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"The Fairphone is a modular handset designed with repairability and ethical sourcing of its materials as headline features. It sold 60,000 units. Amazingly, for what sounds like a nerd-phone, almost half of those buyers had never owned a smartphone before. Now the Fairphone 2 is launching, and with a totally-new, in-house design. The new phone is even easier to repair, and because it was wholly designed by the FairPhone team, its supply chain is even more responsible than ever. The Fairphone is thicker than the latest iPhone or Samsung flagship, but that's the point. Instead of packing everything into a tiny case and keeping it there with glue, the Fairphone is designed to be taken apart. The lightweight magnesium frame supports modules that can be easily replaced by the user. "We have designed it with an aim to last three to five years, looking at making it robust and modular-for repairability," says Fairphone's chief communications officer, Tessa Wernink. "Obviously how long it lasts depends quite heavily on the user, so what we as a company are doing is offering an ecosystem around the phone that supports long-lasting use, first-hand or second-hand." Inside the case (itself one of several options) you'll find the core unit, containing all the chips and radios; a replaceable battery pack; a display that can be snapped off and replaced without any tools (not even a screwdriver); a receiver unit, which contains the front camera, sensors; the headset connector and microphones; a speaker/vibrator unit; and a camera module. These modules are designed to balance manufacturing complexity with repairability. For instance, the display comes as a standalone unit, but less-vulnerable components are bundled into one module. The camera, which people are most likely to upgrade as better versions become available, is also housed in its own module. That way you don't need to toss out your whole phone just to get a better camera. "In fact, the motto from the maker mo

"It has me thinking about what it would mean to improve online classes. A few ideas come to mind: Use multiple platforms. I'm not against using an LMS as a central hub. However, I think it's valuable to experiment with the types of productivity tools you will actually use outside of a classroom. Use Google Docs to share ideas, create surveys, and ask questions. Use Google Hangouts to meet as a group. Go project-based. I haven't figured this out entirely with my first class but my hope is that we can go fully project-based in the same way that my face-to-face class is. In fact, the asynchronous nature of online classes actually means there is a better potential of creating a project-based culture that mirrors the way people actually work on projects. Make something together. I use a collaboration grid with co-creating and communicating on separate spectrums (x-axis) and multimedia and text on another spectrum (y-axis). This has been an effective way to think through collaborative tools that allow students to co-create. Embrace a synchronous/asynchronous blend: I love using Voxer because students can speak back and forth in the moment. However, if they miss it, they can listen to it later. The same is true of using a Google Hangouts On Air. Make it more connective. We tend to treat online instruction as if it is a linear process and we don't do enough to link things back and forth and connect ideas, resources, discussions and content creation in a seamless, back-and-forth nature. Incorporate multimedia. It's a simple idea, but I create a short video at the beginning of each week and I encourage students to create video and audio as well. This has a way of making things more concrete. There's something deeply human about hearing an actual human voice. I know, crazy, right? Go mobile. I don't simply mean use a smart phone. I mean assign some things that allow students to get out in the world and create videos, snap pictures,

"It has me thinking about what it would mean to improve online classes. A few ideas come to mind: Use multiple platforms. I'm not against using an LMS as a central hub. However, I think it's valuable to experiment with the types of productivity tools you will actually use outside of a classroom. Use Google Docs to share ideas, create surveys, and ask questions. Use Google Hangouts to meet as a group. Go project-based. I haven't figured this out entirely with my first class but my hope is that we can go fully project-based in the same way that my face-to-face class is. In fact, the asynchronous nature of online classes actually means there is a better potential of creating a project-based culture that mirrors the way people actually work on projects. Make something together. I use a collaboration grid with co-creating and communicating on separate spectrums (x-axis) and multimedia and text on another spectrum (y-axis). This has been an effective way to think through collaborative tools that allow students to co-create. Embrace a synchronous/asynchronous blend: I love using Voxer because students can speak back and forth in the moment. However, if they miss it, they can listen to it later. The same is true of using a Google Hangouts On Air. Make it more connective. We tend to treat online instruction as if it is a linear process and we don't do enough to link things back and forth and connect ideas, resources, discussions and content creation in a seamless, back-and-forth nature. Incorporate multimedia. It's a simple idea, but I create a short video at the beginning of each week and I encourage students to create video and audio as well. This has a way of making things more concrete. There's something deeply human about hearing an actual human voice. I know, crazy, right? Go mobile. I don't simply mean use a smart phone. I mean assign some things that allow students to get out in the world and create videos, snap pictures,

"The Kaua Moho was the last species of it's entire genus and it was the last genus in it's family. This male was not just the last of his kind, he was the last being on his entire branch of the evolutionary tree, there was nothing left on the planet that was even close to being like him. That kind of loneliness is unimaginable. No other avian family has had every single species within it go completely extinct in modern times. Different species of Moho lived on each island of Hawaii and their evolutionary cousins the kioea birds lived alongside them, but starting in 1800 (about the time Europeans started arriving to the islands in significant numbers and also about the time the native human population of Hawaii also got decimated by diseases) one by one they died out due to the introduction of foreign avian diseases and parasites, habitat loss, and hunting for their plumage. 2 hurricanes within 10 years of each other finished them off. They are all gone and that song or any song like it will never be heard again save for in recordings. The hurricanes dealt the final blow, but 95% of it was humanity's fault. This has become common in Hawaii due to having so many species that only exist there. A LOT of those species are gone now because the arrival of Europeans brought disease, invasive species, and people straight up killed them or destroyed their habitats. It is a similar situation on every isolated island or area in the world as humans have expanded and explored every nook and cranny on the planet, no matter how hard it is to get to or how little business we have there we feel the need to interfere in even the most delicate and tiny ecosystem. Even the large, continent sized ecosystems are suffering. It doesn't matter if there are millions or even billions of an animal or plant, we will find some way to kill them all. It is only in the last few decades that serious steps have finally been taken to preserve the few areas on this world that we have not destroyed, but

"Cada vez con mayor frecuencia oímos hablar del bullying, un forma de acoso entre niños de la misma edad que tiene lugar en el mismo entorno escolar. Los colegios, sin embargo, rara vez están preparados para enfrentarse a casos de acoso escolar. Una nueva App podría ser la solución de este problema. Se da en el entorno escolar y, sin embargo, uno de los talones de Aquiles de este problema social es precisamente la falta de preparación de los profesores para detectarlo y para enfrentarse a él. Y todo a pesar de la gran cantidad de información que circula sobre el tema. Para paliar este contratiempo nace una App que pretende aliarse con el centro escolar para ayudarlo en la detección del bullying y poder confrontarlo. Stop It se trata de una aplicación informática con la que los centros educativos podrán detectar el bullying y el ciberbullying, creada por Todd Schobel, quien quedó fuertemente conmocionado tras conocer la historia de Amanda Todd y decidió, con esta App, ofrecer una herramienta útil y necesaria para evitar que bullying y, más especialmente por su particular incidencia, ciberbullying, tengan lugar. cp stop it 1 La App tiene un pequeño coste para el colegio pero no para los alumnos de los colegios adscritos al programa antibullying cp stop it 2 Uso fácil, intuitivo y rápido Los expertos en materia de bullying ya ha advertido algunos comportamientos típicos del profesorado que, lejos de ayudar al niño acosado, empeoran su situación. Aunque seguramente estos profesores no alberguen mala intención y se trate de falta de información y protocolo, lo cierto es que desde los colegios es muy frecuente minimizar el problema haciendo la vista gorda o incluso victimizar a la propia víctima, haciéndola sentir culpable del hostigamiento al que se ve ya de por sí sometido el niño acosado. Con Stop It los alumnos podrán reportar los casos de acoso que detecten, y lo harán de forma anónima. Toda la información vertida es organizada a

"This is a program for stretching the audio. It is suitable only for extreme sound stretching of the audio (like 50x) and for applying special effects by "spectral smoothing" the sounds. It can transform any sound/music to a texture. The program is Open-Source and it's released under the version 2 of the General Public License. You can download the source code for Linux or the Windows binaries. Please note that this is suitable only for extreme time stretching (e.g. if have a melody of 3 minutes and you want to listen it in 3 hours). If you want "less extreme" time stretching, you can use a program which contains the SoundTouch library. Features It produces high quality extreme sound stretching. While most sound stretching software sounds bad when trying to stretch the sounds a lot, this one is optimized for extreme sound stretching. So, the stretch amount is unlimited. You can play the stretched sound in real-time (including the possibility to "freeze" the sound) or you can render the whole sound or a part of it to audio files It has many post-processing effects, like: filters, pitch/frequency shifters Support for WAV, OGG VORBIS files and MP3 files It is a Free Software "

"Close Reading and Argument Writing - Authentically Across the Curriculum 7/16/2015 0 Comments Close reading of informational texts and non-fiction articles is not - and should not be - reserved for language arts classes. Every content area would be immensely enhanced if science teachers, social studies teachers, physical education teachers, welding teachers, woodworking teachers (in other words, "all technical subjects," as Common Core states) would not push aside the textbook, but instead embrace it, along with content area and trade articles. Students would then simultaneously learn how to dissect the readings while gaining knowledge in these content areas. What often happens is that teachers feel that students can't handle the text books or can't read the articles independently - and often that is true. However, when teachers instead go into a survival mode, of sorts, and read aloud the whole chapter or article or summarize it with a slideshow, it ends up doing a disservice to students - students are not learning HOW to read these complex texts. They are not learning how to acquire the information on their own. They are not being given the skills to read the sometimes intricate information within a particular content area or even within their possible future trade. They are not being given the opportunity to read, understand, articulate, and discuss or even debate topics within their area of study. Teachers sometimes feel that they can't do these things with students because they are not language arts teachers, or because they don't have time, or simply because they don't know how. Alternatively, a simple solution is to let go of the control and let students do…..with the guidance called close reading. Close reading is a guided reading approach. It is guided because 1) the close reading strategy is reserved for complex texts that are often too high for students to be left with independently and 2) students don't use close reading strateg

1) the ways they currently implement Twitter in their teaching and learning, 2) ideas for future development of Twitter-based assignments and pedagogical practices, and 3) issues concerning the integration of Twitter and other digital media into both traditional and non-traditional pedagogies. Collaborators should feel free to add material to these pages, to comment on existing material, and to share links to relevant external readings and resources. It may be helpful to tag your contributions with your Twitter handle. Collaborators are asked to please respect this space as a forum for open and respectful dialogue and networking. Let's fill up the pages below with great ideas!  Share the ways you currently implement Twitter in your teaching and learning: Students in my course New Information Technologies do an "Internet Censorship" project, focused on a specific country. I ask them to follow a journalist who tweets on that country as part of their research to understand the state of Internet freedom in the country they select. -- Lora Since shortly after Twitter was launched, I've experimented with various iterations of "The Twitter Essay," an assignment that has students considering the nature of the "essay" as a medium and how they might do that work within the space of 140 characters. -- Jesse (@Jessifer) In my fully online classes, I've started using Twitter to replace the discussion forum as the central location for student interaction. -- Jesse (@Jessifer) Show Tweets that have gotten people arrested and prompt discussion on whether it is fair that anyone be arrested for any Tweet in the US, who is likely to be arrested for their Tweets, what kinds of Tweets are likely to prompt arrest, etc. Students in my First Year Seminar course "The Irish Imagination: Yeats to Bono" developed a platform for digital annotation of Irish literature. Embedded in their platform was a twitter feed of relevant individuals/groups, m

1) the ways they currently implement Twitter in their teaching and learning, 2) ideas for future development of Twitter-based assignments and pedagogical practices, and 3) issues concerning the integration of Twitter and other digital media into both traditional and non-traditional pedagogies. Collaborators should feel free to add material to these pages, to comment on existing material, and to share links to relevant external readings and resources. It may be helpful to tag your contributions with your Twitter handle. Collaborators are asked to please respect this space as a forum for open and respectful dialogue and networking. Let's fill up the pages below with great ideas!  Share the ways you currently implement Twitter in your teaching and learning: Students in my course New Information Technologies do an "Internet Censorship" project, focused on a specific country. I ask them to follow a journalist who tweets on that country as part of their research to understand the state of Internet freedom in the country they select. -- Lora Since shortly after Twitter was launched, I've experimented with various iterations of "The Twitter Essay," an assignment that has students considering the nature of the "essay" as a medium and how they might do that work within the space of 140 characters. -- Jesse (@Jessifer) In my fully online classes, I've started using Twitter to replace the discussion forum as the central location for student interaction. -- Jesse (@Jessifer) Show Tweets that have gotten people arrested and prompt discussion on whether it is fair that anyone be arrested for any Tweet in the US, who is likely to be arrested for their Tweets, what kinds of Tweets are likely to prompt arrest, etc. Students in my First Year Seminar course "The Irish Imagination: Yeats to Bono" developed a platform for digital annotation of Irish literature. Embedded in their platform was a twitter feed of relevant individuals/groups, m

"Play Back Your Own Google Docs Draftback is a Chrome extension that lets you play back any Google Doc's revision history (for docs you can edit). It's like going back in time to look over your own shoulder as you write. Download it for Chrome here You can use Draftback directly from any Google Doc. Just look for the Draftback button! All the revision rendering is done securely on your own computer. Even large documents can be processed quickly. When your doc has been processed, you can play it back like it's a movie. Download it here Since Draftback is a Chrome extension, your Docs data never leaves your own computer, and, unless you explicitly publish an excerpt, the extension never communicates any sensitive data with any server-it just fetches it over a secure connection from Google. All the computation for rendering the playback is done by your own computer, and it's stored there, too."

"In 1973, near the height of the 'population bomb' panic, a computing programme called World1 offered up some predictions for the future. It anticipated a grim picture for humanity based on current trajectories. Tracing categories such as population, pollution and natural-resource usage, World1 calculated that, by 2040, human civilisation would collapse - a century after the best year to have been alive on the planet: 1940. This film was originally broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News as part of a report on predictions for the coming decades made by cutting-edge computing technology and leading thinkers of the time. The second segment features interviews with members of the Club of Rome, an elite think tank composed of government officials, academics and business leaders focused on the future of humanity. Their view is a bit sunnier, anticipating a world where global governments are forced to cooperate to solve complex problems, people widen their cultural horizons and work fewer hours, and limited consumption - not wealth - becomes a mark of prestige. Viewed today, it makes for an engrossing artifact, raising far more questions than it answers about humanity's ability to effectively predict its future and correct its course."

"Because the world is a sphere, it is impossible to draw it on a flat surface without distorting it in some way. These distortions are known as map projections, the mathematical rules for how to stretch each point on the Earth's surface onto a 2-dimensional plane."

"Because the world is a sphere, it is impossible to draw it on a flat surface without distorting it in some way. These distortions are known as map projections, the mathematical rules for how to stretch each point on the Earth's surface onto a 2-dimensional plane."

"Generating electricity is not only inefficient, it also makes pedal power less sustainable, less robust and more costly. To begin with, batteries have to be manufactured, and they have to be replaced regularly. This requires energy, which can completely negate the ecological advantage of pedal power. According to this research paper (pdf), the embodied energy of a 150Wh lead-acid battery (like the one offered with the Windstream pedal power generator) is at least 37,500 Wh, which equals 250 full charges of the battery (more sources: 1/2). In other words: if you can deliver 75 watts of power to the battery, you have to pedal for 500 hours in order to generate the energy that was needed to manufacture the battery. Because the life expectancy of a lead-acid battery can be as low as 300 discharge/charge cycles (sources: 1/2), you are basically pedalling to produce the energy required to manufacture the battery. If you also factor in the embodied energy of other electronics and parts, the ecological advantage of a pedal powered generator connected to a battery becomes rather doubtful. It might costs more energy than it delivers."

"Generating electricity is not only inefficient, it also makes pedal power less sustainable, less robust and more costly. To begin with, batteries have to be manufactured, and they have to be replaced regularly. This requires energy, which can completely negate the ecological advantage of pedal power. According to this research paper (pdf), the embodied energy of a 150Wh lead-acid battery (like the one offered with the Windstream pedal power generator) is at least 37,500 Wh, which equals 250 full charges of the battery (more sources: 1/2). In other words: if you can deliver 75 watts of power to the battery, you have to pedal for 500 hours in order to generate the energy that was needed to manufacture the battery. Because the life expectancy of a lead-acid battery can be as low as 300 discharge/charge cycles (sources: 1/2), you are basically pedalling to produce the energy required to manufacture the battery. If you also factor in the embodied energy of other electronics and parts, the ecological advantage of a pedal powered generator connected to a battery becomes rather doubtful. It might costs more energy than it delivers."

Muy interesante herramienta para pasar tablas de datos a visualizaciones gráficas, en vectores y personalizables... "RAW works with tabular data (i.e. information which is possible to record or track in a spreadsheet). There are many ways you can upload your data in RAW: Dropping a plain text file containing delimiter-separated values such as .csv or .tsv. File extension does not matter, as long as you use one of these delimters: comma, semicolon, tab or colon. Copying and pasting your data from a spreadsheet (e.g. Microsoft Excel, Google Docs, Apple Numbers...) or a text file. This is particularly helpful when you do not want to (or can not) export your data any time you change it or when you want to use only specific columns. Typing your data directly into the text area. While it is unlikely to use this option, it can be useful for editing your data."

Muy interesante herramienta para pasar tablas de datos a visualizaciones gráficas, en vectores y personalizables... "RAW works with tabular data (i.e. information which is possible to record or track in a spreadsheet). There are many ways you can upload your data in RAW: Dropping a plain text file containing delimiter-separated values such as .csv or .tsv. File extension does not matter, as long as you use one of these delimters: comma, semicolon, tab or colon. Copying and pasting your data from a spreadsheet (e.g. Microsoft Excel, Google Docs, Apple Numbers...) or a text file. This is particularly helpful when you do not want to (or can not) export your data any time you change it or when you want to use only specific columns. Typing your data directly into the text area. While it is unlikely to use this option, it can be useful for editing your data."

Artículo, en inglés, acerca de la utilización de móviles en el aula, etc... "Technology is like water to a fish. It surrounds us, and we rarely notice it, but we use it all the time. Instead of keeping children away from the water, we should teach them to swim. Any alternative would be unthinkable."

Artículo, en inglés, acerca de la utilización de móviles en el aula, etc... "Technology is like water to a fish. It surrounds us, and we rarely notice it, but we use it all the time. Instead of keeping children away from the water, we should teach them to swim. Any alternative would be unthinkable."

"Striking evidence has emerged that an ancient virus previously known only from fossil evidence has persistently infected some humans at very low levels for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. This ancient retrovirus is a kind of living fossil, and the discovery of an intact copy of it within the human genome poses questions as to how it has survived, and suggests others from the distant evolutionary past may lie dormant in the DNA of many species. ..."

"Striking evidence has emerged that an ancient virus previously known only from fossil evidence has persistently infected some humans at very low levels for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. This ancient retrovirus is a kind of living fossil, and the discovery of an intact copy of it within the human genome poses questions as to how it has survived, and suggests others from the distant evolutionary past may lie dormant in the DNA of many species. ..."

"This is not an environmental book, even though it is concerned with the environment. It is not a book to save the world, even though the world is clearly in trouble. Ultimately, A Matter Of Scale is a book about survival; about ensuring that every individual human has the means to save herself or himself from the crisis that is unfolding. And there most certainly is a crisis; like the waves of a surging river; small and irregular at first, but growing larger, creating whirlpools, rising in treacherous white water, and eventually inundating everything in its path. People know that the climate is changing, that species are being removed from the Earth at a rapidly increasing rate, that entire ecosystems are becoming shadows of their former richness; they know, but they do not understand. The environmental crisis is closing in on humanity from all directions, yet the crisis barely registers on this culture's list of problems. As we stand, humanity is doomed to a collapse that will leave only a few nomads, and a toxic, barely survivable Earth in its wake."

"Last year I went to West Kalimantan in Borneo to see for myself the effects of the runaway growth of the palm oil industry. I came home firm in the belief that Iceland would not continue using palm oil until companies delivered on their zero deforestation commitments. This is because palm oil has had devastating consequences for local communities, who are being displaced, and on endangered species like the orangutan (our closest relative in the wild), which are being driven close to extinction. Palm oil has many benefits, chiefly that its yields are better than the alternatives. But it is grown almost exclusively in areas of tropical rainforest, which are the 'crown jewels' of our planet's biodiversity. With 146 football pitches of rainforest being lost every hour in Indonesia alone, the urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated. And global demand is set to double by 2050. At Iceland the 1,000 tonnes of palm oil we used annually pale into insignificance compared to many of our competitors. As such a tiny player we took the decision that the only way we could create meaningful change was to shout very loudly from outside the established palm oil industry. So we decided simply to stop using palm oil until the industry cleaned up its act. It was our own decision to give consumers a choice where previously there was none. We never called for a wider industry ban, and accept entirely that a wholesale boycott of palm oil is not the right long term solution. ..."

"Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a gas essential for life- animals exhale it, plants sequester it. It exists in Earth's atmosphere in comparably small concentrations, but is vital for sustaining life. CO2 is termed a greenhouse gas (GHG) - a gas which absorbs and emits thermal radiation creating the 'greenhouse effect'. Along with other greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide and methane, CO2 is important in sustaining a habitable temperature for the planet: if there were absolutely no GHGs, our planet would be simply too cold. It has been estimated that without these gases, the average surface temperature of the Earth would be about -18 degrees celcius.1 Since the Industrial Revolution, however, energy-driven consumption of fossil fuels has led to a rapid increase in emissions of CO2, disrupting the global carbon cycle and leading to a planetary warming impact. As an international community, UN member parties have set a target of limiting average warming to 2 degrees celcius above pre-Industrial temperatures."

"Open with a question or two. Another favorite education writer of mine, the cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham, argues that teachers should focus more on the use of questions. "The material I want students to learn," he writes in his book Why Don't Students Like School?, "is actually the answer to a question. On its own, the answer is almost never interesting. But if you know the question, the answer may be quite interesting." My colleague Greg Weiner, an associate professor of political science, puts those ideas into practice. At the beginning of class, he shows four or five questions on a slide for students to consider. Class then proceeds in the usual fashion. At the end, he returns to the questions so that students can both see some potential answers and understand that they have learned something that day. What did we learn last time? A favorite activity of many instructors is to spend a few minutes at the opening of class reviewing what happened in the previous session. That makes perfect sense, and is supported by the idea that we don't learn from single exposure to material - we need to return frequently to whatever we are attempting to master.But instead of offering a capsule review to students, why not ask them to offer one back to you?Reactivate what they learned in previous courses. Plenty of excellent evidence suggests that whatever knowledge students bring into a course has a major influence on what they take away from it. So a sure-fire technique to improve student learning is to begin class by revisiting, not just what they learned in the previous session, but what they already knew about the subject matter.Write it down. All three of the previous activities would benefit from having students spend a few minutes writing down their responses. That way, every student has the opportunity to answer the question, practice memory retrieval from the previous session, or surface their prior knowledge - and not just the students most likely to

Finalizando la COP26, traigo a colación una nueva área de conocimiento e intervención que subraya como el cambio climático es un asunto interdisciplinar que se debe abordar multidisciplinar. Aquí encontraréis información y materiales sobre "psicología climática", "ansiedad ambiental"... So what is Climate Psychology? Five key principles ... Climate change is not a scientific problem waiting for a technical solution. It's an urgent, frightening, systemic problem involving environment, culture and politics. It engenders fear, denial and despair amongst individuals, evasion, indifference and duplicity amongst the powerful. It forces uncomfortable dilemmas about justice, nature and equality into consciousness. It challenges all of us in modern societies both personally and politically. To work with these dilemmas the CPA draws on a broad range of perspectives including philosophy, the arts and humanities, ecology and systems thinking. Our core focus however is in psycho-social studies and the psychotherapy field, approaches which help us to understand the unconscious processes and emotions which control our thoughts, beliefs and behaviour and which manifest in mutually reinforcing systems of defence in society. Anxiety, guilt and shame make it very difficult for people to face the reality of climate change and lead to denial and disavowal while the norms and structures of everyday life validate and reinforce these responses.

"The cryptocurrency uses as much CO2 a year as 1m transatlantic flights. We need to take it seriously as a climate Bitcoin's electricity usage is enormous. In November, the power consumed by the entire bitcoin network was estimated to be higher than that of the Republic of Ireland. Since then, its demands have only grown. It's now on pace to use just over 42TWh of electricity in a year, placing it ahead of New Zealand and Hungary and just behind Peru, according to estimates from Digiconomist. That's commensurate with CO2 emissions of 20 megatonnes - or roughly 1m transatlantic flights."