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Un fumetto utilissimo e divertente per insegnare agli adolescenti che il digital footprint è importante. Dal blog di Caterina Policaro. In inglese.

Opening Remarks WIPO DIP Com 18 June 2013 By: Maryanne Diamond on behalf of the WBU [World Blind Union] "...I urge you to play your part in making a difference in the lives of these millions of people, by agreeing a treaty that is simple, usable and meaningful. We cannot accept a treaty which has no substance, nor, can we accept a treaty full of bureaucratic and cumbersome requirements. We cannot accept a trophy treaty that will not work in practice. When considering your proposals, changes or amendments to the text, please stop and think about what that change will make on the ground to the people this treaty is about. You have received copies of our positions on the key issues in the current text of concern to us. * Commercial availability in articles D and E will ensure the treaty fails * The treaty must allow for distribution to individuals * The treaty must not allow TPMs to be a block to access to a book by blind people Please ask us if you're not sure what the impact of text you are considering will be on the ground. We are here for the entire conference. ..."

Come dire che sarebbe da prenderla in considerazione no?

"Laboratorio a più di 400 About this webmix : No description last updated at: Apr 12, 2013 9:18:19 PM (...) 9Users of the Laboratorio a p.. webmix Created by Visalli"

Vedi http://iamarf.org/2013/04/12/bacheca-ltis13/#comment-14311 (Commento 1 di Natalia Visalli)

"luciab Posted April 29, 2013 at 11:49 pm | Permalink @Andreas #70 (e Claude altrove) Comincio a sospettare che ci siano molte cose invisibili sotto il cielo, soprattutto sotto il cielo di WordPress. Avevo provato a fare l'embedding di un video in un post di WordPress, incollando il codice per l'embedding (gentilmente fornito dalla fonte), appunto, direttamente sul "lato" Text del mio post. Controllato sul lato "visual", non appariva nulla. Tornando al lato Text, trovavo il codice… letteralmente moltiplicato! Non si trattava solo di un "no follow", bensì di un sacco di scritte misteriose. Alcune sospetto volessero far apparire la "attribution", ovvero la citazione della fonte del video. Non ha funzionato. Mi chiedevo perché, ma ora comincio a capire che "WordPress" non è uno spazio "vuoto" neppure nel lato Text, o forse il codice che tentavo di importare si trascinava appresso un po' di alieni… Immagino che piano piano capirò la logica che sta dietro a tutto questo. Spero, almeno."

Interessante argomento per chi insegna L2, ma anche no, ;-)

"MP3 From YouTube Flash Video ListenToYouTube.com is the most convenient online application for converting YouTube flash video to MP3 audio. This service is fast, free, and requires no signup. All you need is a YouTube URL, and our software will transfer the video to our server, extract the MP3, and give you a link to download the audio file. How To: Extract MP3 From a YouTube Video Enter the URL from any YouTube page, and this application will quickly retrieve the Flash video file and extract the audio as a downloadable MP3. By using our service you agree to abide by our terms. Enter YouTube URL: Once you click 'GO', you will need to wait a minute or two until we convert from YouTube to mp3. Please be patient while we do this. Once we have converted the YouTube Video to mp3, you will get a download link to get your YouTube mp3."

Vero quanto dice la descrizione, però c'è un mucchio di annunci pubblicitari pulsanti. Perciò meglio aprire una nuova scheda del browser per fare altro mentre si scarica il file audio. Utile quando l'audio YT è debole, come in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvI0dMcNCcA dopo i primi 28 secondi (su 56 minuti e 9 secondi)

Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the E-books Press Conference Washington, D.C. ~ Wednesday, April 11, 2012 "Earlier today, we filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, against Apple and five different book publishers - Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. In response to our allegations, three of these publishers - Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster - agreed to a proposed settlement. If approved by the court, this settlement would resolve the Department's antitrust concerns with these companies, and would require them to grant retailers - such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble - the freedom to reduce the prices of their e-book titles. The settlement also requires the companies to terminate their anticompetitive most-favored-nation agreements with Apple and other e-books retailers. In addition, the companies will be prohibited for two years from placing constraints on retailers' ability to offer discounts to consumers. They will also be prohibited from conspiring or sharing competitively sensitive information with their competitors for five years. And each is required to implement a strong antitrust compliance program. These steps are appropriate - and essential in ensuring a competitive marketplace. Beginning in the summer of 2009, we allege that executives at the highest levels of the companies included in today's lawsuit - concerned that e-book sellers had reduced prices - worked together to eliminate competition among stores selling e-books, ultimately increasing prices for consumers. As a result of this alleged conspiracy, we believe that consumers paid millions of dollars more for some of the most popular titles. During regular, near-quarterly meetings, we allege that publishing company executives discussed confidential business and competitive matters - including Amazon's e-book retailing practices - as part of a conspiracy

"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

"A blogger claiming to be "A Gay Girl in Damascus" attracted a lot of online attention. But when she was reported kidnapped, some journalists became suspicious. From Carvin's Storify of the incident: Around this time I received a Twitter direct message from @DannySeesIt, a Syrian I've known since the Egyptian revolution. He's given me permission to publish the text of his DM: "I'm asking about that today most of the day and I have some solid connection in the lesbian scene in Damascus. No one knows her." Danny's comment struck me as odd, especially based on all the people I knew who were vouching for her online. I replied to him: I have from a good source that she is indeed real. We'll see, though. (...) Andy Carvin ✔ @acarvin And we have a confession: Tom MacMaster is #Amina! http://bit.ly/lLIY83 9:17 PM - 12 Jun 2011 (...) Andy Carvin ✔ @acarvin If we could only calculate the sheer number of hours we spent this week on #Amina, each one of which was an hour spent not on Syria itself. 9:28 PM - 12 Jun 2011"

"By Harry Keller Editor, Science Education Despite plenty of nay-sayers, the textbook is dead. It just doesn't know it yet and continues on walking about as though alive. Textbooks have evolved considerably over the last fifty years and even somewhat in the previous fifty years. I even have one, A Text-Book of Physics, on my bookshelf beside me that was printed in 1891. It has some line drawings and no color. Its size is about 5"x8". Today, textbooks have lots of colorful images, plenty of side bars, and lots of engaging questions sprinkled about on their heavy-weight glossy paper stock. They also have tons of advice to teachers on how to use them effectively. They've gone about as far as they can go with paper as the medium. (...) You can learn faster and learn more than you think you can. Textbooks do not tap into our brains to realize that learning potential. New software that uses true active learning will. By so doing, it will eliminate textbooks of all forms, both printed and online, both passive and so-called interactive. Today, the textbook is a zombie. It's just waiting for that wooden stake or silver bullet to put it to a well-deserved rest."

Interessante la coincidenza con http://blog-micromega.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2013/07/22/boscaino-guastavigna-libri-di-testo-digitali-un-ragionevole-stop/ , già bookmarkato qui da Francesco Vallotto.

Analisi decisamente più interessante rispetto alle precedenti (citate) perchè vola decisamente più alta evitando di impantanarsi sulla falsa questione del formato dei contenuti per ragionare piuttosto di metodo. Ho condiviso filosofia e conclusioni

"Here's the lastest video educator's are jacked about: [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UFpe3Up9T_g ] I like much about this video. I like the message. I like the way it's shot. I like the girls. What I don't like is the perception that this is the girl's invention. It's not. These girls are likely no more into inventing and making than most girls their age. While I might be able to look past that, and I can, I don't like the perception that this is authentic as it suggests. Which raises the larger question of authentic student voice. I remember first being struck by this when this video came out about 6 years ago: [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_A-ZVCjfWf8 ] It's an iteration of Michael Wesch video using college aged students. When I saw the k-12 version it just didn't sit well with me. The signs the students held seemed to be the language and ideas of adults. I had a hard time thinking any 5 year old would use the phrase "engage me". But still I thought the video had value but I never used them to share with others. (...) If you're still jacked about the little girls video, that's okay, show it to your young girls, encourage them to explore science but let's have enough awareness to know when we're being sold something. My point with this little wander through video is let's advocate for student voice but not fake ones. Our students do have a voice. Most of them are childlike, full of child like ideas and most aren't as eloquent as adults because they aren't adults. That's what we're supposed to be doing, helping them develop that voice. Yet we do have some that are ready for prime time and we should provide ways for them to share. I know some districts have had students keynote. I think that's great, as long as the core of their story is their own, not the districts or their teachers. I'd way rather listen to a student share a less polished message that was their ow

Vedi anche il commento di Stephen Downes in http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=61423

"Hackety Hack will teach you the absolute basics of programming from the ground up. No previous programming experience is needed! With Hackety Hack, you'll learn the Ruby programming language. Ruby is used for all kinds of programs, including desktop applications and websites."

"Are you curious about the Helpouts experience? Take a free test spin with a member of the Helpouts Team! You'll get a firsthand tour of the product and see just how easy it is to receive help over video chat. Schedule a time with one of our Helpouts Specialists, or see who is available now! Our team of knowledgeable specialists looks forward to showing you how it all works. If there is a long queue to join this Helpout, feel free to watch our intro video instead!"

La mia recenzione di questo "helpout sugli helpout": "Ronnie was very patient and gave very clear answers. As to whether people from other countries than Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, U.K., and the U.S. (see https://support.google.com/helpouts/answer/3164468?hl=en&ref_topic=14126 ) would be allowed to offer helpouts in future, he said this is planned. As to the difference between helpouts and hangouts, he explained that though helpouts are using the hangout platform, they are a different service. And when asked if helpout participants can use the live captioning app that can be used in hangouts (see https://hangout-captions.appspot.com/ ), he said no. When I asked why the "Introducing Helpouts by Google" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-VFC9AQM1k video is uncaptioned, and the video embedded in the "Find out what it's like to get a Helpout!" https://helpouts.google.com/111421743141645456280/ls/b41c1faef6b76d0f page is not only uncaptioned, but also uncaptionable via e.g. streaming it to amara.org, because if you try to open it on youtube, you get to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=picasacid , which says: "An error occurred during validation. This video does not exist. Sorry about that." he candidly said he couldn't answer and suggested using the feedback, which I'm doing. Same reply when I asked if Google planned to caption these videos. Sure, I would have preferred to get more hopeful answers to the questions about accessibility, but it was great to get candid ones, which can now be reported to the discussion lists of the Collaborative for Communication Access via Captioning - http://ccacaptioning.org/ . " No, è vero, Ronnie è stato bravissimo. Chissà quanti helpout si sarà sorbito quel giorno, e paffete arriva una che comincia a rompergli le scatole e il nuovo giocatolo Google, portandolo a riconoscere implicitamente che insomma, meglio gli hangout veri e propri..

"By Liana Heitin (...) In a growing number of K-12 schools, the use of 1-to-1 computing devices-including iPads, laptops, and Chromebooks-is becoming a central part of instruction. For teachers making the digital leap, one of the greatest hurdles can be figuring out how to manage the tech-infused classroom. How do you keep kids, who suddenly have the Internet at their fingertips, on task? How do you ensure the devices are safe and well-maintained? And how do you compete with your most tech-savvy students? (...)"I think this is the new frontier frankly with classroom management. We've never confronted this," said Kyle Redford, a 5th grade teacher at Marin Country Day School in Corte Madera, Calif. "

Suggerimenti interessanti su come assicurarsi che gli allievi facciano quel che devono fare in classe con aggeggi web-connessi anziché lasciarsi trascinare da altre cose. Ma si tratta proprio di una "nuova frontiera" per gli insegnanti? In tempi pre-web, era lo stesso quando mandavi gli allievi a far ricerca in biblioteca, o gli facevi fare lavoro di gruppo sul prato della scuola, no?

Aggiungo solo questo: che se si va a scuola per lavorare in modalità 1-to-1, tanto valeva restarsene a casa, no? Va bene per brevi periodi di tempo e per scopi precisi, ma altrimenti la scuola è preziosa per comunicare con l'insegnante o lavorare a coppie o in gruppo. Socializzare e costruire la comunità, insomma.

"If there is no signed written agreement, then the work isn't for hire, and you start out with all the rights. If there is a written agreement, it should be entered into before you create the work. Beware of after-the-fact attempts to take away your rights by calling the work "for hire," for example by sending you a check whose endorsement line says that your signature is your agreement that the work was for hire."

Cf. https://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/translations%2FCoursera%20Translator%20TOS.pdf , l'accordo imposto da Coursera ai volontari che traducono i sottotitoli dei video di lezioni.

Example + comment: "This language is designed to grab all rights from a free-lance author or artist. The first clause purports to create a work for hire agreement, which would mean that the author has no rights left at all, ever (and cannot even get them back through the termination right). The second clause takes a belt-and-suspenders approach: if for any reason the work is not for hire -- which it would not be if the commissioned work did not fall within the statutory categories -- the author explicitly assigns all rights not only in this work, but in any work based on this work, for the full term of copyright, for the whole world."

The example is very close to the language of https://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/translations%2FCoursera%20Translator%20TOS.pdf

January 9, 2013 by Jeffrey R. Young "...Setting the Price The company also revealed more details about how it would award certificates and how much it would charge for them. Students who want a verified certificate will have to decide early in the course and pay upfront. Paying that fee will put students on what the company is calling the "Signature Track." The company and colleges are still struggling to decide what to charge for the certificates, though in its latest announcement Coursera said the price would run $30 to $100. "It's a huge decision: You're essentially setting a market," said Daphne Koller, a co-founder of Coursera, in an interview this week with The Chronicle. "No one has ever priced this before." Officials also stressed that they would offer financial aid to students who demonstrated that they could not afford the fees but could benefit from the verified certificates. Ms. Koller said Coursera would continue to offer free unofficial certificates to students who passed some of its courses. So why would someone pay for the verified certificates? Peter Lange, provost at Duke University, which plans to offer one of the courses in the new pilot, said each free certificate would have a clear disclaimer on it: "It says something to the effect of, We cannot vouch that the person who got this document took the course or did the work." The new Signature Track could mean serious revenue for Coursera, and for the 33 partner colleges that will get a cut of it. Exactly how the colleges will divide that revenue is still being worked out, it seems. Mr. Lange said the question was on the agenda at the next monthly meeting of Duke's Advisory Committee on Online Education." So, when Coursera staff offered free Statements of Accomplishment as "Recognition" to the volunteers of the Global Translator community, they did so in full awareness of their lack of value and of the mentioned disclaimer

"About QuickScreenShare.com: QuickScreenShare.com is the simplest way to share screens with anybody: No registration required and completely free. Nothing to install for sharer or sharee (assuming you have Java). Works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Even lets you remotely control mouse and keyboard! This free service is a side project from the creators of Screencast-O-Matic.com and is still in BETA. We use it extensively for remote user support and collaboration. The current version creates a direct peer-to-peer connection, so if you're on a super duper secure school or company network it may or may not be able to connect, but in most cases you'll find it works quite well so give it a shot!"