June 6, 2022
Word of the Day
relationship
noun
re·la·tion·ship | \ ri-ˈlā-shən-ˌship \
1 : the state of being related or interrelated
2 : the relation connecting or binding participants in a relationship: such as
a : kinship
b : a specific instance or type of kinship
3a : a state of affairs existing between those having relations or dealings
3b : a romantic or passionate attachment
-==0==-
Be thoughtful as you develop and maintain your relationships.
December 9, 2015
A group of programmers have created a fork of Microsoft Live Writer. The fork is NOT a Microsoft project. The group is releasing the fork as open source and is doing so through the .NET Foundation.
What’s the point?
I guess the quote from “Shout Me Loud” tells the main story.
Multiple blog support feature of Windows Live writer makes it very easy to manage your multiple blogs. It not only supports multiple blogs, but also supports multiple platforms.
That suggests that if you write a WordPress blog, a Blogger blog and more, you get to do all your writing in one WYSIWYG editor instead of learning the ins and outs of each platform.
Sounds like a “solution” to a problem I’ve not had.
The open fork’s licence is MIT License.
Anybody out there a Live Writer fan?
What’s your take?
Will you switch to the open fork?
November 23, 2015
Create public domain clipart for #OER for ANY topic in any class. Share on openclipart.org
Handouts, whether they are traditional paper or online creations, benefit from topical images. Why only search for suitable ones made by others? Make some yourself (model good process for your students), or alternatively, have your students make them and provide them a grade bump for their effort.
Make images for your subject, to illustrate a concept.
Make icons to help focus the mind while reading a worksheet/student guide.
Encourage students to contribute the images to make them easy to access for you, other classes in your school system and for the benefit of all. openclipart.org is a site which accepts original artwork created with the vector graphic tool, Inkscape.
Inkscape is a Free Software (AKA “open source”) tool you can download and install on your computers at school and at home. There are hundreds of good tutorials to help you and your students get started.
When you or a student publish a graphic to openclipart.org, give your school credit, too. Simply add a tag with a version of your school’s name that will let other teachers search the site for work done by the creatives in your district. There is no cost to set up an account, and the work submitted can also be used as part of a student’s portfolio and resumé, a great component for a college application. All the submitted graphics are, by rule, in the public domain. That makes them totally accessible.
It is easy to export graphics from openclipart to add them to a document in png format, perfect for word processing documents. It is just as easy to get the link codes to include the image on a Web page the way I did above with the physics illustration and calendar icon. You can even download a graphic in original Inkscape (svg) format to remix, modify, simplify, enhance to your specific needs.
If you decide to try this suggestion, please send links to graphics you or your students have created. Your success will encourage others.
July 7, 2015
I visited a family’s website recently. It looks nice. It appears to be done as a WordPress site. I did notice one glitch. On one page, the last paragraph contains what probably are dashes or double dashes. I’m guessing the writer pasted from Microsoft Word into the WordPress editor used for the site. Unfortunately, Word uses a character code for the dash which html does not properly display. My browser displayed – instead of the dash. The WordPress editor allows you to look directly at the html by selecting the “Text” tab instead of the “Visual” editor view.
If this happens to your site, I would recommend you edit the page and substitute the html entity code — for whatever you see there.
Looking at the technical bits: Most current html coding and browsers are set to use a character coding called “UTF-8” or “Unicode.” It is the international extension of the older “ASCII” from the early computer days. You can actually have a lot of fun exploring Unicode. I have done a few pages on it, as it turns out (in case you have not seen them yet).
http://runeman.org/articles/unicode/index.html
http://runeman.org/articles/utf8_codes.html
http://runeman.org/programming/javascript/utf-from-js.html
Happy exploration!
December 16, 2014
Open Education Resources (OER) come in many forms. Some are complex and fullblown activities or even courses to use. Others are less ambitious.
Clipart might be one of the less ambitious offerings. Openclipart.org is a source of clipart produced by almost 4000 different creative people. The clipart is designed using Inkscape, the Free Software vector art tool and is submitted to the site with a public domain dedication to remove any sort of restriction for reuse or remixing. There is no requirement to cite the original author, but it is gratifying and just plain nice to see the work reused.
I recently submitted a graphic of a truck carrying “loads of love” which I had initially created to add as a closing to emails to family.
Today, I stumbled across a remix at openclipart.org done by another user: netalloy.
Thanks to all who use a clipart. That’s what it is there for. Have fun. Share your work, too.
September 8, 2014
Another episode in the “Free vs. Freedom” series.
I just got an email from the educational website Edutopia describing a Microsoft program designed to entrench itself further in the school systems and the homes of students.
Dear Edutopia Subscriber: Did you know your students can get Microsoft Office at no cost? Thanks to Microsoft Student Advantage, schools that purchase designated Microsoft Office licenses qualify for free student downloads, including:
- A complimentary and complete version of the of the latest Office program, ready to install
- The ability to download Office on up to five compatible devices at no additional cost
- An easy way to use Office on Android and Apple products
It makes me cringe when I read this kind of glowing announcement. Here is yet another lock-in opportunity instead of another opportunity to embrace freedom.
Schools seem to be urged by people from all around them to pay money for a product which does not give them choice, giving them, instead a sort of leash to wear, getting staff and students used to a proprietary office suite for which they will pay financially in the future. Their work will be easier to read in the then-current version of MS Office. They will be able to exchange their work with peers who have also paid for the tools which use a “popular” un-public, not-open format. And they will be restricted to operating systems which will run MS Office.
Should we blame the editors of Edutopia? They are simply “reporting” the information.
Well, Edutopia did not mention in the same announcement that schools, principals, teachers, school board members, town officials AND students can install the programs like Open Office or Libre Office, giving them far wider access to the same set of “office” tools along with freedom. I do not recall getting a similar email announcement about open source tools.
The open format files can be exchanged across ALL computers running any popular operating system because the file format is NOT proprietary. All the users can even choose their preferred office suite. All the open source office apps (not just Open Office and Libre Office) try very hard to accurately save files in the broadly usable Open Document Format (ODF) instead of the fancy, sometimes undocumented, binary formats employed by Microsoft.
The “announcement” seemed to me to be more of an endorsement.
I am disappointed.
July 31, 2014
I came across an announcement about an audio editor called “Ocenaudio” available for free which is cross-platform. It sounded good. I looked at the web site and found out that they don’t mention a license. Most open-source/Free Software programs are proud of their use of the GPL or any of the other open licenses.
Ocenaudio does not have an open license according to this forum post.
Just because it is “free” as in gratis, no required payment does not qualify it as Free Software (also often called “open source”). With “Free” as in libre, the issue isn’t cost at all, but your liberty/freedom use without limits, to study it, to adapt the work to your needs and to redistribute your version as long as you don’t try to limit others from those same four freedoms.
For somebody just looking for cheap, I guess there’s no difference. But for those who care to build a strong, community supported software commons, Libre matters way more than Gratis.
When people ask about audio editors, I’ll keep recommending Audacity instead of ocenaudio, too.
June 27, 2014
LibreOffice is one of the major pieces in many, if not all, Linux distributions. LibreOffice has an installer for Windows and Macintosh. LibreOffice is Free and free. It is very popular throughout Europe. In spite of all that, it is not well known in the United States.
Do you use LibreOffice yourself? Would you like to be involved in promoting LibreOffice in any way? There’s a group forming to do just that. It is now meeting regularly online. If you would like to participate, let me know. I’ll contact you with the details.
One thing the group has set up is a “hackfest” IN BOSTON! planned for the weekend of July 26-27. At the hackfest, participants will share ideas, work on practical tasks, learn how to effectively do bug reporting, hear directly from developers. Save the dates.https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Events/2014/US_Summer_Hackfest
January 14, 2014
Jonathan Nadeau is blind. He is a computer user in spite of that. Many blind people around the world are unable to benefit from computers. Jonathan wants to do something about it.
I’ll just quote the email I got
.
“Hello,Providing free access to the vision impaired people of the world, Accessible Computing foundations is raising funds to improve the Orca software; the worlds first free screen reader and operating system for the vision impaired. Through Accessible Computing Foundation’s Indiegogo campaign, you will provide computer access once and for all to the vision impaired citizens of the world.
The accessible Computing Foundation is a non profit developing Free assistive technology for people with all types of disabilities. there
are companies that develop assistive technology but the software is priced extremely high so only a small percentage of people that need this software to access a computer can have access to this software. This means that the rest of the people can’t have access to a computer
just because they can’t afford the software. The ACF wants to put an end to this and feels that everyone should be able to access a computer no matter what the physical hurddle might be to use a computer. This indiegogo campaign is the start of bringing access to all people with
types of disabilities. Lets bridge the gap between accessibility and technology!http://accessiblecomputingfoundation.org/ (link updated)
Moving to Open Source Software in Schools 