Storytelling life cycle

Stories bring us together, encourage us to understand and empathize, and help us to communicate. Long before paper and books were common and affordable, information passed from generation to generation through this oral tradition of storytelling. Consider Digital Storytelling as the 21st Century version of the age-old art of storytelling with a twist: digital tools now make it possible for anyone to create a story and...

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Sway the way ! Web presentations.

Sway is a free app from Microsoft Office. It lets you create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, newsletters, vacation memories, school and work projects, and more. Multimedia may be broadly divided into linear and non-linear categories. Linear active content progresses without any navigation control for the viewer such as a cinema presentation. Non-linear content offers user interactivity to control progress...

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Data synchronization

Data synchronization technologies are designed to synchronize a single set of data between two or more devices, automatically copying changes back and forth. For example, a user's contact list on one mobile device can be synchronized with other mobile devices or computers. Data synchronization can be local synchronization where the device and computer are side-by-side and data is transferred or remote synchronization when a user is mobile and...

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On-Line generators. Creativity?

One can discuss whether web-generators are useful or not. On the one hand, they don’t challenge our creativity, but on the other hand they make our life easier and save our precious time. Tasks requiring subjective assessment or synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scents and sounds, as well as high-level tasks such as strategic planning, currently require human expertise. In many cases, the use of humans is more cost-effective than...

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Data compression

Data compression can be lossy or lossless. Data compression is the art of reducing the number of bits needed to store or transmit data. Compression can be either lossless or lossy. Losslessly compressed data can be decompressed to exactly its original value. An example is 1848 Morse Code. Lossy compression is a data compression method which discards (loses) some of the data, in order to achieve its goal, with the result that decompressing...

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Design Tip 3 - Color Schemes Generators

A color scheme is an arrangement of colors based upon a color system, that is then applied to an illustration, design or work of art. Although most of us primarily work intuitively when it comes to making color choices, knowledge of color theory and an understanding of basic color principles can improve the appearance of an illustration. Understanding color combinations can help move an assignment along more quickly, especially...

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Shared Folders Linux

Select the virtual machine, click on Settings, the above window will open. Click on the plus icon to select the folder you want to share with the virtual machine. Here I share the c:\Users\...\Desktop\HostDesk (the folder names are case sensitive) on the Windows 7 to share with the virtual Ubuntu. The shared folder name is Desktop, which will be used by Ubuntu to mount it. Once you created the share, is time to start your virtual...

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Variables on Scratch

Variables are used whenever a value must be stored — i.e., if a project required the user to input a name and then remember that name, the name would be stored in a variable. With this, the name can be retrieved at any time; all the project has to do is check the value (which is the name). The look of the variable can be changed in to three forms: The normal readout, the large readout, and the slider. The form of the variable can be changed by...

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Guest Additions

The Guest Additions are designed to be installed inside a virtual machine after the guest operating system has been installed. They consist of device drivers and system applications that optimize the guest operating system for better performance and usability. Some of the extra features are: automatic resizing, seamless mode, the bidirectional clipboard, drag and drop, and more. ...

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Freeze ! I´ll save your state.

When you click on the "Close" button of your virtual machine window (at the top right of the window, just like you would close any other window on your system), VirtualBox asks you whether you want to "save" or "power off" the VM. (As a shortcut, you can also press the Host key together with "Q".) The difference between these three options is crucial. They mean: Save the machine state: With this option, VirtualBox "freezes" the virtual...

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Blogging safety guidelines

This post article is intended to students about to open their blogs to the web and student´s parents. Blogging is a thrilling activity, many enthusiast and professional bloggers describe the experience as "life changing". For that experience to be safe, there are a number of considerations you should know about, which I´ll share with you in this post. The following content is a compilation from a variety of sources, such as experts web sites,...

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Create your first VM

See the following two screencasts to learn how to create a simple VM. ...

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Introduction to VMs

The techniques and features that VirtualBox provides are useful for several scenarios: Running multiple operating systems simultaneously. VirtualBox allows you to run more than one operating system at a time. This way, you can run software written for one operating system on another (for example, Windows software on Linux or a Mac) without having to reboot to use it. Easier software installations. Software vendors can use virtual machines...

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Scratch project nro. 1

Lets create a maze ! Numerous mazes of different kinds have been drawn, painted, published in books and periodicals, used in advertising, in software, and sold as art. A maze is a tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage through which the solver must find a route. The pathways and walls in a maze are fixed, and puzzles in which the walls and paths can change during the game are also categorized as tour puzzles. The Cretan labyrinth...

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Intro to Scratch Part 1

Scratch projects are made up of objects called sprites. You can change how a sprite looks by giving it a different costume. You can make a sprite look like a person or a train or a butterfly or anything else. You can use any image as a costume: you can draw an image in the paint editor, import an image from your hard disk, or drag in an image from a website.  You can give instructions to a sprite, telling it to move or play music or react...

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Save your Scrached projects

The following two procedures should be done in all learning and practicing sessions. The "Save now" procedure is to be executed every two to three minutes, in order to prevent loosing too much progress in case of a Internet connection problem or similar. The "Download" procedure is to be executed before the end of each all learning and practicing sessions. Save now... Saving your scratch project in the cloud is easy as to click twice ! Just...

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Gmail language configuration

You can change the display language for all your Google Apps. The display language is the language used in all text and menus for the Google interface. Remember, your Gmail's display language doesn't affect the language in which your messages are sent and received. Access your account settings by clicking on your image, located on the right top corner. Click on "Account" Once in your...

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Amazing word clouds

I wonder if you knew this on-line app. Last weekend I was browsing around and found a typical Top-10-websites-you-should-visit list. This kind of lists are not big deal, most of the times, but in this case one link stood out. The link directed my browsing to tagxedo.com. Would you like to try it out with your favorite song lyrics? Tag cloud definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/word+cloud Video, How to...

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Blogging rubric

A rubric is typically an evaluation tool or set of guidelines used to promote the consistent application of learning expectations, learning objectives, or learning standards in the classroom, or to measure their attainment against a consistent set of criteria. In instructional settings, rubrics clearly define academic expectations for students and help to ensure consistency in the evaluation of academic work from student to student, assignment...

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