Libre Planet

mtadros

stallmanI took several of my WDIM students from my GNU/Linux class to attend Stallman’s Libre Planet, a conference organized at the Harvard Science Center by the Free Software Foundation on March 21-22. In addition to presentations from FSF staff and board members the event included a full “unconference” day of work oriented toward progressing free network services and other areas important to the free software community as outlined on the FSF’s High Priority Projects list.

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985 by Richard Stallman, is dedicated to promoting computer users’ right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software — particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants — and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software.

The students were particularly ‘start-struck’ when Stallman appeared and gave a two minute talk and were disappointed that he left afterwards and that they did not get to hear him personally. They were looking forward to it. In any case, their feedback was great regarding the first day but were not really interested in the second day of the unconference.

virtual activism interviewed in second life

mtadros

As Executive Director of Virtual Activism, I was interviewed on SLCN TV for the work I have done in Second Life. The interview discussed Virtual Activism activities in Second Life as well as the creation of a replica of the St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, which had already been reviewed in the media before. To learn about the interview click here, and to see the interview click on the video below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODxS_VG4AXc]


Educause conference in Rhode Island

mtadros

Educause and NERCMP [Northeast Regional Computing Program] organized a confence in Rhode Island, March 10-12 2009 entitled Creative Intersections, Wise Collaborations, and Sustainable Technology. The conference explored how the many challenges in higher education IT form crossroads of opportunity for educators to work together across  campuses, and with peers in other institutions across the country, to find sustainable solutions and best practices for today and tomorrow. Discussions revolved around teaching and learning to enterprise systems and from e-research support to IT leadership. The conference was also a great opportunity to network with peers across US campuses.

Here are the sessions I attended and some details from that conference:

I- First Session:

The Cite is Right [Dartmoth College presentation]

  • Using clickers to advance student engagement.
  • Challenge was to generate lively debate and accommodate resistance and overcome fear and boredom. In particular international students have a problem with citations.
  • The questions were collaboratively written by the team and presented to faculty for their input.
  • Questions presented situations and case studies rather than rules and regulations sent to judicial affairs at the end.

Lessons:

  • facilitate with energy
  • professors have to be there
  • use it for multiple classes together and not just one
  • generate debate
  • use it sometime after each class has gotten to know each other [this creates classroom cohesion]
  • give out prizes [gift certificates etc]
  • manage contestants

II- Second Session [2-2.50 pm]Room 553

Web 2.0 Information Literacy: Wikis for Engaged Learning: using online collaboration to investigate cases and build knowledge

Presenter: Jay Fogleman, URI and Mona Anne Niedbala

How do educators capitalize on students’ comfort with ubiquitous online tools to leverage critical thinking and strengthen their information literacy skills?

Using wikis for research, collaboration, critical thinking and knowledge building.

Babson college presentation

  • use it as content repositories.
  • An evolving set of teaching notes for faculty using the case in the future.
  • Quick access to supplemental material
  • ability to include multimedia elements
  • give students exposure to tools being used out there [web 2.0 tools]

Used Confluence as wiki platform.

III- Third Session: 3-3.50 pm – Room 551

Twitterpated by Twitter and Other web 2.0 technologies for instructional purposes

presenter: Alexandra Pickett – SUNY

How available technologies like Twitter were used in a summer online course and can be used to enhance instruction.

Map of the world 2.0

To be more effective
Her best tools: seesmic, jing, youtube quickcapture, diigo, polldaddy, mogulus

IV- Fourth Session: 4.35-5.25 – Room 551

The mapping controversies web directory: harnessing students’ collective intelligence

two new ‘search engines’ that aren’t

mtadros

Well they are not exactly search engines.. they are more atuned to the semantic or intelligent web. One has already launched and the other is in the launching beta process.

wolframThe first is Wolfram Alpha, whose name comes from its creator,  British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram who insists it is not a search engine but rather  “a computational knowledge engine: it generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.” This engine is based on what he calls Mathematica and not on the semantic web.

He claims that Wolfram|Alpha’s aim is

“to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.  You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer”.

Here is where you can find out about Mathematica.

Naturally right now it is only available for English language searches and is not internationalized just yet.

imindiThe second is iMindi – which, according to its creators, “helps you collect your thoughts and share them with like minded people”.  Since it is still in beta, you need to register to try it and give your opinion.

putting keyword in firefox’s address bar

mtadros

If you are a Firefox user, you probably already know that you can just type a keyword in the address bar and you will get directed to the page you want.  Also, the default search engine is Google. Sometimes when we download an application like AIM or some toolbar like Ask,com, it suddenly changes our default settings. Here is how you can remedy that:

  1. To change the default search engine: In your address bar, type in:  about:config Approve the button that shows up telling you to be careful about changing settings. Inthe filter type
    browser.search.defaultenginename
    Double click that entry (or right click and choose “Modify”) and then type in the name of the search engine you wish to have as the default search engine.
  2. To make the keyword search in the address bar work if it stopped working, do the following: in the address bar type about:config Approve the button that shows up telling you to be careful about changing settings. In the filter type keyword.url then double click it and paste this: http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=

Hope this was helpful. It took me a while to figure it out. 🙂