kind of experience that I did. One way may be to give students a greater voice in determining what we learn in a course. Students are already involved in choosing the topics we study in my 100-level general education course, but I’ll be looking for ways to incorporate more student input even in courses where I have to be more directive about the syllabus.

Do you have other ideas to share? If so, please add them in the comments.

 

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by pdinnen]