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"Published on March 18th, 2013 | by Guest Author [Kate Lee] Infographics are becoming an increasingly popular method of communicating information quickly and clearly. Great designs can reduce the complexity of information, making a process, product or service easily understandable and accessible to the general public. And a good infographic means that all of that information is presented in a way that is aesthetically pleasing to boot. But have infographics become too good at streamlining information? Have they become the fast food of graphic design - quickly digestible, but lacking in substance? Infographics: Guilty As Charged The web has lots of criticisms levelled at infographics and it's true that many are poorly created, failing to fulfil their purpose, using Papyrus or other crimes against design. The main complaints when it comes to infographics are: 1. Creates confusion: the data is presented in a manner that takes a long time to interpret, is difficult to follow and creates additional complexity instead of providing clarity. 2. Inaccurate information: [...] 3. Too long: [...] 4. General ugliness: [...] The problem with infographics is that so many people think it's easy to create them, when in fact it's a particular subset of skills in an already specialised profession.[...] Data Visualisation Requires Thinking That being said, there are truly great infographics out there that tick all the boxes: accurate information, presented in an effective visual manner that helps the audience interpret and understand quickly. And so we come to the point of this post: with complex information rendered so comprehensible, without the need to read long reports and with the ability to look at pictures and share it with all your friends - is there a danger that infographics cause the audience to stop thinking? In short, the answer is no. In most cases where the audience needs to think, the data isn't simple anyway. The mission of infographics is to re

Titolo volutamente provocativo. Ottima presentazione delle "infographics", di cosa dovrebbero e potrebbero essere ma purtroppo spesso non sono, e degli risvolti cognitivi del loro uso.

Each activity-creation tool helps students develop historical thinking skills and gets them thinking like historians. Choose one of the tools below to begin. Then find and insert primary sources and customize the activity to fit your unique students

"When you think of an "app," do you think of something that you can open, hack, and change how it works? Meemoo wants to give you this freedom. If you can't open it, you don't own it. Meemoo is a framework that connects open-source modules, powered by any web technology. The way that the data flows from module to module is defined and visualized by colorful wires. If you can connect a video player to a TV, you can program a Meemoo app"

"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

"Oettingen's team call this strategy "mental contrasting" - thinking about how wonderful it would be to achieve your goals, while paying due attention to where you're at now and all the distance and difficulties that lie in between."

Filmed Feb 2010 * Posted Apr 2010 * TED2010 "Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as much as to teach. A prolific short story writer and blogger since age seven, Adora Svitak (now 12) speaks around the United States to adults and children as an advocate for literacy"

From http://www.stanford.edu/~efs/693b/TED1.html : "1. length: 8:13 2. overall speed (WPM): 154 3. vocabulary profile: 3K-94.2%; 5K-96.6%; 10K-98.4%; OL-1.2% 4. accent: US standard 5. comments: the speaker is just 12 years old 6. Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as much as to teach."

"Importing Feeds From the Internet Another very useful function that could potentially be used for some pretty cool uses inside of Google Spreadsheets is the IMPORTFEED function. If you consider the sheer volume of information throughout the Internet that are offered by feeds, just think of what you can do with this versatile function. How it works is pretty straightforward. Simply fill in the feed details into the function itself, surrounded by quotes."

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. ..."

"Author: Andy Carvin , EDC Center for Media & Community | December 7th, 2004 You may have noticed recently that lots of websites now contain little graphical buttons with the word XML on them. For example: XML button When you click on the button, all you see is a bunch of jumbled text and computer code. What's this all about? It's an RSS feed, and they're changing the way people access the Internet. RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a technical format that allows online publishers to share and distribute their content to other websites or individual Internet users. It's commonly used for distributing headlines on news websites. Bloggers use it to distribute summaries of their blog entries as well. RSS is written in the Internet coding language known as XML, which is why you see RSS buttons labeled that way. If a website publishes an RSS page, commonly known as an RSS "feed," this feed will contain summaries of all the recent articles posted on that site. For example, Yahoo News publishes news related to world headlines, national news, sports, etc. These you can all read by going to the Yahoo website. But they also publish RSS feeds for each of these subjects. Each RSS feed contains a summary of the most recent news stories posted. Similarly, the Digital Divide Network publishes RSS feeds for our news headlines, events listings and other content on our website. I even have my own RSS feed for articles that I publish on my personal blog, Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth. But why do RSS feeds look like a jumbled mess when I click on them with most Web browsers? It's because RSS feeds are meant to be read by machines rather than people. Software and websites can understand the data contained in RSS feeds and make it available to people on personalized websites, through software known as news aggregators, even through email. So when you aggregate RSS feeds, you're having a computer collect content from many different websites and organize them in a convenient pla

Linkato in http://iamarf.org/2013/04/20/racconti-ltis13/ , commento 42. RSS come empowerment.

Posted on July 11, 2013 by JimS By Harry Keller "...I don't really see the rush, the extreme hurry exhibited by districts to buy expensive iPads, and forgo other expenditures to do so, when this development in computing devices is still playing itself out. The next great device could be announced tomorrow and could put iPads on the shelf until Apple manages to come out with a newer model. Manufacturers are scrambling to entice consumers to their particular device, while almost entirely ignoring the problems that schools face. When a school chooses widespread adoption of a consumer or business product, it's taking a risk. Often, it's bowing to parental pressures at the same time. While we should applaud schools for overcoming traditional education inertia, we should also realize that some of these new things are just fads or early examples of an incompletely developed new technology. The fact that so many districts are going in so many directions indicates strongly that we don't know where these trends will end. Until we do, I think that wholesale adoption of iPads by high schools is a mistake. My specialty is science. I have yet to see a great science app for high school on an iPad. Mostly, they're just games, animations, and other ordinary stuff. My disclaimer here is that I run a company that puts out an online science application that I consider to be great and am currently porting to the Chromebook, iPad, and Android tablets. Vendors have to cover all bases eventually. I'd rather not have to spend all of this money on fads, but major customers are demanding it. The result will be higher prices."

Capisco, ma sai com'è: se utilizzi una piattaforma unica e costruita per essere ben integrata, ti troverai sempre senza (seri) problemi, al di lla di quale sia il sistema che adotti. Per quanto riguarda le tue esperienze pregresse non so proprio che dirti: per questioni legate alla clientela (ovvio che un consulente non può che adattarsi!) opero da sempre su sistemi senza la i davanti e non mi riconosco nella tua storia tormentata... Che ciò possa dipendere dal fatto che mentre da una parte ci mette le mani chiunque (magari malamente) dall'altra il tutto risulta piuttosto "blindato"? La mia è solo un'ipotesi sia chiaro! Ma appunto: pur seguendo una certa logica, non posso lamentare i problemi che hai avuto tu. Per "certa logica" intendo dire che non mi sono mai fiondato ad aggiornare un sistema operativo con l'ultima versione appena uscita (anzi: per la verità attendo sempre almeno il service pack 1 quando non il 2: attualmente lavoro ancora con Windows XP!!!), ne ammetto facilmente e con leggerezza l'installazione di utilities, add-onn, plugin ed amenità varie. Io però noto che, usando questo ambiente e software prevalentemente opensource, non ho mai riscontrato problemi a scambiare informazioni con altri, nemmeno con gli utenti con le "i" davanti da quali pur arriva in genere robaccia carica di fronzoli quantomeno inutili quando non fuorvianti. In ogni caso lungi da me criticare chi opta per apple: libero di farlo se si tratta di una scelta! Per la scuola invece sarei sinceramente molto più propenso ad utilizzare ambienti più aperti, meno costosi e meno "blinda utenti"!

Ma, sarà ma io non ho problemi nemmeno a interfacciarmi con utenti che usano altre piattaforme. E la mia esperienza negativa con Windows (o con Winzzoz come lo chiamano a volte in Toscana) è condivisa da tutti i miei colleghi che si trovano a usare i computer dei nostri laboratori. Forse i nostri tecnici non fanno corretta manutenzione (però anche noi abbiamo XP e non installiamo con facilità utilities varie, perché la password ce l'hanno solo gli amministratori, cioè i nostri ITP). Ci stiamo trovando bene invece con Linux, gli stessi vecchi PC con Linux girano 10 volte meglio che con Windows, quindi in una mia ipotetica classifica, il sistema operativo di Bill lo metterei in coda. Però hai ragione, per la scuola (soprattutto per i PC), sistemi e software aperti sono sicuramente la soluzione migliore. Via libera al pinguino ;-)

"Why a supposed German breakthrough in e-book DRM is just as dumb as the old e-book DRM By Cory Doctorow | Jul 06, 2013 " > The idea that copyright owners might convince a judge, or, worse, a > jury that because they found a copy of an e-book on the Pirate Bay > originally sold to me they can then hold me responsible or civilly > liable is almost certainly wrong, as a matter of law. At the very > least, it's a long shot and a stupid legal bet. After all, it's not > illegal to lose your computer. It's not illegal to have it stolen > or hacked. It's not illegal to throw away your computer or your > hard drive. In many places, it's not illegal to give away your > e-books, or to loan them. In some places, it's not illegal to sell > your e-books. > > So at best, this new "breakthrough" DRM scheme will be ineffective. > But worse, what makes anyone think this kind of implicit fear of > reprisal embedded within one's digital library is acceptable, or, > for that matter, preferable to old-school DRM?

"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

"Videogames are one of the fastest trending topics in media, education, and technology. Research across fields as disparate as science, literacy, history, visual processing, curriculum, and computer science suggests that videogames aren't just fun - they can actually be good for your mind as well. In this course, we will discuss current research on the kinds of thinking and learning that goes into videogames and gaming culture. We'll investigate the intellectual side of digital gameplay, covering topics that range from perception and attention in Left 4 Dead 2 to the development of historical understanding in Civilization to collaborative learning in massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft. Throughout the course, we examine the inherent tensions between contemporary youth culture and traditional education and new developments in games for learning that promise to help bridge that growing divide."

"...MOOCs are just the latest incarnation of bringing watered-down versions of culture, knowledge, and learning to a mass audience. What we see as the courses' flaws may well be their strengths, and they have the potential to carry those strengths to a broader audience than ever before. Problems arise only when we think of MOOCs as university courses rather than as learning for the masses. Yes, the vulgarians who run Coursera and Udacity deserve to be swept into the dustbin of history, and the fact that they seem not to have figured out how to profit from their enterprises suggests that they'll soon be hoist by their own capitalist petard. When they are, the real action can begin. As the history professor Jonathan Rees puts it, the fast-­approaching post-corporate-MOOC world "will almost certainly be a period of real pedagogical innovation conducted by people who are more interested in actual education than they are in becoming famous or just making a quick buck."..."

Giusto! Aspettiamo che l'azione inizi (e forse si può dire che è già iniziata! ;-) )

Non rinuncerei mai alla possibilità di usare i mezzi tecnologici per la diffusione della conoscenza, tuttavia è vero: non c'è nulla che possa sostituire la relazione didattica, nel senso di interazione significativa individuale.

""Scoot & Doodle, a social creativity site that blends the video conferencing capabilities of Skype with the playfulness of Draw Something." -GigaOm "This is a mind amplification tool that allows verbal and visual thinking to happen simultaneously." -Apple Distinguished Educator, Canada "Scoot & Doodle offers some of the capacity to do what I believe technology should be about. Technology should be about how it intertwines itself with the way we live and the way we do things." -WIRED's GeekDad"

"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.

"K-8 Intro to Computer Science is a free course that aims to demystify computer science and show K-8 students that it's fun, collaborative, and creative. The course is designed to motivate students and educators to continue learning computer science to improve real world relationships, connections, and life. Educators will foster an environment of communal learning that emphasizes risk-taking. This course will teach students about computer science, computational thinking, and programming. It will also teach that success does not come on the first try, just like the world's most difficult problems aren't solved on the first try. Challenge is good when it is supported by plans and tools that lead to success. This course will help students persevere in solving problems."

"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."

"MOOC.Well, what's that? The word MOOC is an acronym. I should at least say once what it stands for: Massive Online Open Course. That was the easy part, just to give you those words. Now to give a definition, that's going to be very challenging.For every one of those words, I think it's fair to say that there is a generally accepted understanding of what the word means, but then there is a substantial number of people who challenge that understanding, who try to push it further....

"From Week 1 Lecture Videos of "Teaching goes massive: new skills required" by Paul-Olivier Dehaye See https://etherpad.mozilla.org/pr8ZtLXODg and http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2014/07/09/congrats-to-paul-olivier-dehaye-massiveteaching/"

Chris Hoofnagle, director of BCLT's privacy programs | 3/6/13 "...We need to be less infatuated with "the cloud," which to some extent is a marketing fad. Many of the putative benefits of the cloud are disclaimed in these services' terms of service. For instance, a 2009 survey of 31 contracts found that, "…In effect, a number of providers of consumer-oriented Cloud services appear to disclaim the specific fitness of their services for the purpose(s) for which many customers will have specifically signed up to use them." The same researchers found that providers' business models were related to the generosity of terms. This militates towards providers that charge some fee for service as opposed to "free" ones that monetize user data. We should charge our IT professionals with the duty of documenting problems with outsourced services. To more objectively understand the cloud phenomenon, we should track the real costs associated with outsourcing, including outages, the costs of managing the relationship with Google, and the technical problems that users experience. Outsourcing is not costless. We could learn that employees have simply been transferred from the operation of CalMail to the management of bMail. We should not assume that systems mean fewer people-they may appropriately require meaningful staffing to fulfill our needs. As the expiration date of system wide Google contract approaches in June 2015, these metrics will help us make an economical decision. Finally, there are technical approaches that, if effective, could blunt, but not completely eliminate, the privacy problems created by cloud services. Encryption tools, such as CipherCloud, exist to mask data from Google itself. This can help hide the content of messages, reduce data mining risks from Google, and cause the government to have to come to Berkeley officials to gain access to content. The emergence of these services indicates that there is a shared concern about s

Attenzione alla data: alcune cose potrebbero essere cambiate nel frattempo.