Last Revised in February 8, 2011

One of the things people who know me well will tell you is that I am a major Apple geek. If Apple put their logo on a pair of socks, I’d buy them and proceed to tell everyone I know how superior they are to Windows and Linux socks.

In terms of my work in Narrative Inquiry, I wanted to make mention of a couple of the tools I discovered (or discovered new uses for) over the course of the semester. Some of these I used for transcribing interviews, coding and reviewing notes, and outlining and diagramming major themes. Maybe these can help future students who want to use some digital tools in their narrative research.

Scrivener

A powerful application, Scrivener is used by writers for everything from lengthy legal briefs to crafting the great American novel. I’ve used Scrivener for the first pass of almost all of my academic writing since starting my PhD program in 2007. Version 2.0 was recently released and there is a Windows version in Beta as I write this. In my work for this course, Scrivener was an invaluable tool for transcribing audio files and putting together a final transcript.

iAnnotate PDF

I actually started coding my transcript in hard-copy form. What I couldn’t shake was the sense that pulling the codes together at the end was going to be a lot more work than it needed to be. Using my iPad and iAnnotate, I was able to use several colors of highlighter to identify key themes that I identified in the interview. Once the highlighting was complete, I was able to export the highlighted text as a plain text file for further analysis. The plain text file includes data on the color used to highlight each piece of text.

OmniOutliner Pro

Once I had the plain text out of iAnnotate, the next step was to regroup like colors together into some kind of an outline. For years, the “non-pro” version of OmniOutliner was bundled on every Mac. I used it from time to time for class notes and the like, but doing narrative research I discovered it’s real power to import raw .txt files and simplify the process of cleaning it up and getting it in outline form. Not only does OmniOutliner save in its own native file format, it also has the capability to export outlines in the standard OPML format that can be read by other applications.

OmniGraffle Pro

OmniGraffle Pro has the ability to read files that have been formatted in OPML and turn them into visual displays. At first this was just a way for me to see how far I could push my “all electronic” system, but I really liked the way that it looked. I found that it was nice to have a graphical representation of how the coding was looking.

I’m not sure if this will ever be helpful to other narrative researchers considering how to use their Mac to the best of its ability, but I found this to be a great starting point for my work in this class.

UPDATE 2/8/2011: PDF Expert

With a UI that is far superior to iAnnotate’s, PDF Expert only lacks one feature and that is the ability to export highlighted text to a plain text email. That being said, it’s worth a look if that is not the killer feature for you. I’ve downloaded and used it for class readings when I knew I wouldn’t have a reason to export length quotations.

Ben Wildboer

Ben’s immediate observation distills everything I’ve been trying to convey as succinctly as I’ve seen it done:

There were several students that expressed regret at the demise of the bullet points. It’s easier for them to just copy down exactly what it says (of course it is, they don’t have to actually pay attention or comprehend to do that). How well they’ve been trained by their past experiences!

Ah yes. Undoing years of damage done by the ubiquitous bullet point. Challenging, to say the least. But definitely a battle worth fighting.

Go check out Ben’s slide decks. And the rest of his blog while you’re there. He’s off to a great start!!

I’m truly humbled by all of the positive attention my “Presentation on Presentations” has received since I published it one week ago. I’m especially grateful to those who have linked it on their own blogs and increased the potential reach for this work.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I think it bears repeating that there is nothing in that presentation that I didn’t learn from following in the footsteps of those who have covered this stuff in far greater detail (Dan, Merlin, Guy, Seth, Garr…). I have merely synthesized from the work of others and distilled it down into a presentation that I gave to a group of faculty.

My goal was to whet their appetites. Not to “convert” them to “my” way of thinking, so much as to show them that there are other (better?) ways to use presentation software — to share the possibilities.

I had a limited amount of time and there is a LOT of information out there. I didn’t know if I’d have another opportunity to share this material with them so I wanted to be sure to include as much as possible in the hour that I had. I wanted to leave them hungry to learn more and to some extent I think that I was successful.

Thanks to all who have commented and linked!

First, have you seen this? I thought I’d seen some complex organizational schemes, but this one is incredible. Elegant in its simplicity, yet amazingly comprehensive. [via 43F]

Second, if you’re in graduate school and you use a Mac, you need to check out Schoolhouse 2.1. All I can say about this app is, “Wow!” I’m using it to track assignments and the like in my two doctoral classes this term and I’m thoroughly impressed.

• My gadget-geekiness has finally met its match. Check out Principal Miller’s most recent podcast – this time a recording of a staff development on (You guessed it!) podcasting.
• My copies of iWork and iLife ’08 arrived on Friday. I have got to learn Pages.
• Check out my August post for LeaderTalk titled, Word up. (Those of us who grew up in the 80s will be able to hear Cameo singing it now…)

Quote for the week: “You don’t own a TV? What’s all your furniture pointed at?” – Joey Tribbiani

Maybe they should have considered 10.4.95 or 10.4.9.1. I’m sure this is commonly done with version numbers, but anything would have been better (and more mathematically correct!) than going from 10.4.9 to 10.4.10.

I don’t think this will detract from the iPhone hype today, but it sure feels good to get that out of my system.

Since I started this blog in January, my post on education and GTD has consistently been one of the most viewed. I’ve taken some time to update the information from that post and to make it a “Page” for ease of linking and future updates. It’s now a part of my Resources so enjoy:

Using GTD in Education

Looks interesting, if a bit disturbing, to see the little Safari compass on my Windows desktop. Almost as disturbing as the first time I installed iTunes on a Windows machine. I’m not sure if it will catch on, though, as most Windows users (what is it – like 78%?) are perfectly happy limping along with Internet Explorer and I don’t know if many of them are checking apple.com for the latest Windows browser.

So it’s working fine here on my work machine, but in a few months I’ll be interested to see what kind of penetration Apple has gotten into the Windows web-browser “market.”

I anxiously kept hitting "refresh" on the FedEx tracking site until I was sure my new MacBook was safely at my house.  And then it sat there.  Mocking me until I was able to get home, enjoy our usual evening routine, and finally get the little one to bed.

I tricked it out pretty well hoping it will last me through my doctoral program.  I upgraded to 2GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard drive.  And I did pony up the extra $150 for a black one.

It looks like I’m not the only one with a new Macbook!  And Wesley created a wiki page where he is encouraging folks to post their software choices.  As Google, in their ongoing quest for complete Internet domination, is taking over JotSpot, they are not accepting new registrations at this time and so I couldn’t add my picks to Wesley’s already extensive list.  I decided it might be useful for me to keep track of what I have installed on my machine, so I finally put my heretofore empty personal wiki to good use. 

I did comment in Wesley’s thread that two little apps I didn’t find on the list were XTorrent and Quicksilver.  I noticed his list did include Parallels and I can tell you that I could not be more thrilled with this powerful app .  I love having a teeny XP install for those increasingly few things that just work better in Windows.  And it will also give me an opportunity to play a bit with Ubuntu and Edubuntu without worrying about dedicating a machine or stressing over dual- or triple-boots.

Whew.  I think I’ve exceeded my geek quotient for the week.  I’m glad Miguel and Wesley posted on this as I don’t always get to put on my propeller hat as much as I used to when I was a tech integrationist.

As seen on: Lifehacker & The Cranking Widgets Blog