Academic Evolution

The Ultimate PowerPoint Replacement: Prezi

I've heard a lot of arguments about how PowerPoint is the end of civilization as we know it. I use it a lot, and with being able to share presentations on sites like Slideshare, what gives? Well, you owe it to yourself to check out a most creative and enjoyable new mode of presentation called "Prezi." It's a little more work than learning PowerPoint, but even after just an hour of tinkering, I can already tell this is going to be a tool that will help me conceptualize the information better and employ media more interestingly. Here's a quick look at one that I put together. This is a screencast that I talk through (thanks, ScreenJelly) but you might do better to access this Prezi presentation directly so you can try out the navigation tools yourself, or go ahead and check out others' more developed examples at the Prezi Showcase).

Scholarly Communications must be Integrated Into the Cyberinfrastructure

I last spoke about the need for scholarly communications to be syndicated in this series of posts on how scholarly communications must transform. In this post, I discuss the need for scholarship to be integrated into the cyberinfrastructure. 

"Cyberinfrastructure" is a mouthful, but a vital concept today. Scholars, librarians, and all stakeholders in academic knowledge production need to understand the concept of cyberinfrastructure and come to see the generation of scholarship as something participating within and building this emerging structure for learned communication.

Academic Networking with Twitter

Want to use Twitter to connect with other people sharing similar academic or research interests? Here's a 2 1/2 minute screencast in which I briefly explain one method. Can you suggest other ways, too? (By the way, I used the free screen capturing tool, "ScreenJelly" to create this video).