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Jessica Smith

OATS - oats - 29 views

www.oatsoft.org

technology accessibility opensource software assistivetechnology freeware assistive source

shared by Jessica Smith on 15 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Jessica Smith on 15 Apr 10
     
    Open-sourcing offers great potential for AT software users. However, currently there are a number of barriers that stop its wider use within the AT community. It is generally difficult to find on the Internet and, until the OATS Project, there have been no specific websites dedicated to developing or downloading AT software. Open-source software can also be unfriendly to install, often obliging the user to download many different packages before it can be set up and used. Often it is still "under-development", poorly documented or technically demanding, something that the end user finds frustrating and irritating. To see just how complicated this can be for the lay enquirer, one need only visit the most well-known source of mainstream open-source products, Source Forge (http://sourceforge.net/). Finding OATS products here is like experiencing death by a thousand cuts! The OATS Project's repository will strip away all the technical complexity and provide via its database and search engine an efficient and intuitive way to access good quality OATS. By removing these barriers to open-source AT software, users will not only have a single point of contact for obtaining open-source software but volunteer developers will also discover a forum where they can develop ideas and write software that meets the real needs of specific end users.
Ed Webb

Please Sir, how do you re-tweet? - Twitter to be taught in UK primary schools - 2 views

uk.techcrunch.com/...e-taught-in-uk-primary-schools

twitter technology literacy education UK socialmedia

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK’s education system. And that’s not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
  • Traditional education in areas like phonics, the chronology of history and mental arithmetic remain but modern media and web-based skills and environmental education now feature.
  • The skills that let kids use Internet technologies effectively also work in the real world: being able to evaluate resources critically, communicating well, being careful with strangers and your personal information, conducting yourself in a manner appropriate to your environment. Those things are, and should be, taught in schools. It’s also a good idea to teach kids how to use computers, including web browsers etc, and how those real-world skills translate online.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • I think teaching kids HOW TO use Wikipedia is a step forward from ordering them NOT TO use it, as they presently do in many North American classrooms.
  • Open Source software is the future and therefore we need to concentrate on the wheels and not the vehicle!
  • Core skills is very important. Anyone and everyone can learn Photoshop & Word Processing at any stage of their life, but if core skills are missed from an early age, then evidence has shown that there has always been less chance that the missing knowledge could be learnt at a later stage in life.
  • Schools shouldn’t be about teaching content, but about learning to learn, getting the kind of critical skills that can be used in all kinds of contexts, and generating motivation for lifelong learning. Finnish schools are rated the best in the world according to the OECD/PISA ratings, and they have totally de-emphasised the role of content in the curriculum. Twitter could indeed help in the process as it helps children to learn to write in a precise, concise style - absolutely nothing wrong with that from a pedagogical point of view. Encouraging children to write is never a bad thing, no matter what the platform.
  • Front end stuff shouldn’t be taught. If anything it should be the back end gubbins that should be taught, databases and coding.
  • So what’s more important, to me at least, is not to know all kinds of useless facts, but to know the general info and to know how to think and how to search for information. In other words, I think children should get lessons in thinking and in information retrieval. Yes, they should still be taught about history, etc. Yes, it’s important they learn stuff that they could need ‘on the spot’ - like calculating skills. However, we can go a little bit easier on drilling the information in - by the time they’re 25, augmented reality will be a fact and not even a luxury.
  • Schools should focus more on teaching kids on how to think creatively so they can create innovative products like twitter rather then teaching on how to use it….
  • Schools should focus more on teaching kids on how to think creatively so they can create innovative products like twitter rather then teaching on how to use it….
  • Ed Webb on 25 Mar 09
     
    The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK's education system. And that's not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
N Carroll

Twurdy Search - Search for Readable Results - 61 views

www.twurdy.com

Searchengine search twurdy readability research

shared by N Carroll on 09 Jan 11 - Cached
  • N Carroll on 09 Jan 11
     
    Search engine - with readability built in "Twurdy uses text analysis software to "read" each page before it is displayed in the results. Then Twurdy gives each page a readability level. Twurdy then shows the readability level of the page along with a color coded system to help users determine how easy the page will be to understand."
Stan Golanka

Reading and the Web - Texts Without Context - NYTimes.com - 49 views

www.nytimes.com/...21mash.html

shared by Stan Golanka on 08 Feb 11 - Cached
  • It’s also a question, as Mr. Lanier, 49, astutely points out in his new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” of how online collectivism, social networking and popular software designs are changing the way people think and process information, a question of what becomes of originality and imagination in a world that prizes “metaness” and regards the mash-up as “more important than the sources who were mashed.”
    • Stan Golanka
      Stan Golanka on 08 Feb 11
       
      Core discussion topic? From this, I see a few discussion issues: 1. Do we prize "mash-ups" more than original work? Who is "we" in this? 2. If the answer to #1 is "yes," then the next question is: is this good or bad? 3. Finally, if the answer is "bad" to #2, what place do "mash-ups" have, and how do we help our students see the value in original work?
  • Web 2.0 is creating a “digital forest of mediocrity” and substituting ill-informed speculation for genuine expertise;
    • Stan Golanka
      Stan Golanka on 08 Feb 11
       
      How do teachers help students rise above this "digital forest of mediocrity"?
  • Mr. Johnson added that the book’s migration to the digital realm will turn the solitary act of reading — “a direct exchange between author and reader” — into something far more social and suggested that as online chatter about books grows, “the unity of the book will disperse into a multitude of pages and paragraphs vying for Google’s attention.”
    • Stan Golanka
      Stan Golanka on 08 Feb 11
       
      If Johnson's predictions are true, is this necessarily bad? How much of this concern is "nostalgia"? What would be lost from an academic p.o.v, and what migh be gained?
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Instead of reading an entire news article, watching an entire television show or listening to an entire speech, growing numbers of people are happy to jump to the summary, the video clip, the sound bite — never mind if context and nuance are lost in the process; never mind if it’s our emotions, more than our sense of reason, that are engaged; never mind if statements haven’t been properly vetted and sourced.
    • Stan Golanka
      Stan Golanka on 08 Feb 11
       
      Should teachers "fight" this, or embrace it? Can summaries/sound bites ever be appropriate for academic discussions?
  • And online research enables scholars to power-search for nuggets of information that might support their theses, saving them the time of wading through stacks of material that might prove marginal but that might have also prompted them to reconsider or refine their original thinking.
  • Digital insiders like Mr. Lanier and Paulina Borsook, the author of the book “Cyberselfish,” have noted the easily distracted, adolescent quality of much of cyberculture. Ms. Borsook describes tech-heads as having “an angry adolescent view of all authority as the Pig Parent,” writing that even older digerati want to think of themselves as “having an Inner Bike Messenger.”
    • Stan Golanka
      Stan Golanka on 08 Feb 11
       
      Can teachers moderate this attitude? Does our (adults) use/non-use of technology help breed this attitude?
  • authors “will increasingly tailor their work to a milieu that the writer Caleb Crain describes as ‘groupiness,’ where people read mainly ‘for the sake of a feeling of belonging’ rather than for personal enlightenment or amusement. As social concerns override literary ones, writers seem fated to eschew virtuosity and experimentation in favor of a bland but immediately accessible style.
    • Stan Golanka
      Stan Golanka on 08 Feb 11
       
      Does this ring true to educators? Are social concerns and literary conerns opposites? How does web publishing affect "literary" publishing, as opposed to "non-literary" publishing?
  • However impossible it is to think of “Jon & Kate Plus Eight” or “Jersey Shore” as art, reality shows have taken over wide swaths of television,
elsjekool

Paul Ford: What is Code? | Bloomberg - 35 views

www.bloomberg.com/...2015-paul-ford-what-is-code

shared by elsjekool on 14 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • There are keynote speakers—often the people who created the technology at hand or crafted a given language. There are the regular speakers, often paid not at all or in airfare, who present some idea or technique or approach. Then there are the panels, where a group of people are lined up in a row and forced into some semblance of interaction while the audience checks its e-mail.
  • Fewer than a fifth of undergraduate degrees in computer science awarded in 2012 went to women, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology
  • The average programmer is moderately diligent, capable of basic mathematics, has a working knowledge of one or more programming languages, and can communicate what he or she is doing to management and his or her peers
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • The true measure of a language isn’t how it uses semicolons; it’s the standard library of each language. A language is software for making software. The standard library is a set of premade software that you can reuse and reapply.
  • A coder needs to be able to quickly examine and identify which giant, complex library is the one that’s the most recently and actively updated and the best match for his or her current needs. A coder needs to be a good listener.
  • Code isn’t just obscure commands in a file. It requires you to have a map in your head, to know where the good libraries, the best documentation, and the most helpful message boards are located. If you don’t know where those things are, you will spend all of your time searching, instead of building cool new things.
  • Some tools are better for certain jobs.
  • C is a simple language, simple like a shotgun that can blow off your foot. It allows you to manage every last part of a computer—the memory, files, a hard drive—which is great if you’re meticulous and dangerous if you’re sloppy
  • Object-oriented programming is, at its essence, a filing system for code.
  • Where C tried to make it easier to do computer things, Smalltalk tried to make it easier to do human things.
  • Style and usage matter; sometimes programmers recommend Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style—that’s right, the one about the English language. Its focus on efficient usage resonates with programmers. The idiom of a language is part of its communal identity.
  • Coding is a culture of blurters.
  • Programmers carve out a sliver of cognitive territory for themselves and go to conferences, and yet they know their position is vulnerable.
  • Programmers are often angry because they’re often scared.
  • Programming is a task that rewards intense focus and can be done with a small group or even in isolation.
  • For a truly gifted programmer, writing code is a side effect of thought
  • As a class, programmers are easily bored, love novelty, and are obsessed with various forms of productivity enhancement.
  • “Most programming languages are partly a way of expressing things in terms of other things and partly a basic set of given things.”
  • Of course, while we were trying to build a bookstore, we actually built the death of bookstores—that seems to happen a lot in the business. You set out to do something cool and end up destroying lots of things that came before.
  • Siri Anderson on 14 Jun 15
     
    A lengthy but worthy read for all non-programmers on code.
  • elsjekool on 15 Jun 15
     
    Explains code
Tonya Thomas

course-builder - Course Builder - Google Project Hosting - 3 views

code.google.com/course-builder

google coursebuilder coursedesign onlinelearning builder MOOC course resources tools

shared by Tonya Thomas on 25 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Tonya Thomas on 25 Sep 12
     
    Course Builder is our experimental first step in the world of online education. It packages the software and technology we used to build our Power Searching with Google online course. We hope you will use it to create your own online courses, whether they're for 10 students or 100,000 students. You might want to create anything from an entire high school or university offering to a short how-to course on your favorite topic.
Stacy Olson

course-builder - Course Builder - Google Project Hosting - 11 views

code.google.com/...course-builder

course_builder elearning onlinelearning google

shared by Stacy Olson on 12 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Tonya Thomas on 12 Sep 12
     
    Course Builder is our experimental first step in the world of online education. It packages the software and technology we used to build our Power Searching with Google online course. We hope you will use it to create your own online courses, whether they're for 10 students or 100,000 students. You might want to create anything from an entire high school or university offering to a short how-to course on your favorite topic.
  • Marc Patton on 21 Sep 12
     
    Course Builder is our experimental first step in the world of online education. It packages the software and technology we used to build our Power Searching with Google online course. We hope you will use it to create your own online courses, whether they're for 10 students or 100,000 students.
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