PICOL stands for PIctorial COmmunication Language and is a project to find a standard and reduced sign system for electronic communication. PICOL is free to use and open to alter.
Apunts per a un capítol d'un llibre. Diversitat de propòsits de l'eportfolio, la pedagogia del programari, relació amb el Web 2.0 i les xarxes socials i amb l'entorn personal d'aprenentatge (PLE), etc. etc.
Mac Dictionary Kit is a collection of tools to help convert and build dictionaries on Mac OS X platform. The source dictionary could be in any format, but we only support stardict format at present. The target dictionary must be Dictionary 2.0 format defined in Mac OS X 10.5.
Another Smashing Magazine guide. "In this article, we’ll look at some useful techniques and clever effects that use the power of style sheets and some features of the upcoming CSS Text Level 3 specification, which should give Web designers finer control over text."
Graham Attwell sobre el canvi de llicència que el govern del Regne Unit aplica a les seues dades públiques (coses com ara convocatòries, calendari escolar, festes locals, entre moltes altres). Sembla que a partir d'ara utilitzaran la llicència de Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Això vol dir que s'autoritza per defecte qualsevol tipus de reutilització.
All this augers well. I have been working on developing mash up applications for careers guidance and counselling and in particular for using Labour Market Information. All to often, the major barrier is the lack of available data, license restrictions and the lack of APis to query data. At last attitudes seem to be changing.
Pontydysgu revisa (i extracta) l'article de 1971 d'Ivan Illich, "Education Without School: How It Can Be Done".
Illich, best known for his groundbreaking book, Deschooling Society, remains as relevant today as he was 40 years ago. And in many ways he anticipated the use of computers for social networking and collaborative learning.
John Fontaine (Blackboard) defensa els entorns virtuals d'ensenyament/aprenentatge davant de les acusacions d'inflexibilitat i manca d'innovació.
[...] The simple use case of making it easy for a class to post and share information through a secure website continues to be a highly useful and has had a great impact on teaching and learning.
My colleague at Blackboard Dr. Demetra Katsifli wrote a research paper with the University of Kingstown which provides a summary of research into the impact of the VLE on education in the last 10 years. It summarizes a enormous volume of research demonstrating the positive impact of the Virtual Learning Environment on education.
Finally, when surveyed I do not see students requesting that instructors use Blackboard less. A recent editorial in the GW Hatchet argued for Blackboard mandatory [...]
Potser per a donar unes passes més enllà d'aquest tipus d'eines -com es reclama últimament- sí que ens faltaria encara que tothom hi arribe :-)
Omeka és un programari lliure que permet implementar fàcilment exposicions i museus virtuals. Ara s'anuncia Omeka.net, un servei d'allotjament que elimina la necessitat de comptar amb un servidor i instal·lar programari.
Omeka.net will expand Omeka’s current offerings with a completely web-based service. No server or programming experience required. Similar to services offered by WordPress, the popular open-source blogging software, with the launch of Omeka.net users will be able to sign up for a free hosted Omeka site. Just create a username and password, and your online collection or exhibition is up and running.
This new hosted web service will further the Omeka project’s mission to make collections-based online publishing more accessible to small cultural heritage institutions, individual scholars, enthusiasts, educators, and students.
Browser-based ebook reader. Embeddable (javascript, no dependencies, MIT license).
Podcàsting i informe del JISC sobre els avantatges econòmics per a les universitats d'un model obert de difusió del coneixement. Amb estimacions en lliures esterlines.
A new report launched today (25 February 2010) shows how universities can work out how much they could save on their profit and loss accounts as well as increasing their contribution to UK plc when they share their research papers through Open Access.
Graham Attwell sobre la Free Technology Academy
(FTA), un projecte conjunt del Free Knowledge Institute i tres universitats europees (UOC, OUNL, Adger), finançat per la Comissió Europea. La FTA ofereix formació en línia sobre tecnologies lliures. Els programes d'estudi es basen en recursos educatius oberts i s'utilitza un entorn virtual de programari lliure.
The FTA Consortium partners aim to accelerate the adoption of Free Software and Free Knowledge by working on strategic projects like the FTA, the international SELF Project, and other initiatives. They collaborate with parties to set up a solid ecosystem for the production of free educational materials.
The courses are not free – according to the website the “FTA charges tuition fees to cover only the marginal costs of running the courses and tries to keep costs as low as reasonably possible to make participation in its tutored courses accessible to those interested.” This year the fee has been set at 380 Euro a module. But it is particularly interesting that the consortium has agreed a standard fee, which in many cases is substantially lower than that usually charged by the participating universities and is justifying this through the use of OER and open source.
Smashing Magazine. Resizing images based on window size, one page résumé, CSS 100% height, vertical centering, etc.
Un article interessant de Don Tapscott i Anthony D. Williamsen el darrer número EDUCAUSE Review, amb resposta de Tony Bates en els comentaris, més interessant encara.
We have seen a major enlargement of the higher education system, but basically we have not increased the number of tenured professors or even adjunct instructors to maintain the elite system of teacher:student ratios of 1:20, except in the most expensive Ivy League institutions. Using lectures and increasing the number of students per lecture is an exceedingly cost-efficient way of dealing with larger numbers with less resources. The extra student added gets exactly the same education as all the others, at no extra cost. (Note that I said cost-efficient, not cost-effective.) Also the investment in technology has actually taken away resources that could have been spent on teaching.
The basic problem is that you cannot use constructivist learning approaches with classes of 100 students or more [...]
Also, Tapscott and Williams write about the ‘new’ constructivist way of teaching. I’m sorry, but this is not new. It’s been around for over 100 years and has been used in elite universities from the middle of the 19th century. (It was called in Oxford and Cambridge the tutorial method). Why universities don’t use it now is not because they don’t understand the technology of the Internet but because it doesn’t work well with very large numbers.
[...] Lastly, the suggestion that the privatization of the universities or ‘market forces’ are needed to bring about change also misses the point.
An extension to the Atom feed format to express what people are doing around the web.
A Mac OS X Leopard developer tool for debugging HTTP services by graphically creating & inspecting complex HTTP messages.
The Gerd Arntz archive. It includes the Isotype pictograms' collection, created by Gerd Arntz under direction by Otto Neurath.
Disponible ací: http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2010/01/29/pdfs/BOE-A-2010-1331.pdf
Capítols sobre interoperabilitat organitzativa, interoperabilitat semàntica, interoperabilitat tècnica, reutilització i transferència de tecnologia, signatura electrònica, etc. Inclou, entre altres coses, l'obligació d'utilitzar estàndards oberts des de les administracions públiques en les relacions amb els ciutadans. Annex amb glossari de termes, molt interessant.
La interoperabilidad es la capacidad de los sistemas de información y de los procedimientos a los que éstos dan soporte, de compartir datos y posibilitar el intercambio de información y conocimiento entre ellos. Resulta necesaria para la cooperación, el desarrollo, la integración y la prestación de servicios conjuntos por las Administraciones públicas; para la ejecución de las diversas políticas públicas; para la realización de diferentes principios y derechos; para la transferencia de tecnología y la reutilización de aplicaciones en beneficio de una mejor eficiencia; para la cooperación entre diferentes aplicaciones que habiliten nuevos servicios; todo ello facilitando el desarrollo de la administración electrónica y de la sociedad de la información.
Inform is a design system for interactive fiction based on natural language. Mac OS X, Windows & Linux versions.
Add audio to your site the easy way. 1) Put audio links in your page (href="*.mp3") 2) include external javascript in your HTML template and 3) you get play buttons next to each song :-)
An alternative to sIFR, cufón ("fonts for the people") consists of a font generator -which converts OTF/TTF/Postcript fonts to SVG/VML- and a rendering engine written in JavaScript. No Flash. Compatible with every major browser.
Notes de Hans de Zwart (i presentació en Slideshare) referents a la seva conferència en iMoot 2010. "El futur de Moodle i com no aturar-lo". Després de recapitular les opinions recents sobre "la mort dels LMS" en el context del Web 2.0, de Zwart insisteix que Moodle s'ha de transformar en una plataforma (a la manera de Drupal) i mostra com hi contribuiran les noves API de la versió 2.0: repositori, eportfolio, comentaris i serveis web.
Free online OCR tool. It takes a single file in the following formats: JPG, GIF, TIFF BMP or PDF (only first page). Not larger than 2MB, no wider or higher than 5000 pixels, 10 image uploads per hour. Catalan, English, French, German, Spanish, etc.
