By George Williams. Like many blogs, ProfHacker runs on software called WordPress, and we’ve written many posts over the years about this software. WordPress is a great tool for creating a variety of different kinds of digital resources. An important issue to consider when creating a digital resource is how accessible it is to a diversity of users — including, but not limited to, people with disabilities. (For a consideration of the various reasons why, read “Why: The Case for Web Accessibility.”) However, if you’re not especially skilled in what might seem like highly technical web design requirements, the issue of accessibility can seem overwhelming. Fortunately, the WP Accessibility plugin — developed by Joe Dolson — can help non-expert blog owners correct a variety of technical accessibility issues within many WordPress themes. More...

By Jennifer Polk - From PhD to Life. I had a great notetaking and project management system when I was working on my Master’s thesis (on Canadians in revolutionary Russia). I used a free program called Scribe, which was developed for historians at George Washington’s Center for History and New Media. The program wasn’t particularly user-friendly, but with time and patience, I made it work well for me. All my research notes went into the program, including notes I wrote by hand in the archives or library and then later typed up. Doing this meant I could tag each note with keywords, and that meant I could find anything I needed. More...

By John Warner. Thanks to Twitter, if you screw up these days, you’re going to hear about it.
It happened to me a year and a half ago when, as editor at large of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, I helped initiate a “comic contest.” The idea was patterned on our longstanding and successful columnist contest, through which we add new contributing writers to our stable each year. Many of those writers have gone on to bigger and better things like book and television deals, and I figured the same would work for comics. Read more...

By Joshua Kim. Last week I had the opportunity to spend the day in our nation’s capital, hanging out with higher ed types from across academia, business and government. The gathering was an Education Datapalooza, organized by officials from the White House and the Department of Education. The idea of a Datapalooza is pretty cool. The administration uses its power of convening to bring together people from higher ed, startups, venture firms, publishers, foundations, and government to make commitments to collaborate on tech projects and initiatives. Read more...

By Joshua Kim. Over the past couple of months I’ve been spending some quality time with Microsoft’s tablet / laptop combo, the Surface Pro. The Surface Pro was sent to me by Cameron Evans, Microsoft’s CTO for Education. Cameron is an executive, technologist, educator, and leader whom I greatly respect for both his passion to improve education and his knowledge of our edtech ecosystem. Read more...

Par L'Atelier de l'Emploi. Le numérique peut être un élément décisif de l'inversion de la courbe du chômage : c'est le message qu'a voulu porter le ministre du Travail, Michel Sapin, à l'heure de présenter la stratégie numérique du gouvernement pour 2014. En ligne de mire : des outils numérique pour les politiques d'emploi ainsi que, surtout, l'anticipation des besoins en compétences et la formation. 
En annonçant la préparation d’un nouvel acte de la feuille de route numérique du gouvernement, le ministre du Travail, Michel Sapin, a affiché une certitude : ce ne sont pas les infrastructures qui créent de la valeur, mais les usages et les compétences. Suite...

By Eric Hoover. The Common Application’s Board of Directors has hired a consulting firm to conduct a “complete and expeditious review” of the organization’s structure and technology, according to emails the board recently sent to members. As Nancy Griesemer, an independent college counselor and blogger, first reported on Monday, the board held an “off-cycle” meeting in December to discuss the technical problems that have dogged the revamped online application since last summer. More...