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Apps from 2 big MOOC providers

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I have been waiting for this – edX mobile is finally here.

I’ve been taking courses from the two big names in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), edX and Coursera, and making good use of Coursera’s iOS app on my iPhone (also available for Android). What I like about having the apps is that I can download course videos and view them anytime, even offline.

I can now get on with the course I’ve signed up for from MITx: Design and Development of Games for Learning. The furthest I’ve got is through their pre-course tutorial videos on Gameblox. I designed my first game (don’t judge!).

Keep your eye on offerings from McGill on McGillx. You can now follow courses on your mobile (yay).

@mymom I’m back on Twitter!

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After a four year hiatus I am returning to Twitter (@tweetapril) and quickly realizing that I have really missed out. As a participant in a MOOC, Introduction to Learning Technologies, I was prompted to connect via their hashtag (#ilt_usask) on Twitter (in 140 characters or less at a time).

For anyone new to Twitter, course instructors pointed us to the very sweet and useful Mom This is How Twitter Works. It has some quick tips if you are a little rusty as well. For example, if you start a tweet with a username like @mymom it will limit who gets to see it, versus putting a period or other characters in front of it.

We were also directed to 10 Commandments of Twitter for Academics from The Chronicle for Higher Education, with some sage advice on using Twitter in your personal and professional lives. I will of course recommend that you follow McGill Library (@McGillLib) but please do not stop there. I’m following a lot of Montreal- sci-tech- library-oriented people and discovering new things everyday.

Here is one that I will leave you with: British Library’s #ShareMyThesis competition. First prize for this worldwide competition is a 15-inch MacBook pro. Take a look at how past and present PhD students have been sharing why their project is important #ShareMyThesis and consider contributing.

Bagels in space

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FairmountBagels

I have the pleasure of living right between Fairmount and St-Viateur Bagel and I refuse to pick a side, but here is one cool thing that I noticed on my bag of bagels from Fairmount: 1st bagel in space!

There has been some attention on Fairmount Bagel lately, since they were thought to have joined the world of Twitter but then the account turned out to be a fake.

The NASA mission to the International Space Station was STS 124 when Montreal-born astronaut, Greg Chamitoff, brought 18 sesame bagels with him. I don’t know how I missed this but you can read more about it in this 2008 article from CTV News.

Recommend a graphic novel

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IMG_Book_coverI checked this book out of the library to get myself thinking about graphic novels for the Schulich collection. Feynman, from our Education Curriculum Resources Centre, is juvenile literature and worth a read but there are other great ones out there written for adults.

I have been talking with librarians from other university science and engineering libraries that have been purchasing books in this format but I’d love to hear from you. Do you have any graphic novels to recommend that touch on science and technology?

McGill researchers make another highly cited list

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The first edition of the list of 382 Highly Cited Researchers (h>100) according to Google Scholar Citations includes two McGill scientists: Alan Evans has an h-index of 152, putting him at #34 in the list, and Andreas Warburton is #99 with an h-index of 128. Alan Evans is no stranger to citation fame, as he was also included in the 2014 Highly Cited Researchers list from Thomson Reuters, along with Chemistry professor, Chao-Jun Li (read more on this from McGill News and Events).

The h-index marks the place where the number of citations a researcher receives meets the number of papers they have published (see the graph below). Read more about the h-index from Hirsch’s article in arXiv.

h-index

You can create your own citations page in Google Scholar by looking for the “My Citations” option.

Image is in the public domain.

MOOCs and OERs

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Welcome / welcome back! I wanted to bring your attention to some free resources, such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), that may help support your studies. I know, classes have just begun so the last thing that you are thinking about is enrolling in another course but there is some great material out there to help reinforce or expand your learning.

We have a new guide to MOOCs and open education resources (OERs for short) on our Schulich Library site. These include places where you can go to register for courses, but also options for viewing course materials, such as MIT’s OpenCourseWare, or for taking advantage of openly available textbooks in science and engineering.

I’m currently following (when I can) a Linux MOOC and waiting on Writing in the Sciences from Stanford.

There is also Comic Books and Graphic Novels starting in a few weeks on Coursera, but that is neither here nor there…

Try this: Altmetric it

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Last year I posted on Altmetric for Scopus where you can find metrics, like tweets, blogs, and saves to citation managers, that are alternatives to the traditional citation counts. Altmetric now has a tool to allow you to see these metrics for articles that you are viewing in your browser. I installed this Altmetric bookmarklet to my bookmarks bar. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Superfast scientist

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Associate Professor Bradley Siwick, a Canada Research Chair in Ultrafast Science, delivered a Cutting Edge Lecture in Science in January (I’m falling behind on my posts!): Lights, action, camera – Making movies of molecules and materials. I have a background in microbiology so I was keen to hear about some of the tools and techniques that he has been using in his lab.

During his talk he pointed out how the 20th century was all about the development of new tools, like the electron microscope (one of the greatest Canadian inventions, as voted on by CBC watchers, just six spots behind the poutine). In the 21st century we can expect to see scientists pushing the limits of these tools. His research is taking a novel approach to electron microscopy, using femtosecond lasers to produce ultrashort/ultrafast pulses.

Visit Bradley Siwick’s research site to learn more.

I highly recommend attending one of the upcoming lectures as well, if you get the chance.

New impact crater (i.e. my new wallpaper)

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Mars craterThis amazing image is a crater on Mars taken by a high resolution camera, a High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera to be precise. NASA released it this week, although a space rock caused this crater between July 2010 and May 2012 when they were imaging the site.

The crater is 30 metres in diameter and the resulting explosion threw debris as far as 15 kilometres away.

Visit this site if you’d like it to be your new wallpaper too.

Image from: The University of Arizona