1. Extremes Aren’t Necessarily Good | Chemistry deals with molecules. Molecules are made up of atoms. Every atom has a similar anatomy: a central nucleus made up of positively-charged protons and neutral neutrons. This nucleus is surrounded by a cloud of negatively-charged electrons. When different atoms combine, the resulting molecule can either be neutral, positive, or negative. A molecule is most stable when it is in a neutral state. If a molecule has a net positive or negative charge, it can be highly reactive.I think this is true with people too. If someone is a really negative person, they probably will not mix well with others. Likewise, a person who is always over-the-top bubbly and positive runs the risk of people not taking them seriously. I know that you know someone like this. C’mon, seriously folks - you can’t possibly be that happy all the time. So, just like molecules are best when they’re neutral, I think it’s a good idea to stay neutral in life. Don’t let the little things get you all hot and bothered. Or, as I like to say: Don’t sweat the petty stuff and don’t pet the sweaty stuff.
2. If You’re Not Part of the Solution, You’re Part of the Discard | One of the concepts we learned related to solubility. If two substances are soluble, this means that they mix well with each other to form a new “solution.” As a general rule, we are taught that “like dissolves like.” Another way to classify a molecule with a negative charge is to call it “polar,” and another way to classify a neutral molecule is to call it “non-polar.” Because “like dissolves like,” this means that polar molecules generally will not be soluble in non-polar molecules.In lab, many of our experiments required us to mix fluids together that weren’t completely soluble. This caused layers to form. In order to purify the final product, it was often necessary to extract these polar layers from the non-polar layers. (Here’s a cool picture of what this might look like.) The polar, or negatively-charged, layer was often discarded.This happens all around us every day. People, organizations, businesses that do not mix well with others are eventually discarded. Think of that restaurant you went to 3 months ago where the waiter was a jerk, the food was undercooked, and the drinks were mediocre. Have you been back? Have you recommended them to your friends and family? No. In fact, probably the opposite. You probably wrote a bad review on Yelp, blogged about it, told at least 10 people about your horribly experience. In effect, this restaurant has been discarded from your life. Down the drain. Never to return again. Don’t find yourself in the discard bottle.
3. Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way | As I mentioned before, chemistry deals with molecules and how they react with each other. The bulk of the curriculum for Organic Chemistry deals with learning these reactions. Students are expected to learn, step-by-step, how Molecule A reacts with Molecule B to form Molecule C. The technique for showing this is called a Mechanism. Here is an example of a mechanism I drew that shows the preparation of acetaminophen, a pain relieving ingredient found in Tylenol:
   
   All those arrows represent electrons being pushed back and forth between molecules.

   Sometimes on an exam, we would be given a starting materials and a final product and then be asked to show all the steps it took to get there. Other times, we would be given the final product and be expected to work backwards to the starting materials. If there is one thing that I learned from all these reactions, it was that there always seems to be a way to accomplish something. Sometimes the answer was blatantly obvious, and other times it took me hours to come up with the answer. Life is like that too. Often times the answers are not plain to see. Sometimes we have to mess up. Sometimes things explode in our face. Sometimes we never come up with an answer (there were several times when I turned in an exam with blank spaces because I just couldn’t get it). If we expand our thinking, ask for help, and ultimately never give up, we’ll eventually figure out the mechanism.

I could probably come up with several more things, but I want to leave the rest in the hands of my readers, classmates, professors, TAs, and anyone else who has “survived” Organic Chemistry.

If there is something that you managed to learn that you will take with you beyond the lecture hall and the lab room, please share it in the comments below.

(There’s a button below the comment form that you can check that will send you an email every time a new comment is added. This will save you from having to check back to monitor the conversation. You can remove yourself from the mailing list any time, and I won’t use your email address to spam you.)

The popularity of personalization is beginning to show as the university prepares to release a new version of the myASU page that will merge three popular sites: ASU Interactive, ASU Current Students, and myASU. This will create a one-stop-shop for students to manage their academic life. According to the project website the new site will go live on July 20.

Based on student feedback that was collected last May, the University has set out to simplify the online experience for current and potential students. Leah Lommel, Director of Academic Development at ASU responded saying that:

We are trying to consolidate the ASU web experience for the students so they get the most pertinent information to be successful in school without a lot of digging around.  It is about a personalized experience pertaining to them and their ASU. We plan to continue this strategy of student feedback and more surveys to make the experience better and more integrated over time.

The current survey is asking students to review a semi-working sample of the proposed redesign. Below is a screenshot of the new layout taken from the project website:

So far, the survey results have been positive. Lommel provided me with a few  of the comments that have been received so far.

• It seems a LOT better than the student page we have now. It’s already seeming more useful.
• I really like the set up, it’s easy to understand, it’s useful and I definitely think it’s easier to understand for freshman.

It’s an impressive start and a HUGE improvement on the existing setup. Consolidating these three sites into one location will greatly improve how students keep track of their academic career. No longer will we have to search around from page to page to register for a class or to check announcements from professors. This is an enormous undertaking, so my kudos to everyone involved. I am excited that they are asking, and will continue to ask students for feedback. This is a classic characteristic of emerging web technology; get the users involved and rely on the collective wisdom of your customer base. Here is a bit of the feedback I left yesterday when I took the survey:

• Move the “My Info”/”My Stuff” tabs on the top left instead of top right.
• When student clicks on “My Info”, it would be nice to have a customizable dashboard, similar to the look of the current ASU Google start page. Students could pick and choose which info boxes are displayed on this dashboard.
• Make an RSS version of the academic calendar so that students can add it to their ASU Google Calendar or any other calendar that supports subscriptions.
• Add a link to the ASU announcements section so that students can subscribe via RSS or email to these announcements.
• More prominent links to information about tutors/LRC resources

The project is managed by Lissa Gladden. You can track its progress here if you like.

If you are interested in providing feedback to the project team, spend a few minutes and take the survey.

(Oh yeah - one more thing - the last few questions on the survey ask about mobile devices. Looks like maybe they’re working on developing a version for the iPhone/Blackberry/other mobile devices…)

UPDATE 7/22: Looks like the site is live now. Although, officially it is not supposed to roll out until next week, I was able to view the new page today. If you’re interested in taking a look, check out the new my.asu.edu. Or, you can click the myASU button under the search bar at the top of the blog. I’ve updated the button to direct to the new version. You’ll need your ASURite username and password for access.

I think this is the first time in my college career that I have seen Blackboard move in the direction that the rest of the online world is moving. I’m excited, but still only a tiny bit excited. Here’s why:

According to the post at Wired Campus:

For privacy and security reasons, the Facebook application does not actually pull academic data from Blackboard onto a user’s Facebook page, said Karen Gage, vice president for product strategy at Blackboard, in an interview on Tuesday. Instead, it pushes a notification to Facebook users when something is new on their course Web pages, such as when one of the user’s professors has posted grades. Then the student has to log into Blackboard to see the grade itself.

Boo. Hiss. Scratch. If you’re going to extend your services and become more “open,” why not take it all the way? C’mon Karen - push it to the limit. We should be able to completely manage our classroom experience from Facebook. I think “privacy and security reasons” is a lame excuse to give. I’m not a programmer by any means, but I read a lot of news on the Internets. So far, I haven’t seen any stories about a breach in account security for Facebook. If there are any readers out there that can give reasons for this concern, please share below in the comments.

Okay - enough ranting. I’m happy to see the progress. I hope it turns into more in the coming semesters. If you’re interested, see the official press release from Blackboard about the Facebook app. Or check out blackboardsync.com to learn more.

I’ve added the application to my Facebook account. Now I’m trying to figure out why it’s not recognizing my ASU Blackboard URL…

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that ASU is upgrading to Blackboard 8 tomorrow:

If you’re an ASU student or faculty member, check out the Blackboard Wiki. There’s one for both of you:

• ASU Student Blackboard Wiki
• ASU Faculty Blackboard Wiki

(I think you have to log in with your ASURite username and password.)

UPDATE: After publishing this post, I sent a link around to a few people. I sent it to Matthew Maurer and Amy Storey from Blackboard, Inc., as well as Ruvi Wijesuriya, an ASU faculty member that has had experience with our implementation of Blackboard’s services. I haven’t heard anything back from Blackboard, Inc. yet, but this is what Ruvi had to say:

The new FB app for Bb looks pretty cool but it is still too buggy to implement at ASU.  We have been following the experiences of other universities since the pre-release and official release of the building block and many of the institutions that run load balanced systems (like we do) have experienced problems with it.  Apart from it being unstable and having connectivity issues, one bug that is a major concern is that unavailable courses (ones where the instructor has not yet made the course available to students) are showing up in the FB module and giving students access to unavailable content (for example the answer key to a quiz that has yet to be given).  So I don’t see the FB add-on going in until the major bugs have been fixed and it is stable.

That was disappointing to hear, but not surprising. Given Blackboard’s lackluster past I could have predicted spotty performance on this new adventure. Let’s hope they clean it up so that students can start using it!

(Image was taken from blackboardsync.com. Hope they don’t mind.)

If you’re a procrastinator like me, you are probably not thinking much about fall semester. Especially not about the books that you are going to need for your classes. Hopefully this will help motivate you to get off your butt and save yourself some money on your books.

At the beginning of this semester, I wrote passionately about my outrageous text book costs for two of my classes. It sparked some great comments from classmates and professors, and has turned into one of Geek Stew’s most popular posts.

A week after my initial post published, the State Press ran a story about Chegg.com. (The link is to download a PDF copy of the original story.) Chegg.com is a site that allows students to rent text books at a FRACTION of the cost of purchasing. If I had known about Chegg, I could have saved about $300 this semester. Live and learn, right kids?

For your book-renting convenience, there’s a button at the top of Geek Stew that will take you to Chegg.com. I also updated their search tool in the sidebar so you can search for your books by entering in the Author/Title/ISBN number.

Oh - and to give you a warm fuzzy, Chegg.com will plant a tree for every book you rent.

Go get yer books!

In a landmark decision to improve the technology experience for its 60,000+ students, the University Technology Office announced this morning their decision to end its relationship with Google and their Google Apps and start fresh with Microsoft. Many of the details are still unknown, however a reputable source has made it clear that this transition will take place during the Summer 2008 break.

Student Gmail accounts, web-based (and now offline!) document editing and collaboration, calendar, website creation, and myASU accounts will be eliminated at the end of the Spring 2008 semester. They will be replaced with the mildly popular Microsoft Live@edu services. This is a similar set of services that includes an email account, calendars, and document collaboration.

The Microsoft Live@edu services are expected to launch in Spring of 2009.

Students will need to set up temporary services on their own for use during the Fall 2008 semester. According to Microsoft officials:

“This is only temporary until all the bugs can get worked out with the Microsoft Live@edu services. We really don’t anticipate it taking much longer than 1-2 semesters to get everything working properly. Definitely two semesters at the most. We would recommend students set up a new Google account in the meantime until we can get everything running.”

University Technology Officer, Adrian Sannier, is excited for the change. He has been a driving force behind the advancements to how students and faculty communicate. He sees this move to Microsoft as the University

“…heading in the right direction. With these new services, students will be rocking and rolling in cyberspace like never before. They will be able to send electronic messages to each other. Advanced users will quickly learn how to attach electronic files to these messages to share them with classmates and professors.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what Microsoft has in store for us. They have always been at the forefront of Internet-based technologies. I mean - seriously, who doesn’t have a Hotmail account? Did you know you can get like 2 Gb of free storage in a Hotmail account?!? That’s wacky!”

Google representatives could not be reached at the time of publishing. More news will follow as details develop.

Purchasing text books sucks. Judging by the response to last weeks’ post about my Physics + Organic Chemistry fees this semester, most students agree. Up until two days ago, I only knew of a few options to get them cheaper: Amazon.com, Half.com, or attempt to survive class without the book. There is now another option that has quickly risen to the top of my list, and I really wish I would have known about it sooner. The State Press did a story on Wednesday about the frustrating cost of text books, and what two Iowa State University students have done to solve it.

The website is Chegg.com. The concept is simple:

According to the article yesterday in the State Press, the company

…began in 2003 when the two founders, fed up with the costs of their books at Iowa State University, decided to come up with their own solution, said Aayush Phumbra, the company’s vice president and co-founder.

“I was an international student, and I got very frustrated, especially with paying so much and not being able to return the books,” he said. “We wanted to do something revolutionary.”

The company started a small-scale book resale Web site at Iowa State in 2003 and expanded into a worldwide rental company in fall 2007.

I just did a comparison to what I purchased this semester, and what I would have spent at Chegg.com. (Note: The comparison is only for textbook costs - not website subscriptions, lab supplies, or those CPS clicker thingies.)

Here’s a quick table of the savings I could have enjoyed by shopping at Chegg.com:

I think the numbers speak volumes. If you’re curious to see what you could have saved, go check it out. For those of you who read Geek Stew from the actual site, I’ve also a couple of links to my site to help you find your books.

There is now “Rent Textbooks” link at the top of the screen:

…and a Search widget in the sidebar where you can type in the ISBN/Author/Title of the book you’re looking for:

With over 2 million titles available and growing every day, I am sure that you and I will be able to find our books for next semester. With all the money we save, let’s have a party. I’ll buy the pizza.

1. Jott | Their motto is something like “Think it. Jott it. Do it.” This incredibly easy service transfers a spoken message into text. After registering your phone number with Jott, you can place a call to their 1-800 number, record a message, and it will be converted to text and sent automatically to practically anywhere you want.
   
   You can use it to send a quick reminder to your email account, to another friend’s phone, or even add an event to a to-do list or calendar. For anyone who forgets to write things down as you think of them, this service is essential.
   
   
2. Pandora | I find it easier to study and do homework when there is music playing. (This is a typical characteristic of Kinesthetic/Visual learners.) For those times when I don’t want to drain my iPod battery, I have been turning to this free Internet Radio site. By setting up an account, you can create a personalized radio station. You tell Pandora the name of a song or artist, and it creates a non-stop stream of music that is similar to that song or artist.
   
   I don’t know how it does it, but they make reference to the Music Genome Project. I’ve been using it for a couple weeks now and absolutely love it. If you’re not sure what music to study to, you may want to read this post+comments over at Lifehacker.com.
   
   
3. Google Calendar | For the past few years, I have been using this service to keep track of my life. When it comes to school, I use it constantly. I set up a calendar for each class and transfer the assignment/exam dates onto the calendar as events.
   
   For assignment due dates, I set reminders to my cell phone via text message. For exam dates, I set email reminders for a week in advance. If an professor announces a project or assignment during class that wasn’t on the original syllabus, I send a text message to GVENT (48368), and it is automatically added to my calendar. Since I’ve been using this system, I have not missed a single assignment or forgotten to study for an exam.
   
   The great thing about Google Calendar is that it plays well with others. You can set it up to communicate with Jott. Then you can call Jott and add an event to your Google Calendar. Perfect for those of you who have the dangerous habit of texting and driving. (Shame on you.)

Good luck out there everyone. If you want more productivity tools, there is an amazing list for students at this post here. (Thanks to HackCollege for the tip.)