30 online resources for academic life, writing, and technology

May 16, 2012 by Jo (16 Comments)

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The web is full of great resources for academics, and this is a list of my personal favourites. They offer great advice on writing, productivity, creativity and managing your career. Although they are a great inspiration, they not always go into the nuts and bolts what technology is available for researchers and students. Luckily, thats what academiPad is for.

You can subscribe to those that you are finding useful for yourself, and please don’t forget to join academiPad’s email list or RSS feed to get free updates from my blog as well (see to your right ➚).

Academic Life

1. The Chronicle of Higher Education: Almost more like a newspaper that brings you up to speed with everything that is going on in Higher Education. Check out the Blogs section for some cool blogs (some are also featured here).
2. Ekant’s Veernacular: Ekant Veer, a dear colleague of mine, iPad owner, Apple hater, and guest author on academiPad, muses about academic life. Topics include writing, engaging students, and damn good career advise.
3. GradHacker: Like ProfHacker, but without funding. GradHacker’s original goal was to teach other grads about technology to ease their lives and help with networking. But it also covers other topics that expand the idea of ‘hacking’ to all aspects of grad life: discussions of professional tasks, reviews of software/hardware, pedagogical challenges and solutions, wellness related topics, family and personal issues, and productivity.
4. The Guardian’s Higher Education Network: Similar to the Chronicle, but more based around the UK.
5. Inside Higher Ed: Another newspaper style webpage on all issues in Higher Education. Check out the Blogs section for even more academic blogs.
6. Mind the Gap: Sarah Thornycroft rethinks academia, education, technology and research in this stimulating blog. Sarah is a true radical with great ideas how to make your research more relevant for the outside world. Proof: have you ever thought of memebasing your thesis?
7. Postgraduate Toolbox: A list of resources available to support postgraduates from all subject areas, including topics such as time management or practical help such as proof-reading.
8. ProfHacker: Tips about teaching, technology and productivity hosted by The Chronicle. Like GradHacker, this blog is one of the best resources to stimulate your thinking related to research and teaching.
9. Research Centered: Minerva Cheevy shares her thoughts on productivity, competence, and being surprised by herself. Now part of The Chronicle Blog Network.
10. The (Research) Supervisor’s Friend: A blog for sharing some of the experiences the author has as a research supervisor to encourage other supervisors to share their practice. Its all about not following the same old routines you experienced as a grad student.
11. The Research Whisperer: A blog dedicated to the topic of doing research in academia that offers practical tips and techniques on doing research, getting funding, and how to build your career.
12. The Thesis Whisperer: A newspaper style blog dedicated to helping research students on their way to the PhD (and beyond). Topics cover productivity, writing, presenting, career maintenance, creativity, and the relationship with your advisor.
13. The Three Month Thesis: A collection of articles to overcome procrastination and finally get your PhD done – fast.
14. To Do: Dissertation: A blog to talk realistically about practical steps that dissertation writers could take to finish their writing and take satisfaction and pride in their process and final product. The blog is dormant now, but it is filled with a lot of great info in its archives.
15. Vitae: A UK organisation championing the personal, professional and career development of doctoral researchers and research staff in higher education institutions and research institutes.

Writing

1. The Bureau of Better English: A relatively new blog that advocates clarity and elegance in writing. Not targeted especially for academics, but hey, clarity and elegance is something that we need more of for sure!
2. Explorations of Style: A blog that offers readers an ongoing discussion of the challenges of academic writing. The ability to formulate and clarify our thoughts is central to the academic enterprise; this blog discusses strategies to improve the process of expressing our research in writing.
3. Literature Review HQ: The title says it all: If you are new to the PhD and start out on the literature review, you can find some useful tips here.
4. Patter: A blog on academic writing and other activities to communicate your research.
5. Durham University’s Writing on Writing: A bunch of really smart people share their personal reflections on the process of writing. In these pieces, scholars from a variety of social science disciplines share their thoughts, feelings, pearls of wisdom, anecdotes, theoretical musings and much else likely to give insight and inspiration to those in the later stages of doctoral writing.

Technology for Academics

1. Academic Mac: A blog dedicated to discussion the uses of Apple hardware and software in academia.
2. Apps for Academics: A list of useful apps for academics curated by the MIT Libraries. You can find recommendations for apps for  productivity, writing, note taking, presenting, and more.
3. Colleen’s Commentary: A blog at the intersection of emerging technologies, the social web, libraries, research tools, and tech culture. Colleen offers some great tips on how to use the iPad in academia.
4. Edudemic: A blog that threads new technology with academic issues. It mainly focuses on the role of social media in improving education, but you can also find articles about other apps there.
5. GradHacker: Like ProfHacker, but without funding. GradHacker’s original goal was to teach other grads about technology to ease their lives and help with networking. But it also covers other topics that expand the idea of ‘hacking’ to all aspects of grad life: discussions of professional tasks, reviews of software/hardware, pedagogical challenges and solutions, wellness related topics, family and personal issues, and productivity. (mentioned here again, because it is really good)
6. iPad Academic: This blog is devoted to providing original reviews, tutorials, and educational material for iPad users who want to get stuff done. iPad Academic is about learning, teaching, reading, writing, and creating. You can see there is a great overlap with academiPad, not only in the mission statement but also in the depth of reviews that are offered. Check it out!
7. Macademic: A blog discussing academic workflows on the Mac that covers issues such as note-taking, writing, presenting, emailing, organizing, scheduling, project, task and time management. The topics discussed on this blog are really insightful and helpful stuff, and even seasoned Mac users can learn a lot from it.
8. Networked Research: A project to support and promote the use of social media in academic research and researcher development. If you are wondering whether you should blog or tweet about your research but you are not sure whether this is a good idea, check this out.
9. Organizing Creativity: This blog is all about how to generate, capture, and collect ideas to realize creative projects. Daniel Wessel, the creator of this blog, has written a massive ebook on this topic (10MB) that you can download from this page. The book is donation based.

Research Skills and Methods

1. Brandthroposophy: Another colleague of mine, Rob Kozinets writes in this blog about marketing, social media, and research. His netnography method (web-based ethnography) is a great tool for researchers, so check out his blog.
2. Reskidev: Shorthand for Research Skill Development, this blog is for discussing cognitive and affective dimensions of doing research.

You want still more? Check out this list of Top 100 Education Blogs… and write the editor of that list that they should add academiPad
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Comments

1. Nader Ale Ebrahim says:
   September 16, 2012 at 9:59 pm
   You may find more academic tools in My Reearch Tools Box http://www.mindmeister.com/39583892/research-tools-by-nader-ale-ebrahim . I have collected over 500 online resources for academic life, writing, and technology.
   
   Reply

30 online resources for academic life, writing, and technology