OneBigU’s slogan says it all, “Answer Questions, Help Darfur.” OneBigU is the brainchild of Eric Cheung, a University of Toronto graduate.

The idea came when I was stuck on an assignment for school. Sure, I could call up a friend or pester them with messages, but why do that?

I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only student in the world to be stuck on this particular problem.

If only there was a place where you could find old and new questions asked by students around the world along with the answers…

Perhaps Eric didn’t find that community, but he is starting to build it. Launching at the beginning of the year, OneBigU’s premise is similar to Yahoo Answers: ask questions and share your knowledge with anyone over the web. However, OneBigU focuses on students, with questions stemming from a student’s homework problems. Anyone is free to post a question without signing up. However, you must sign up in order to answer questions.

Upon answering a question, other members can vote if they believe your answer is correct. Ultimately, the submitter of the question selects a “best answer.” Following this, OneBigU pays the user who submitted the “best answer” as a portion of its ad revenue. The user is then free to either withdraw the funds to their PayPal account or donate the funds to OneBigU’s partner charity, Help Darfur Now (HDN).

HDN is a non-profit organzation geared specifically for students and their families that is dedicated to raising funds for and awareness of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. It was started by three New Jersey high school students. Currently, HDN has 100 chapters across the US.

Prominently displayed on HDN’s home page are endorsements by the likes of George Clooney, Martin Sheen, and Senator Barrack Obama.

Hands-On
Below you can see the results of my experience with OneBigU.

What Does the Future Hold?

Currently, OneBigU has raised $35, with $25 going towards HDN. It remains to be seen whether OneBigU’s social consciousness will provide enough incentive to attract a larger user base.

One key factor at play would be its existence as an “online study group.” This has recently come under fire in Canada, where the Toronto Star reports that a student at Ryerson University (where I attend), located in Toronto, has been expelled for running a study group in Facebook.

For more info, see Eric’s interview with tech journalist Amber MacArthur, on the commandN video podcast.

Here is the story. Fresher student wants to write the single best essay they have ever attempted. Student searches keyword in Google. Student clicks on first entry on the page that will usually end with, for example …/wiki/French_Revolution. Student reads, believes, cites, and references Wikipedia. Student hand in essay, waits, and fails. Or maybe does not fail but is told in no uncertain terms NEVER to reference Wikipedia.

How many of you can relate to this story? Is that unnamed student you? It was me at some point I can promise you that, but, I quickly learned my lesson.

What are my research options?

The degree I read was BSc. Sport Sciences, a degree heavily rooted in biology, psychology, and biomechanics amongst a few other smaller disciplines. This made researching a particular topic a tiresome and endless process using multiple online databases that spewed out vast amounts of scientific literature in answer to a single keyword entry. For example, the definition of DNA, I’d enter “DNA” and hit “search” only to be confronted by thousands of articles, half of which were inaccessible, some written in Spanish, French or German, and others were published in the early 1900s long before sport science, as a discipline, existed. Alternatively, I type”DNA” into Google and I’m provided with …/wiki/DNA. what do I do? I need a simple definition DNA and I face the choice of sifting through tens of PDF documents or opening up a browser window that will display the definition of DNA according to someone that entered it into the wiki database. The answer is simply neither

Wikipedia has revolutionised the way that we can access information I agree, but these wonders have far too often been infiltrated by individuals seeking to destroy all that is great about the site using the “anybody can edit” feature. Examples of this have been highlighted in the press, for example, Wikipedia’s biography of John Seigenthaler Sr. where nearly the complete article was false and linked him with the assassination of JFK and was posted on the site for 132 days. Another example is that of Chris Benoit where a person wrote about the death of Nancy Benoit 12 hours before it actually happened. A coincidence or otherwise I am not sure but the whole situation infers that Wikipedia is an unstable, unreliable, and a limited resource.

What can I use instead?

Citizendium. A compendium initially set up to serve as mirror of Wikipedia where expert authors would edit the posts deemed inaccurate, this mission was recently altered and the site now contains its own original database of posts. Citizendium aims to stamp out the aforementioned accuracy, post hijacking, and general limitations of Wikipedia by implementing fundamental principles. These include:

• Open collaboration - anyone can participate, much like Wikipedia.
• Expert contribution - all posts can be edited by Citizens but certain decisions are placed in the hands of subject experts.
• Article approval - a post is approved once it is deemed true, unbiased, and accurate by a subject expert.
• Real names - all participants are required to provide their real name, unlike Wikipedia where false names are often used.

For a greater depth of information regarding the policies then click on http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Citizendium.

Why Citizendium?

I read the page Why Citizendium? because I do not completely understand why they are trying to out do Wikipedia. The page is written in a manner that initially compares the two sites and basically declares that Citizendium is better, however, towards the end of the article they set Citizendium apart from Wikipedia and discuss its merits independently. An interesting read to say the least.

The founders of Citizendium strongly believe that they can catch up with the millions of articles contained within Wikipedia. Why? The Citizendium added five million words in its first year - more than Wikipedia achieved. The authors do not believe that Wikipedia is simply “good enough”, they state that it is full of inaccuracies that blemish the massive database, editors “squat” on posts ensuring that they are never edited in a way that does not suit their personal opinion, textual vandalism is rife due to the anonymous author feature. The Citizendium authors believe that real names will stamp out hijacking of posts because people are considerate when a name is on the line, expert approval will ensure that nobodies will not be able to approve an article as fact, and sensible governance is better. New participants, called Citizens, are required to agree to the Statement of Fundamental Policies, and are reined in upon by Constables when/if they behave irresponsibly.

The Citizendium also offers supplementary reference material or sub pages.

The Citizendium has “subpages.” These are pages, such as Bibliography or Related Articles, attached to a main (encyclopedia) page via a standard table. A main article together with its subpages is called a “cluster.” You might look at the Biology article and its subpages–our “biology cluster”–as an example.

The purpose of subpages is to provide supplementary and background information to allow people to find all different types of information about a topic.

This in my opinion is a superb addition to the wiki model, subpages offered to you on a plate by experts in the field. The numerous hours that I used to spend looking for a decent video clip of a sporting action will never be returned to me but for you this should not be an issue.

Another useful addition is Signed Articles.

Signed articles are introductory, overview, general review, and perspectival articles attributed to one person or a small group of people. Such articles have two fundamental requirements: first, they must be characterizable as reference material, and neither brand new research nor mere polemics; second, they must be crafted by people who are unquestionably experts on the topic in question.

Basically, academic experts can post their personal opinion about a post contained in Citizendium. This to me in genius. In science, as with many subjects I suppose, there are differing views on almost all topics. In psychology there are; Cognitive, Behavioural, Psychoanalytic, Humanistic, Biological, among other paradigms, prominent psychologists from each of these will undoubtedly have fairly opposing views on the formation of personality, who is to say which views are correct and which are not. With Signed Articles you can follow the arguments from different perspectives and devise a theory or belief of your own.

The final word from the founder of Wikipedia himself

Jimmy Wales, the site’s founder, has acknowledged Wikipedia’s limitations. “If what you are after is ‘Who won the World Cup in 1984′, Wikipedia is going to be fine,” he said. “If you want to know something more esoteric, or something controversial, you should probably use a second reference – at least.”

Source: Wikipedia amateurs face backlash from the experts

On GearFire, I write about productivity and time management. If the adage “time is money” is true, then students need to manage their money too. Enter ClearCheckbook, a free Web 2.0 application for personal finance.

ClearCheckbook runs under the slogan “money management made easy” and I can wholeheartedly agree having used it for the last six months. Registration is simple, requiring only your e-mail and desired username and password. Upon registration you are presented with a step-by-step walkthrough of how to setup ClearCheckbook.

Step 1: Creating your Accounts

Account Name: Give your account a descriptive name.
Account Type: Is it Cash, Checking, Savings, or a Credit Card?
Active: Are you using it right now? If not, unchecking the box will hide the account until you need again.

Step 2: Manage Your Categories

When creating categories, I recommend subcategories to allow for detailed tracking of your spending habits. This stems from my adoption of the methodology in Your Money or Your Life. It is a personal finance book that comes highly recommended from tier-one bloggers.

Step 3: Manage Your Initial Balances

Amount: Enter the current balance of the account.
Description: Enter something appropriate.
Transaction: Initial balance.
Account: Do an initial balance for each of your accounts.
Category: You don’t need to categorize the initial balance.

After you have finished setup, you can click on the “summary” to go to your home page (seen below).

Step 4: Record your transactions

You are now ready to record your daily transactions. For example, you buy a DVD for $20 in cash.

Splitting a Transaction
Let’s say you order multiple items from Amazon on your credit card. ClearCheckbook let’s you subdivide the main transaction (seen below).

Balancing your Accounts

Forget whether your cheque has cleared? Worried about credit card fraud? ClearCheckbook uses “jiving” to easily balance your books. Each transaction has a checkmark beside it. You can confirm all your transactions by “jiving” them. For example, you go to your online banking and see the Amazon order on your credit card statement. In ClearCheckbook, you click “un-jived” in view options. “Jive” the Amazon order by clicking on the checkmark beside it (seen below).

Paying Off Your Credit Card

Spending Reports
You can view your spending habits by clicking on “reports” at the top of the page. ClearCheckbook provides pie charts and bar charts.

Recurring Notices
ClearCheckbook can send you reminders of payments or automatically create recurring transactions. You can access this by clicking “tools” at the top of the page.

Budgeting/Monthly Spending Limits
Also found under the “tools” page, it is a set-it-and-forget-it way to start budgeting.

Other Tools
ScratchPad: A text page for recording notes (e.g. use it as a wishlist).
Quicken Support: Import and export Quicken files.
Checkbot: Record your transactions using instant messaging or SMS on your cell phone.

If you’ve made it through this post, I’m sure you’ll find that ClearCheckbook is a powerful, intuitive, and free way to manage your finances. I know I have.

Summaries can be really useful as a quick reminder of an article’s main points to use when revising for an exam or to bring to class. They are also helpful before delving into the original as a road map. WikiSummary is a free database containing over 600 summaries of scholarly research in the social sciences. At the moment, the categories seem limited to political science but there are also some classic economics and sociology pieces that you can find by looking under keywords or using the search function for the article title or author. Hopefully it will expand as I find it to be a great resource! Just remember, these are summaries written by authors for their own personal use and, therefore, there is no guarantee that they are accurate or complete. And, if you haven’t already read it, be sure to check out Rebecca’s related post on how to use Wikipedia.

Remember the Milk, a great to web-based to-do list application, has released an excellent plug-in for the Firefox.  It works with gmail, creating a panel on the right side of your screen with your to-do list in it.  It’s now right there and you can add, remove, change and see all of your tasks in one place.

The feature that really won me over, however, was the ability to set up either a tag or use the star in gmail to create a new task. You can create a tag (for example to-do) and whenever you apply it to a message an item will be added to your Remember the Milk task list automatically.  If you get to-do items in email, this feature saves time and keystrokes!

This plug-in has quickly become something I can’t live without!

It’s almost a guarantee, no matter what your major, that your classes will eventually begin to overlap and build on each other. That is why it is so important to take full advantage of the work you’ve already put into past classes.

REUSING PAST PROJECTS

An important aspect of this system is the direct reuse of past projects. For example I remember taking an English class in which I needed to write a persuasive essay, in writing this essay I spent hours and hours researching a specific topic (in my case Nuclear Energy) and ended up doing very well on the paper. As a naive first year college student I discarded the paper once I received it back from the teacher. The next semester I needed to make a persuasive speech on a topic of my choice, and it hit me: I had already researched a topic (Nuclear Energy) the past semester and that there was no need to do it all over again. Fortunately, even though I had thrown away the paper, I had not deleted the file from my computer and was able to find it. Reusing the information I had previously found saved me hours of research and increased my confidence in the project because the original grade ensured the quality of my research.

REUSING PAST CLASSES AS A WHOLE

A chilling realization is taking a sequential class, such as calculus II, and discovering that you’ve forgotten most of calculus I. Fortunately, there is a very simple and effective way to avoid this problem and it consists of three steps:

1. Make sure you keep all of the tests/classwork/homework throughout a semester.
2. As you have each test in class, keep the relevant classwork/homework with that test and file it away.
3. At the end of the semester take each test and it’s appropriate classwork/homework and put it in a manila folder labeled for that class.

If you follow these three easy steps it saves an incredible amount of time backtracking in future classes, and makes reviewing entire classes worth of work organized and simple.

REDUCING THE AMOUNT OF WORK YOU SAVE

In the above step 2. I make it a point to keep the relevant work only. This is where the reducing part of this system comes into play. If you end up with a huge unordered pile of paper and just file it all away, you’ll likely waste a substantial amount of time sorting through to find what you want in the future. Reducing the clutter to only what is absolutely necessary for understanding is crucial in streamlining the entire process so that you can spend the most time concentrating on the class you’re actually taking.

Full credit to Pascal Venier who posted a review of his Easy-read.

So what is it? According to their web-site,

Easy-read is an ergonomic book holder that allows its user to read in real comfort without the aching hands and discomforts we usually experience holding our book open.

As Pascal said, “I do not know how I managed before without it.” The Easy-read works flawlessly as described. They provide a set of easy, understandable picture instructions with how to setup the Easy-read (it’s actually easy). It has made reading and taking notes from textbooks much more efficient and less painful. It also makes practising speed-reading a lot easier because you don’t have to hold the book with one hand while using your other hand as the pointer.

It also serves as a copy holder when working at the computer. This comes in really handy when you’re writing a paper from an outline.

I can’t think of anything bad to say of the Easy-read because it just works. You can buy one from their site for only $19.95 + $2.95 shipping (USD). It also makes a great gift for anyone (especially fellow students).

This post was inspired by my recently received horror of a schedule for my second semester as a freshman. I had Mondays off, but was greeted with two 8 AM starts and one 9 AM start (I have to commute), a 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM course, and large gaps between courses (up to 4 hours). However, my friend had a bomb dropped on him. His Thursday started at 10:00 AM and ended at 9:30 PM with only a single hour break from 5:00PM to 6:00 PM. That is 2/3 of his entire course load in a day. Needless to say, we are both seeking to change our schedules. Fortunately, Google Calendar is there to lend a helping hand.

Step 1: Create a calendar for each course you have to take next semester. In addition, create a calendar for your “desired schedule” and an “alternate” one in case an option is full.

Step 2: Create an event for each course on your pre-assigned schedule to the first week of the semester. In the event name, include the professor, section #, and the class location. Add these to your default calendar created by Google (usually titled “first name last name“).

Step 3: Pick one course by displaying only its calendar. This makes it easier to add time slots because your screen won’t be filled with entries from other courses.

Step 4: Create an event for every time slot available for that specific course (remember to include the professor, section #, and class location). Add these to the first week of the semester. Repeat for all your courses. Once done, you may have a crazy, colourful mess. In my course below, there are multiple professors and multiple tutorials.

Step 5: Display only your pre-assigned calendar and copy any time slot you like to your desired schedule as seen in the picture below.

Step 6: Display both your desired and pre-assigned schedules. Note any time slot you don’t like due to time, professor, or location on campus. Also display that course’s calendar. Look for the options that don’t overlap with your desired schedule. In my course below, I had ACC406 at 6:30 to 9:30 PM (in orange). I only had one other option (Monday at 8 AM), but I’d much rather wake up early than commute back home only to fall asleep without any productive time left.

Pick your preferred option and copy it to your desired schedule (same as Step 5). You should also copy “decent” options to your “alternate” schedule just in case your #1 pick is full. Once done, uncheck displaying that course.

Step 7: Repeat step 6 for each course until you’ve created your optimal (but probably not perfect) schedule. You can view your final result by displaying only your desired schedule (same as step 3). You can see mine below.

I ended up moving 5/6 courses. I no longer have a day off, but only have one 8 AM start and no night classes. I also removed all gaps from my schedule, but have five continuous hours on that 8 AM start. However, it was my only option to dodge the night class. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been finalized yet because the online enrollment appointment is scheduled during the winter break.

Remember to plan this ASAP so that you aren’t fumbling around with decisions during the enrollment period while others are snatching up all the good time slots.