digital voice recorder

olympus dvr CC Hickey 08obviously not a ‘new’ technology, but if I had to name the one techi thing that changed life in my corner  it was the nifty usb recorder I started using five years ago…. what it means in practice is that the linguistically vulnerable student seeking advice about their writing (those using English as an additional language, for example) can instantly get a copy of the consultation (no cables, just pull it apart, stick it in their laptop) which they can listen to repeatedly at their own pace, and thereby  learn so much more than from a single exposure which they may or may not well recall when back at their desk trying to put into practice the pearls of linguistic wisdom showered upon them… their feedback assures me this was the best investment for teaching I ever made…

xmarks

For those of you struggling to juggle your digital life between the home office and computer supplied by the workplace (which may not be your first preference of machine, c’est la vie) is so much easier with…. xmarks – which like Dropbox is an add-on to Firefox. And one of our UOW staff users has found that (unlike Dropbox), adding xmarks to your browser doesn’t seem to require admin – you can do it yourself. And it’s great – because it syncs all your bookmarks. So you can have your essential websites at your finger-tips no matter where you’re working today. http://www.xmarks.com/

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