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"Sparky Sweets' self-styled "gangster" approach to education is bringing books like Jane Eyre and To Kill a Mockingbird to new audiences. Miranda Dobson meets him For those students who hastily scan SparkNotes, Wikipedia or CliffNotes before a seminar, the latest comedy sensation to hit YouTube could be a godsend. Sparky Sweets PhD invites his viewers to join him as he gives the lowdown on the great and the good of literature, urging his Twitter followers to, "Educate yo'self, son", by using his Thug Notes. Hailing from the streets of L.A. and claiming to have a doctorate in Classics, Dr Sweets delivers literary summaries and analysis in his "original gangster" style, in a way that he hopes will both entertain book nerds and educate/enlighten those who aren't into their literature. With an unprecedented surge of YouTube fans, Sparky has over 99,000 subscribers to his channel, and counting, and nearly 506,000 views on his most popular "drop" on classic American novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Also included on Sparky's reading list are George Orwell's 1984, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and popular culture's latest literary buzz courtesy of Baz Luhrmann's film, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sparky tells me the idea for Thug Notes came about as a result of his "frustration with the world of academia." "In my opinion," he says, "an academic's job should be to utilise their passion for the classics to make the gift of literature available to everyone. Unfortunately, in my experiences, that is not the case." Sparky believes academia is "enshrouded by a veil of unnecessarily convoluted terminology and intellectual one-upmanship", which negates the whole point of education. "Instead of promoting the universality of these works, they are building them up to a virtually inaccessible plane and saying 'If you want to truly understand classical literature, you have to get on my level.' So Thug Notes is my way of tri

Il video che illustra l'articolo è quello delle Thug Notes per Hamlet.

MOOC News and Reviews is an online publication devoted to thoughtful critique of individual MOOC courses and to discussion of the evolving MOOC landscape. We are independent and user-centric, and our goal in every review is to answer for readers, "What will I experience in this course and how will it impact my life?"

di Robert McGuire segnalato da S. Downes su Twitter

"Posted by Dario Taraborelli on August 2, 2012 Improving the quality of articles has long been one of the primary aims of contributors to Wikipedia, and is one of the Wikimedia movement's 2010-15 strategic priorities, but measuring it objectively has remained a challenge. In 2005, Nature famously reported that Wikipedia articles on scientific topics contained just four errors per article on average, compared to three errors per article in the online edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Britannica objected to the report, but Nature stood by it, and the report remains widely cited today. Since that time, however, there have been relatively few independent analyses of Wikipedia article quality, despite the enormous growth of the project. Wikipedia today counts more than 23 million articles across languages (more than 4 million articles in the English Wikipedia alone) compared to 3.7 million total articles in 2005; today it ranks 6th by overall traffic according to Alexa, while it ranked 37th in 2005. (...) The Wikimedia Foundation is announcing the release of a pilot study conducted by Epic, an e-learning consultancy, in partnership with Oxford University - "Assessing the Accuracy and Quality of Wikipedia Entries Compared to Popular Online Alternative Encyclopaedias: A Preliminary Comparative Study Across Disciplines in English, Spanish and Arabic." The study compared a sample of English Wikipedia articles to equivalent articles in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Spanish Wikipedia to Enciclonet, and Arabic Wikipedia to Mawsoah and Arab Encyclopaedia. 22 articles in the sample were blind-assessed by 2 to 3 native speaking academic experts each, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The small size of the sample does not allow us to generalize the results to Wikipedia as a whole. However, as a pilot primarily focused on methodology, the study offers new insights into the design of a protocol for expert assessment of encyclopedic contents. For our editor community a

"What it is What is mind mapping Freeplane is a free and open source software application that supports thinking, sharing information and getting things done at work, in school and at home. The core of the software is tools for mind mapping (also known as concept mapping or information mapping) and using mapped information. Freeplane runs on any operating system that has a current version of Java installed. It can be run locally or portably from removable storage like a USB drive. Application areas Application areas Freeplane supports much more than classic static mind mapping. This is illustrated by the mind map Application areas on the right which summarizes the kind of tasks supported by Freeplane. Click on the hyperlink below the image to navigate the map. Read the node called Caption to learn how to navigate the map and unhide hidden information. And click the node Demonstration creating a map to see how easy it is to make a map. In the center of the map Application areas you see an elliptical form which contains the central topic (root node) of the map. Extending from it are branches with subtopics (child nodes). At the border you see free topics which are independent of the root-tree. All topics can be formatted or styled and can contain text, hyperlinks, pictures and more; and can be connected with labelled lines or arrows. Also a topic (node) can represent hidden information which shows when the user wants it or can be automatically executed (formula). Or content can be password protected or connected to a particular time or filter."

"What are my ISBN options? You have four ISBN options: you can either use a CreateSpace-Assigned ISBN, a Custom ISBN*, a Custom Universal ISBN*, or you can use your own ISBN. Both custom ISBN options are offered through an agreement with Bowker®. Price Imprint Distributors CreateSpace-Assigned ISBN Free CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform CreateSpace Custom ISBN* $10 You choose CreateSpace Custom Universal ISBN* $99 You choose You choose Provide Your Own ISBN Existing ISBN Required You choose You choose"

"The Ultimate Section 508 Guide for Students In 1973, the United States government passed a sweeping piece of legislation known as the United States Workforce Rehabilitation Act. Intended to aid those with disabilities, this legislation provides funding for ...vocational rehabilitation, supported employment, independent living, and client assistance (and) authorizes a variety of training and service discretionary grants administered by the Rehabilitation Services Administration. As technology advanced, and both the workplace and society as a whole underwent significant changes, the need of those with disabilities also evolved. In order to foster equal access to the Internet and related technologies for all, the government added Section 508 to the Workforce Rehabilitation Act in 1998. What is Section 508? As amended by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (P.L. 105-220), Section 508 ...requires federal agencies to develop, procure, maintain and use electronic and information technology (EIT) that is accessible to people with disabilities - regardless of whether or not they work for the federal government. In short, federal law requires government agencies to create and use electronic devices, and content developed to be used with them (e.g., websites, media files, etc.), that people with disabilities can readily access. "

Questa guida è scritta in lingua molto semplice e illustrata da video, mentre la sezione 508 dell'ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act, un po' come la legge Stanca in Italia) in legalese originale è più difficile da capire.

"Cinematic Montage II from GameOvais 1 day ago All Audiences The second cinematic montage created by me. Over 300 movies used. I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed making it. Movies used are: 21 300 2012 12 Years a Slave 3:10 to Yuma 300 Rise of an Empire A Christmas Carol A Few Good Men A Good Day to Die Hard A League of Their Own A Little Princess Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter Alien Aliens Aliens vs Predator American Beauty American Gangster American History X Angels and Demons Apocalypse Now Apocalypto Avatar Back to The Future I,II & III Bad Boys II Bambi Bangkok Dangerous Beauty and the Beast Ben Hur Berverly Hills Cop III Big Fish Big Hero 6 Black Hawk Down Blade Trinity Blood Diamond Braveheart Bridge on the River Kwai Brotherhood Captain America: Winter Soldier Cars Casino Royale Cast Away Catch Me If You Can Chronicles of Narnia Cleopatra Constantine Cool Hand Luke Crimson Tide Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Defendor Deja Vu Despicable Me II Die Hard District 9 Donnie Darko Drive Eagle Eye Edward Scissorhands End of Days Enemy of the State Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer Fast & Furious Field of Dreams Fight Club Forrest Gump Gangs of New York Ghosbusters GI Joe: The Rise of the Cobra Gladiator Godzilla Gone Baby Gone Gone With The Wind Good Will Hunting Goodfellas Gran Torino Grease Harry Potter: The Complete Saga High Plains Drifter Hitman Home Alone I & II Hook How to Train Your Dragon I Robot Ice Age Immortals In The Heart of The Sea Inception Independance Day Indiana Jones: Quadrilogy Inglorious Basterds Inside Man Into The Woods Iron Man I, II & III Jack the Giant Slayer James Bond: The Franchise Jaws John Carter Jonah Hex Jumanji Jurassic Park: The Trilogy Jurassic World Kick Ass Kill Bill: Vol 2 Kindergarten Cop King Kong Kingdom of Heaven Kung Fu Panda Lawrence of Arabia Leon: The Professional Little Miss Sunshine Live Free or Die Hard Lockout Loncoln Lone Survivor Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Lord of The