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.
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.
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.
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)
December 9, 2013
The “Hour of Code” is an initiative to get all sorts of kids and adults to devote an hour during the 2013 Computer Science Education Week (CSEd), promoted by the Computer Science Teachers’ Association (CSTA), especially to draw attention to getting the activity to happen in the daily routine of school work. Lots of different groups have signed up to participate. There are hundreds of challenge activities which have been designed for every age group and for all sorts of contexts, in school and outside of the school setting.
This example is based on the Khan Academy activity at https://www.khanacademy.org/hour-of-code/hour-of-code-tutorial/p/challenge-h-for-hopper.
This was my first use of the Kahn Academy site. The Kahn Academy activity was well done, with lots of popup support from an animated character named Hopper which is similar to the infamous “Clipper” help system of Windows. Hopper worked, especially in this context. The site does NOT require login or an account to use the coding tool. There is nothing to download. You are free to play.
Screencapture of my Kahn challenge. Yes, I know that the expected result is just the basic large “H” outlines, but what’s the point of stopping when the urge to extend washes over? If you choose to complete the activity for the badge, you will want to set up an account and go through the steps without doing extensions. You are not limited to the planned activity, but the system is set up to get a particular result in order for you to earn official recognition.
November 8, 2013
Good resources all around us.
http://opensource.com/education/13/11/open-source-materials-children-teens
November 5, 2013
Is the shift from textbooks to Open Educational Resources anything more than a shift from one publisher to another?
Are schools simply shifting students from one resource to another?
I read articles like this one at Edutopia about how schools are substituting OER for textbooks. Great, but really?
Are educators and their students really shifting the perspective from consuming information created by others?
Where are the schools which are asking students and their teachers to actually produce OER components, building upon and expanding and personalizing the knowledge?
Is yours such a school?
Are you such a teacher?
Let us know about it.
October 1, 2013
Copyright and plagiarism and the effective use of Internet resources are vital elements of creative assignments in schools. Access to digital versions of books, magazines, audio and video resources have changed the nature of what a student can do when constructing a school assignment.
It has been common practice to ask students to write about a famous person, for example. The writing part may actually be the focus of the assignment. The person being used isn’t the real focus. Typically students get to choose from a batch of people and then gather resources to learn what they need in order to begin writing the essay.
A teacher’s common practice has been the recommendation of resources, sending children to the school or town library to access encyclopedias, books, newspapers, etc. A rough draft frequently follows so the teacher can comment on style, grammar, spelling and such along with proper use of quotations with adequate citations. The final draft gets a grade.
The Internet has given teachers the task of adding online resources to the mix. That means each teacher must add some online/digital expectations to the assignment and rough draft evaluation. Teachers need to incorporate an honest discussion of fair use, copyright, remixing. The vetting of resources which was once passed off to librarians now must become part of a teacher’s routine. Teachers need to make very few assumptions. Some students will have their own computer/tablet/smartphone and good support at home. Some students will be better than others at search strategies. The assignment needs to become more broad so it can include a student sharing of those skills. Each school year, as student move ahead, the discussion needs to become more rich and nuanced like any other phase of helping studnts learn.
With that in mind, a discussion about and use of Open Educational Resources is important. Teachers need to have a good personal understanding of the digital issues involved. Plagiarism has long been part of the discussion. Now, when we talk about copyright compliance, it is not only valuable, but vital to highlight the distinction between restricted and open usage of all the easily accessible materials a student may want to incorporate in an assignment.
I would recommend you read and refer others to the article, “Teach kids about copyright: a list of resources from Creative Commons” by Jane Park. Develop your own skills to become as strong in resource selection as possible. Understand the alternatives yourself. That way you can be the best guide you can be for this year’s students and keep exploring to prepare for the next year and the next. In fact, you will be modelling the process for your students. Revealing your process may actually help them understand how you see that fabled goal, “life long learning.”
Moving to Open Source Software in Schools 