Sunday, December 30, 2018
Sunday, December 16, 2018
How to use VLC as a Media Player in order to Listen to Internet Radio
Languages are taught
in a different way today. Some years ago, students could sit for a
language exam without speaking that particular language. Nowadays
it’s impossible! Part of the exam includes listening and speaking.
How about using a radio to improve the level of the language? It
would be a good idea because students would start listening to a
native speaker, speaking at his/her own speed!
I do remember some
students who would take great interest to participate in a quiz.
Besides practising the language, they had to use their minds to
formulate the answers. The best of it was that as they were listening
to a live transmission, they could take part in it. On the other
hand, they couldn’t play back at the moment to re-listen to some
parts! So they had to listen in silence and work together as a team!
Today we’re
showing how to use VLC in order to listen to the many internet radios! It is available for Windows, Mac, Android
and Linux. Just click here.
Apart from using the
search field, you can search for radio stations by countries,
languages, and tags.
Sunday, December 2, 2018
Cpod : An Open Source, Cross-platform Podcast App
Listening and speaking are two of the most important assets in education. Students, teachers and parents need to listen to each other. On the other hand, communication consists in a 2 way traffic. In this sense speaking becomes important too.
Today with this explosion of electronic sources one finds that podcasts could be a wonderful way in order to promote better teaching, understanding and communicating with all the partners involved!
As podcasts involve the audio part, it becomes easier for busy people to listen to as they can perform other tasks whilst listening to the podcast.
It could help busy teachers to give instructions to students in order to listen to it at home or elsewhere. On the other hand, students themselves can produce wonderful podcasts to show what they have learned or else to work together in a project and explain the part played by each one of them! There could be many other uses for, in education. If one is creative, one can find numerous reasons to use a podcast in class.
Today we are suggesting a podcast which is free, open source and available for Mac, Windows and Linux. It is Cpod. One can download it from here. There is no documentation available online but it’s very simple to install and use. The cpod was mentioned in this article.
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Sourcegraph : An Open-Source Source Code Search Engine
One of the most challenging exercises when it comes to coding, is to remember a code you have used some time ago...but alas you can’t figure it out this time! What makes it frustrating is that you have built something on your own, where you have used a lot of time, now because of memory loss, you can’t simply remember how you did it!
Well today we’re presenting Sourcegraph to our ICT students. Sourcegraph is a free, open-source, self-hosted code search and intelligence server that helps developers find, review, understand, and debug code. Use it with any Git code host for teams of any size. Start using it now, then install the Sourcegraph Docker image on your private code.
Search in files and diffs on your private code using simple terms, regular expressions, and other filters. Syncs repositories with your code host and supports searching any commit/branch, with no indexing delay.
One can use it on a browser too as an extension (Firefox or Chrome).
Sunday, November 4, 2018
Open Source 3D Printing
It’s very easy to go and buy from shops ready made products if money is not a problem. Yet as educators, we know that money is a problem for most students. Besides the financial problem, one wishes to present our students with a challenge: why not build it yourself? In this case open source becomes an integral part of modern education where students do their research work and make the product themselves! It might take much longer but the learning benefits outweigh all challenges!
We wish to introduce something which is gaining popularity nowadays: 3D printing!
Open Source 3D Printing eliminates all the issues created by proprietary products. Not only does it reduce costs, it enables easier innovation to solve issues faced during 3D manufacturing.
Apparently, the phrase, “Open Source 3D Printing” is also gaining popularity as is evident with a simple search online.
It is now possible for users to completely go Open Source, making it possible to greatly reducing production time and manufacturing costs!
Some quick examples where 3D printing is of immense use are:
- Vehicles
- Environment
- Construction
- Dentistry
- Gadgets and Tools
- Organs
More information is found in this website. YouTube videos are found here. Another interesting website would be here. If you would like to read about the best open source 3D printer, go to this website.
Monday, October 22, 2018
jBilling : Complex billing solved
Some students in high school are practically in a
very delicate situation: they’re still studying, yet they are on
the verge of coming into close contact with the business world. One
hand they’re studying in class, on the other hand they would like
to have some experience in the real world!
Today
we’re presenting jBilling. It is the world’s leading open source
billing solution as it gives you all the flexibility and customizable
options you need for highly complex billing. Students will learn how
to bill future clients in their own business office etc…
As
it is open source, one can change the program according to his own
business model! One can add new items as well. jBilling
lets you get to market fast with your innovative products and
services by allowing you to isolate
your custom code and change it
whenever you need to.
The
official website is here.
YouTube
tutorials are here.
Some
screenshots are here.
Forum
(practical challenges).
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Open Online Physical Education Network
How many teachers seem to hold all their notes,
books, experience under a tight padlock? It seems that they are
holding on to their ‘secret’ lessons! Well the advantage of
having an open mentality and sharing your experience means that
others will share too. Consequently one gains rather than loses
information, tips etc…!!
This
is the experience of the Open Source software. Besides, some
challenges can never be solved by one person. More people means more
input. It’s a win win situation.
Today
we’re presenting just a normal website. Yet it is completely open.
One can give one’s contribution. It regards the physical education
of our students. It was created for the US but one can adopt it for
other countries of the world [obviously doing the necessary changes].
It
is Open Online Physical Education
Network. Hopefully more teachers in
other areas will develop the same concept of sharing online other
educational ideas with the rest of the community.
Sunday, September 23, 2018
DocuWiki : Another way of creating an online space for students, parents and teachers!
One knows, that during lessons there is never enough time for students to learn. They need time after the lesson to try to understand it with their own pace. Others might need more information to understand really well. Some students would need to look for more information, to compare the received information with other sites.
Some projects in schools would need colloboration from other schools. All this could be done using docuwiki! School could host their own server (computer). This space would be accessible just by school students and other persons allowed by the school administration.
DokuWiki is a simple to use and highly versatile Open Source wiki software that doesn't require a database. It is loved by users for its clean and readable syntax. The ease of maintenance, backup and integration makes it an administrator's favorite. Built in access controls and authentication connectors make DokuWiki especially useful in the enterprise context and the large number of plugins contributed by its vibrant community allow for a broad range of use cases beyond a traditional wiki.
For downloads, questions, forum and other queries one has to go here. If one prefers YouTube videos, it is here.
Some projects in schools would need colloboration from other schools. All this could be done using docuwiki! School could host their own server (computer). This space would be accessible just by school students and other persons allowed by the school administration.
DokuWiki is a simple to use and highly versatile Open Source wiki software that doesn't require a database. It is loved by users for its clean and readable syntax. The ease of maintenance, backup and integration makes it an administrator's favorite. Built in access controls and authentication connectors make DokuWiki especially useful in the enterprise context and the large number of plugins contributed by its vibrant community allow for a broad range of use cases beyond a traditional wiki.
For downloads, questions, forum and other queries one has to go here. If one prefers YouTube videos, it is here.
Sunday, September 9, 2018
SoX : the Swiss Army knife of sound processing programs!
Walking in
any part of the Western Civilization, one notices that music has
become easily accessible and more popular. One notices people walking
with headphones nearly most of the time! One can see people talking
on their own (!). Our young students are crazy for music. Besides one
uses various formats of audio files. Transferring an audio file to
anther media outlet is simply, yet not all apps can read all kinds of music!
We
have experience with students in classes when they record other
sounds on their mobile/laptop etc...but then they cannot hear it on
some media outlets!
Today
we are suggesting SoX, what is called the swiss army knife for
sound processing programs! We have to make you aware that
it calls for a steep learning curve. It seems so daunting in the
beginning, but that’s what communities are for – to help you sort
out any teething problems! It could be installed on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Monday, August 27, 2018
0 A.D. Is A Free, Open-Source, Historical Real Time Strategy (RTS) Game.
“Macedonia or Macedon was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later the dominant state of Hellenistic ...”
Imagine this kind of introduction in a history lesson...would you be cut off? Would you sleep in class? Would you start fiddling around?
Well, today we’re presenting 0 A.D. is a Free, Open-Source, Historical Real Time Strategy (RTS) Game. It’s a game which students (why not parents too?!) play to learn historical facts by having some time understanding how past generations dealt with life challenges! The students would go back in time in encounter these generations and understand better their challenges in a given historical time! What an excellent way to bring history so near our life today!
Students would not be passive listeners but feel empowered to see things from a different point of view. It will surely help them to see today’s life from a different perspective and be more prepared to face challenges!
It’s an open source game which means that it could be played on mac, windows and linux OS.
More info is here.
YouTube videos (which are very useful) are here.
One can download it from here.
Forums, channels and contact form are here.
Imagine this kind of introduction in a history lesson...would you be cut off? Would you sleep in class? Would you start fiddling around?
Well, today we’re presenting 0 A.D. is a Free, Open-Source, Historical Real Time Strategy (RTS) Game. It’s a game which students (why not parents too?!) play to learn historical facts by having some time understanding how past generations dealt with life challenges! The students would go back in time in encounter these generations and understand better their challenges in a given historical time! What an excellent way to bring history so near our life today!
Students would not be passive listeners but feel empowered to see things from a different point of view. It will surely help them to see today’s life from a different perspective and be more prepared to face challenges!
It’s an open source game which means that it could be played on mac, windows and linux OS.
More info is here.
YouTube videos (which are very useful) are here.
One can download it from here.
Forums, channels and contact form are here.
Sunday, August 12, 2018
Hollywood Casts Open Source Software in Starring Role
There are still so many people out there who believe that a free program is non-sense or not worth it at all. We are used to pay for products, services etc...so when something is offered for free we say: what’s the trick? Is there something that I have missed? Are you kidding me?
Well, we’ve been saying that in our age transparency is imperative. The fact that an open source could be thoroughly looked at and scrutinized at, makes it a five star program. On the other hand, a propriety program, normally employs a small group of people who have access to the ‘inside’ of the program. The other side of the coin is that in Open Source, anyone who is able to code can 'see' the program and can contribute to it. Can a small number of people from the propriety company compete with such an incredible number of worldwide people who are willing to improve the program?
This time we have great news for open source: the famous Hollywood has teamed up with Open Source! This is not a joke. Yes it’s true! Could Open Source be a partner with such a famous brand if it hasn’t good quality to offer?
We are expected to see lots of positive results in the future! Let’s hope that it will be the door for more sections of society to make such a bold move and embrace open source! For more information click here.
Monday, July 30, 2018
Words, Images, and Sounds to tell interactive stories : all in Ren'py
Teachers and educators are all the time looking for ways and means to improve the delivery of their lessons. Today we are presenting a different answer. It’s Pen’Py.
Pen'Py is a visual novel engine – used by thousands of creators from around the world – that helps you use words, images, and sounds to tell interactive stories that run on computers and mobile devices. These can be both visual novels and life simulation games!
It should brighten up our language lessons! Students could be part and parcel of the story writing where they can show their talents and skills. If students were to take part, it won’t be boring, but quite interesting!
If one wants to go for documentation or to download it, one should go here;
You tube videos;
Examples of how it was used;
Pen'Py is a visual novel engine – used by thousands of creators from around the world – that helps you use words, images, and sounds to tell interactive stories that run on computers and mobile devices. These can be both visual novels and life simulation games!
It should brighten up our language lessons! Students could be part and parcel of the story writing where they can show their talents and skills. If students were to take part, it won’t be boring, but quite interesting!
If one wants to go for documentation or to download it, one should go here;
You tube videos;
Examples of how it was used;
Sunday, July 15, 2018
GoldenDict: a truly Golden Dictionary
It’s the not the
first time that we receive a note from somebody which has mistakes.
In today’s age, one can avoid that kind of embarrassment by
checking one’s words with a good dictionary.
Today we proudly
present GoldenDict: a feature-rich dictionary lookup program,
supporting multiple dictionaries' formats, perfect article rendering
with the complete markup, illustrations and other content retained,
and allowing to type in words without any accents or correct case.
It supports multiple
file formats. It has the ability to use arbitrary websites as
dictionaries. It has the ability to index arbitrary directories with
audio files for pronunciation look ups.
It has full Unicode
case, diacritics, punctuation and white space folding. This means the
ability to type in words without any accents, correct case,
punctuation or spaces (e.g. typing 'Grussen' would yield 'grüßen'
in German dictionaries).
It can pop up a
small window with the translation of a word chosen from another
application.
It is free and open
software (GNU GPLv3+ license.)
Sunday, July 1, 2018
Anki : Helping you to remember things!
We would like to help anybody who wants to memorise any type of content: students, parents and teachers.
Anki is a program which makes remembering things easy. Because it's a lot more efficient than traditional study methods, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn.
Anyone who needs to remember things in their daily life can benefit from Anki. Since it is content-agnostic and supports images, audio, videos and scientific markup (via LaTeX), the possibilities are endless.
For example:
-
Learning a language
-
Studying for medical and law exams
-
Memorizing people's names and faces
-
Brushing up on geography
-
Mastering long poems
-
Even practising guitar chords!
Besides, one can have several other features such as synchronization, flexibility, Media-Rich, Fully extensible and can handle decks of more than 100,000 cards!!
It is and open source and it can be used on any operating system!
If you want to download the program, please go here.
YouTube tutorials, please go here.
More tutorials are found here.
Forum where you can write about your challenges etc….go here.
Labels:
anki,
audio clips,
flash cards,
flexibility,
free,
fully extensible,
helping one's memory,
images,
media-rich,
open source,
optimized,
revision,
studying,
synchronized,
videos.
Monday, June 18, 2018
Explore, create and collaborate website.
A few supporters of open source, do so because all products are free. We know that in some families, countries, schools etc….the financial limitations could inhibit students from advancing in their career. We would help any student who because of money problems, cannot study. We do so because we firmly believe that education is the best investor. It is the best guarantee for the future of our planet earth.
On the other hand, once one enjoys the services or products of the open source world, one realises that other people have worked for long, tedious hours in other to offer the final product. The open source is great not because the people participating are the best in the world. Yet the fact that everything is out in the open, anybody can participate, suggest, examine, change and/or rewrite. The propriety programs are made up of a very limited group of people. They never reveal how they built the program. The users are not allowed to tinker with the program. You are expected to pay and use it as the programmer intended when he/she started to code it.
The open source is not simply a provider of alternative programs. You are not expected to pay and obey! It encourages people to criticise and change the way a program works. In other words it needs people who are very active and do give their valid contribution.
In the education department we are aware that most teachers have never been introduced in the sharing aspect of the open source. Some teachers are too jealous to share their lessons worldwide. They always point out that some might take advantage of their valuable work.
Surprisingly one notes that they have become educators because others have chosen to share their information, knowledge, expertise etc....!
The educators’ role is not to be let by others but by trying to do one’s part in order to change the world! If the others are not following the rules or are behaving badly, the educator does not change his/her way of life!!
We are aware that the change in the mentality of the educators does not happen overnight! It won’t change just because of one article. Yet we do believe that the open source is giving a great helping hand in changing the behaviour of educators, students and parents. The more we share, the better the world will become.
One positive thought is that social networks have introduced an important aspect in our lives – that of sharing thoughts, photos, discussing material, opinions etc….Let’s hope that schools and educational institutions will build on this social feeling in order to enhance teaching!
Today we are presenting the explore, create and collaborate website. We leave it in your hands to get to know how to use it correctly without indicating any additional help (ie to learn how to collaborate with other people).
On the other hand, once one enjoys the services or products of the open source world, one realises that other people have worked for long, tedious hours in other to offer the final product. The open source is great not because the people participating are the best in the world. Yet the fact that everything is out in the open, anybody can participate, suggest, examine, change and/or rewrite. The propriety programs are made up of a very limited group of people. They never reveal how they built the program. The users are not allowed to tinker with the program. You are expected to pay and use it as the programmer intended when he/she started to code it.
The open source is not simply a provider of alternative programs. You are not expected to pay and obey! It encourages people to criticise and change the way a program works. In other words it needs people who are very active and do give their valid contribution.
In the education department we are aware that most teachers have never been introduced in the sharing aspect of the open source. Some teachers are too jealous to share their lessons worldwide. They always point out that some might take advantage of their valuable work.
Surprisingly one notes that they have become educators because others have chosen to share their information, knowledge, expertise etc....!
The educators’ role is not to be let by others but by trying to do one’s part in order to change the world! If the others are not following the rules or are behaving badly, the educator does not change his/her way of life!!
We are aware that the change in the mentality of the educators does not happen overnight! It won’t change just because of one article. Yet we do believe that the open source is giving a great helping hand in changing the behaviour of educators, students and parents. The more we share, the better the world will become.
One positive thought is that social networks have introduced an important aspect in our lives – that of sharing thoughts, photos, discussing material, opinions etc….Let’s hope that schools and educational institutions will build on this social feeling in order to enhance teaching!
Today we are presenting the explore, create and collaborate website. We leave it in your hands to get to know how to use it correctly without indicating any additional help (ie to learn how to collaborate with other people).
Sunday, June 3, 2018
Kolibri: a free and open education for all
Education is very expensive. This is for many reasons: books, courses, tuition etc..
We've been offering open source material in order to make it possible for all to
educate themselves. Today we are presenting Kolibri. Kolibri makes high quality
education technology available in low-resource communities such as rural school, refugee camps, orphanages, non-formal school systems and prison systems.
We print language learning books, distribute digital language learning
materials, build tailor-made products, print smart notebooks and
more; all our products are to inspire the teachers and students to
achieve their potential in learning a foreign language. That’s what
we care most. We produce an extensive range of top-notch educational
materials including readers and activities, picture
dictionaries, online learning materials in various sizes, formats,
and color, as well as tailor-made products to meet the
customized needs of students and teachers.
Kolibri
installers, updates, and content can be downloaded once to a device
in an area that has an Internet connection.
That
"seeded" device can then share new content and updates with
other devices over an offline local network.
To
reach the most remote communities, a device can be carried by foot to
share installers, updates, and content with other devices over local
networks.
To
facilitate broad, low-cost adoption, Kolibri is designed to run on as
many devices and operating systems as possible, leveraging existing
legacy hardware or low-cost off-the-shelf devices. This includes
Windows, Linux and OSX. The cost of Android tablets is plummeting, so
we're also building Kolibri to run standalone as an Android app.
We
developed special processes to package online learning materials to
be taken offline. One of our innovations is a video compression
technique that convert the pen strokes and objects in a
blackboard-style video into scalable vector objects. In our tests, a
250MB video can now be compressed into just a single megabyte, while
retaining most of the original quality. This reduces the time and
cost needed to download a large set of videos, and allows a large
amount of content to be stored on a small, low-cost device.
Track
educational growth for individuals and groups of learners accurately
and easily, even in informal educational contexts. Kolibri comes with
tools such as a coach dashboard, exam creation, exercises, assignment
of content for differentiated instruction, and a recommendation tool
that displays useful and relevant next steps based on a learner's
history, progress and goals.
Sunday, May 20, 2018
A Modular and Open Source Router is Being Crowdfunded
The router is the
gateway for many people to the internet. We’re all in favour of
open source. Most of the routers we find on the market are propriety.
How about an open source one? There is a bunch of individuals who are
trying to find funds for such project.
It’s important
that we do support open source if we truly believe in freedom! It has been proved
beyond any doubt that open source supports 100% freedom for its users.
Other propriety programs and routers can’t guarantee that because
they don’t disclose their code which might contain anything.
More people, after
the Facebook scandal, are becoming aware of how many people are
watching us behind our backs, registering every movement of our
keyboard in order to sell that information to the first buyer!
Educating people is
not simply helping them overcome exams, but first and foremost
training them to be independent, in thought and action. Those
choosing open source are the ones who are not afraid to learn new
actions and practices for the sake of freedom of thought and
expression.
This router supports open VPN server. It has parental control features and an internet measuring tool.
Let’s give a free
world to the young people who are growing up today!
The link is found
here.
If you need more
information about other open source routers then go here.
Monday, May 14, 2018
Free Resources: OpenStax
Time is precious.
Today time has become more precious because we live in the age of
buttons and the answer we’re looking for pops up in a split of a
second.
When preparing
lessons, tips, comments etc… about lessons, we notice that most
educators simply repeat what others have been already doing for years.
On the other hand, those who are responsible for resources are not in
contact with the real learning situation of the class.
All these concerns
can be diminished if something like openstax becomes more popular
amongst teachers, parents and students. Finally they can adopt, edit
and change the textbooks!!!
Openstax is 100%
free. Any author can change the resources found according to his
situation! There is no need to invent the wheel as there are already
some resources which are commonly shared! They are written by
professional content developers who are experts in their fields.
Besides these resources undergo a rigorous peer review before
becoming available for the general public.
If one wants to know more just go to: openstax
Sunday, April 29, 2018
E-portfolio: Mahara
Exams have become
part and parcel of any education system. But is it just? An exam is
just one time photo! How many talents which students achieve or
master, yet they can’t show them during exams? A portfolio is an
example where a student can show many skills which are not easily
tested during exams!
Nowadays we speak of
an e-portfolio. Today we present Mahara: an open source
modular e-portfolio system. It can easily be integrated with other
educational programs or Learning Management System (LMS).
In one link one can
find several links to look for particular help. One finds a musical
tune of Mahara too! Link to Mahara.
If you prefer more youtube videos for help then go here.
More youtube videos can be found here. The best advantage of Mahara is that it is student centered. A student can simply not only present the final product but present as well the struggles and challenges faced during the duration of the action taken.
Sunday, April 15, 2018
Rogo – An e-Assessment Management System
One of the objectives in teaching is to have a reliable assessment of students. Students and parents too would like to know the true level of students.
Can open source help in this area? Of course it can! Today we are presenting Rogo. Rogo is a leading e-assessment system that is scalable, secure, useable and extensible.
If you’re interested in quickly seeing a demo, then go to: https://rogo-demo.nottingham.ac.uk/demo/register.php.
If you want to download the open source license go to: https://bitbucket.org/rogoOOS/rog/get/6.4.1.zip
For documentation please go to: https://rogo-eassessment-docs.atlassian.net/
If one prefers Youtube videos then go to: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rogo+assessment.
If any educator would like to see any case studies, please go to: https://www.eciu.org/case-study/rogo-an-e-assessment-management-system.
Can open source help in this area? Of course it can! Today we are presenting Rogo. Rogo is a leading e-assessment system that is scalable, secure, useable and extensible.
If you’re interested in quickly seeing a demo, then go to: https://rogo-demo.nottingham.ac.uk/demo/register.php.
If you want to download the open source license go to: https://bitbucket.org/rogoOOS/rog/get/6.4.1.zip
For documentation please go to: https://rogo-eassessment-docs.atlassian.net/
If one prefers Youtube videos then go to: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rogo+assessment.
If any educator would like to see any case studies, please go to: https://www.eciu.org/case-study/rogo-an-e-assessment-management-system.
Monday, April 2, 2018
Going for open software in schools
We’ve been writing
about open source software for some years now. We’re making more
popular, programs or operating systems, which otherwise would have
been unknown by the majority of our readers. This is because other
companies have lots of money which could be spent in advertising. Open Source does not have enough money to do the same kind of advertising. Hence it relies on the good will of those who have tried it and were satisfied 100%
What about changing
completely and going for open source? In some countries it’s still
not possible as it is centralised by government or an education
department. In other countries they are truly free to roam about and
go for a different choice as long as it helps the education of
students.
We are presenting
the case of a school which was very successful in going for open
source but a simple google search would lead to more examples. In all
cases, there is no need of a consensus from a large majority. In many
cases it all started with just one single person who was totally
convinced of the need for change in our IT choices! Read
this.
In a summary we are
going to outline some advantages for open source.
Open source gives
the power to students, teachers and parents to change, fine-tune or
re-program according to the school needs. This has two aspects: it
gives students the power to change programs according to their
wishes. In the meantime they would be preparing themselves for the
working world as they would have some practical experience to when it
comes working in the IT department. Lastly, any program used would be
more efficient, because if not changes can be made.
Open Source gives
the students the opportunity to study programs and learn how they are
programmed as nothing is hidden! On the other hand students will only
learn as long as they have a hands on experience. Open Source
provides enough hands on experience. Propriety programs would not
allow anyone to tinker with their program! Besides, if the company
goes bankrupt, nobody can continue their work. This is the typical
case of being locked out! In contrast, Open Source programs can be
continued or adapted by anybody in the world!
As an educator, I
hate to use programs which are costly or which are not available to
students. We use open source, so if the student wants to use the same
program, there are no restrictions (financially or legally)! Students
can download open source programs for free and as many times they
wish to. Practically it’s useless to keep an extra copy because
most of them change frequently and there is no limit as to how many
times one can download.
The biggest hurdle
is that when it comes to IT most people are very lazy. They are used
to some programs and they feel threatened if the IT department
changes their favourite programs! Others, never thought that a pc
could work without their famous operating system! It was a truly
complete surprise if other unknown operating system run their pc!
Another hurdle would
be that the teachers responsible for change would need a lot of time
to select the right programs and to become familiar with. Ideally
they would be financially compensated.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Encrypting your files on the cloud
Teachers would like
to use the most popular programs for their teaching. They do this
because students are already very familiar with them. Hence it cuts
down on the learning curve of how to use a program.
On the other hand,
both teachers and parents are concerned about privacy. Today we’re
presenting a program which can guarantee privacy though using popular
programs.
Everybody has heard
about the cloud. As students, teachers and parents are travelling
nowadays, they would like to be able to fetch their files wherever
they are. There are various clouds solutions out there, but the
cryptomator will ensure that one’s files are encrypted as soon as
they leave the pc/laptop/mobile phone towards the cloud.
Same wise when one
is downloading a file, one is sure that the file is secured and
cannot be read by third parties!
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Downloading challenge in some schools
Internet
speeds in schools are normally painfully slow! How many times teachers
and/or educators would like to show something online to students and
get frustrated with the speed of the internet?
It’s
one thing when a teacher is preparing a lesson at home and it’s
another when one is doing it in class. Although some websites can be
downloaded from home, others need a direct link especially when
involves live data or a situation which is changing really fast.
Today
we present Xtreme Download Manager (XDM). Works with
all modern browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Vivaldi etc.,)
available in Mac, Windows, BSD and Linux. It downloads 5 to 6 times
faster!!!
It
is beneficial to take over downloads and
saving streaming videos from web. XDM has built in video converter
which lets you convert downloaded videos to popular MP4 and MP3
formats.
It
resumes broken/dead downloads caused by connection problem, power
failure or session expiration. XDM can save video from YouTube,
Dailymotion, Vimeo, Facebook and thousands of popular video sharing
sites.
If
one wants to download it, simply go here.
If one prefers some help via videos, then here is the link. Here
are some pics.
Sunday, February 18, 2018
weeWX: open source software for your weather station
Some
schools did experiment with a change in methodology ie how to teach
students today. They are going for project based teaching. One of
them could be the setup of a weather station! Obviously it involves
the collaboration of several teachers and students but that is a
great asset for students today as nobody can work all alone. They see
the example of teachers helping each other. They see various students
giving their input,comments,
questions…..and that makes teaching and learning real fun! It could be the best preparation for their future when they would be called to work with different type of people!
Today
we are presenting an open source program called weeWX.
On the same page one can: download; read documentation; go through
the users’ group; learn how to publish readings etc…...If one
prefers youtube videos in order to learn, here is the link.
An interesting factor is that most schools are using the raspberry
pi 3 in order to maintain the weather station!!
The
weeWX program can do several things:
Sunday, February 4, 2018
Creating and maintaining projects in school : GanttProject
Some schools are
leaving the lecture lesson type and moving towards the hands on
experience. Not only students need to work directly on a project but
they need to work with others, collaborate and change throughout the
experiment. It’s the learning process where students learn to edit
all the way through, as they interact with other students and
teachers.
The world they’re
going to work in one day, is based on projects. Hence it makes sense
if they start preparing for the future. Today we’re presenting
another tool in the hands of educators in order to help their
students write their projects: GanttProject. Some functions done by GanttProject are:
- Create tasks and milestones. Aside from the start date and duration, every task may have priority, cost New in 2.7, color and fill pattern, text notes and user-defined custom fields.
- Organize tasks in a work breakdown structure. Hierarchical tree where progress, dates or costs of lower level tasks is summarized on the higher levels. Summary tasks can be collapsed to hide tasks which are not important at the moment.
- Draw dependency constraints between tasks, like "start X when Y finishes" and GanttProject will take care of enforcing these constraints. You can add a lag or use other types of constraints.
- Create baselines to be able to compare current project state with previous plans..
- PERT chart for read-only view can be generated from the Gantt chart.
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Avoiding too many emails: SpamAssassin
The use of ict in
schools should have given more free time to students, teachers and
parents. Alas in some cases it did not happen! One of the reasons is
that when one opens up his/her email account, there are so many
emails! Email marketing is still being used. Some companies do sell
our information. In other times we do give our information for some
free goodies….yet in the end we are overwhelmed by the amount of
junk mail we receive. I’ve heard people saying that they have
hundreds if not thousands of emails in their inbox!! The overall
result will be that such people will not open their email account as
they see it as an impossible task even though they receive urgent
emails!
Is there a solution?
Well first of all working in a school we should all be educated to
start thinking before giving in our information. Will they share our
information? Please do take some time to read the information before
signing in!
Secondly we have an
open source program in order to train our email program to know
what’s spam (unwanted emails) and what’s not. We introduce
SpamAssassin. On that
page one has where to download; wiki; forum; documentation and FAQ.
If one prefers
YouTube videos then one should visit: YouTube
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
ArgoUML
ArgoUML is the leading open source UML
modeling tool and includes support for all standard UML 1.4 diagrams.
It runs on any Java platform and is available in ten languages.
ArgoUML 0.26 and 0.26.2 were downloaded
over 80,000 times and are in use all over the world.
If you need to download, read the manual
or write to the forum your own personal difficulties, you have to
visit just one single
webpage.
If you prefer a you tube video, it is
here.
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