La documentación de procesos educativos está cobrando cada vez más importancia. Pero, ¿cómo comenzar a documentar? ¿Cuáles son las primeras consideraciones?
Strong password policies have come a long way. When I created my very first online account many, many years ago, my password was the word “cool” (don’t judge me, ok? I was very young at the time). That password has long since been changed, to something much more secure, but passwords still remain part of everyday life as more and more of the services we rely upon are managed online through websites or mobile applications. Users today are inundated with passwords they must remember. Think about it. Website logins, email accounts, social media accounts, banking accounts, smartphone passcodes, ATM pin numbers, and home security system alarm codes all require some type of password. Creating a strong password policy is key to helping users safeguard these critical systems they rely on every day.
Some facts to remember:
73% of users have the same password for multiple sites, 33% use the same password every time.
Every extra character in your password increases the difficulty for hackers to crack it.
An 8-character password with letters (upper & lower case) and includes numbersand symbols has 6,095,689,385,410,816 possible combinations.
Passwords such as “mustacheehcatsum” (that’s “mustache” spelled forward and then backward) may give the appearance of strong security, but they’re easily cracked by isolating their patterns, then writing rules that augment the words contained in the [2009 hack of online games service] RockYou [...]and similar lists. For [security penetration tester] Redman to crack “Sup3rThinkers”, he employed rules that directed his software to try not just “super” but also “Super”, “sup3r”, “Sup3r”, “super!!!” and similar modifications. It then tried each of those words in combination with “thinkers”, “Thinkers”, “think3rs”, and “Think3rs”.
Use the Norton Identity Safe Password Generator to create highly secure passwords that are difficult to crack or guess. Just select the criteria for the passwords you need, and click "Generate Password(s)". Remember, the more options you choose, the more secure the passwords will be.
Once in a while, I find a video with loads of interesting concepts. Last week I came across this very short video starred by Michio Kaku where he shares with us some very interesting concepts. Is quantum computing the future generation of computers? What would happen if Moore´s law is expired? Silicon-based computers are reaching a natural physical limit, miniaturization can´t go beyond a certain frontier. Are computer manufacturers reaching this limit?
Las fuentes tipográficas, en castellano comúnmente llamadas "tipos de letra" o "Font" en inglés , son un conjunto de caracteres gráficos (letras del alfabeto, números y símbolos especiales, como los símbolos de puntuación) diseñados individualmente y con propiedades visuales uniformes. La palabra "tipografía" proviene del Griego, τύπος [típos], ‘golpe’ o ‘huella’, y γράφω [gráfο], ‘escribir’, se dice que es el arte y la técnica en el manejo y selección de tipos para crear trabajos de impresión. En tipografía, un tipo de letra alude a cada una de las piezas usadas en la imprenta en las que hay un realce con una letra u otro signo. En la edición por ordenador, también se llama tipos o fuentes a los conjuntos de modelos vectoriales que representan a cada uno de los caracteres de una letra, con descripciones respecto a su posición y conformación, almacenados en un archivo; en la fotocomposición, son plantillas de imágenes independientes de cada carácter.
Tipo de plomo utilizado en las imprentas de Gutemberg.
Los diferentes tipos de letras o familias de tipos de letras son diseñados como piezas de arte. El diseño tiene en cuenta tanto los aspectos artísticos en sí, como el contexto y el tema del mensaje a ser transmitido con el texto que la utilizará. Es así que, por ejemplo podemos identificar los tipos de letras con diferentes tipos de arte o piezas de arte. Por ejemplo, considere la siguiente imagen:
El uso de tipos de fuentes específicas es también aplicado en contextos educativos, persiguiendo objetivos muy específicos. Por ejemplo, en aquellas instituciones en las que se integra en las aulas a alumnos con dislexia, es recomendable utilizar el tipo "Dyslexie Regular", creada por el diseñador holandés Christian Boer. La fuente es de libre descarga y puede ser instalada fácilmente en computadores con windows. En los próximos párrafos encontrará enlaces de descarga de la fuente y vídeos tutoriales sobre cómo realizar la instalación de la misma.
Descargue la fuente "Dyslexie Regular" haciendo click aquí. (sólo para usuarios Goethemail.net)
Descargue la fuente "OpenDislexic" haciendo click aquí. (sólo para usuarios Goethemail.net)
El siguiente manual explica cómo instalar las fuentes.
Sharing content to a community is much like sharing to one of your circles or even in your public feed. While you can post to your respective community directly from the community's page, you can also post from basically anywhere on the platform. You only need to find and click on the following, to display the extended post creation tool:
Users will see their own profile picture and name.
Extended post creation tool.
Each post may contain:
A relative short text description, type your text where it indicates "What do you want to share?". Try to keep the post short, to avoid forcing the reader to scroll down.
Some images from uploaded files or images already in your GPhoto collection. The new version of Gplus allows you to publish several images inside the same post.
A link to an external website. Even inside private communities, users will be redirected to external websites without a warning.
A short multiple choice poll.
A shared location.
Once you created your content, please remember to verify all of the following security settings. First click on the "post visibility restriction link" (pointed with a green arrow)
Secondly, select the community to which you are posting or change the domain visibility option. For this example, the post about to be shared will be visible only by "Aulas Digitales de Secundaria" and restricted to Goethemail.net users.
At this time, Google+ prohibits you from sharing to multiple communities. Also, when you do choose to post to a community, you will not be able to share that same post through the public feed — meaning you'd have to post your content twice for it to show up in the community and in the public feed. If you do post your content to a public community, though, it will still be visible to users who navigate to your profile page. But if you share a post to a private community page, it cannot be publicly viewed anywhere except in that community.
On Google Plus, all users have the ability to manage their circles (list of contacts) to control the groups of people and brands they receive information and content from. Google Circles are a one-way road, this means that whenever you circle a contact you´ll be receiving their update, but there's no guarantee those brands or users will circle you to receive your updates. Two different users must circle each other in order to enjoy a two-way communication channel.
This is where Google+ Communities come in, Google's version of a group or forum, built to bring people together around particular topics. User included into the same community will share a two-way communication channel. All members of the community will read, comment and like each other's posts.
Launched in December 2016 (latest platform update), the types of Communities available to the Google+ audience seem endless — ranging from science, animals, development and more. Communities are places where users can share specific questions, comments or content relating to a particular topic with other users who are just as interested in the conversation. For example, if you're a member of a cooking community, it's likely each post will contain something related to food. And if there is a user who is posting content unrelated to the chosen topic, a moderator could step in and police that person.
All of the above features and topics make the G+ community an attractive tool for teachers. The teacher should be in charge of creating the community and setting up all access permission settings. Speaking of which, some of them can be set only at community creation time. Once the community is created, the teacher should invite students to join, depending on the security settings placed by the teacher, students will be able to join directly or ask the administrator to join.
How to create a new community: you may watch the entire following video or skip to 2:27.
Recommended security settings for Goethemail.net users: <Download>
Una de las propuestas que son habituales al inicio del año escolar es la organización de jornadas institucionales de capacitación. Son jornadas en las que los docentes se reúnen en pleno con el objetivo de intercambiar información relevante a las planificaciones escolares, y también, hay ocasiones en las que nos visitan referentes del mundo de la educación. En el día de hoy hemos compartido una charla ofrecida por Silvia Duschatzky. Han sido dos a tres horas de diálogo profundamente enriquecedor, de intercambio de ideas valiosas, tiempo en el que hemos generado un espacio en el que la reflexión sobre cuestiones fundantes del quehacer escolar fue intensa.
Con su voz serena y mensaje poblado de referencias a autores y bibliografías, Silvia nos ha exhibido una forma renovada de pensar la escuela. Nos invita a investigar en acción y preguntarnos ¿qué lugar ocupa la escuela hoy? ¿Cómo podemos otorgar sentido a las prácticas educativas en un contexto de incertidumbre? ¿Cuáles son los elementos organizadores de una práctica educativa contextualizada? ¿Cuáles son los verdaderos problemas de la escuela? Y nos advierte que para esbozar una respuesta a estas preguntas debemos pensar por fuera de las categorías tradicionales, debemos aceptar que nos posicionaremos en un lugar incierto, debemos experimentar en lo desconocido dejándonos afectar por lo que aún desconocemos. En este sentido, su investigación se centra en cuáles son esas formas de afectación en contextos escolares y cómo podemos subjetivar esa acción para darle un sentido constructivo.
En el marco del encuentro, Silvia ha hecho referencia a la serie televisiva "Black Mirror". Esta referencia es particularmente interesante, en tanto el signo de los tiempos refiere a la idealización de la tecnología en contexto educativo. Se trata de una serie cuyo argumento gira en torno a cómo la tecnología afecta nuestras vidas, en ocasiones sacando lo peor de nosotros. El primer capítulo de la tercer temporada de la serie es titulado "Nosedive", cuya traducción literal es picado vertical (en inglés el término refiere a una aeronave cayendo de nariz) En este capítulo, los protagonistas se califican con "likes" o cantidad de "estrellas" en cada interacción social que realizan. Esas calificaciones sociales afectan por completo las vidas de los protagonistas, al extremo que los grupos sociales están definidos como intervalos de valor en estas calificaciones sociales.
Resumen del argumento
Lacie Pound (Bryce Dallas Howard) vive en un mundo donde la gente vive obsesionada con valorar cada interacción social con hasta cinco estrellas. Lacie, que está obsesionado con ser recibido bien, comienza el episodio con una calificación de aprobación de alrededor de 4,2. En cambio su hermano, no tiene la misma preocupación por su calificación social. Ella y su hermano deben cambiar de hogar, y pretende lograr alquilar una lujosa propiedad, para lo cual debe abonar una cuantiosa suma de dinero (que no posee) o lograr al menos una calificación social de 4.6.
Entre tanto, Lacie protagoniza algunos entredichos con su hermano y allegados, quienes la califican con pocas estrellas y logran bajar su ranking social. Esta situación la aleja de cumplir su sueño de vivir en una propiedad lujosa.
Es entonces cuando una amiga de su infancia la contacta para que asista a su boda. Su amiga tiene una puntuación social muy superior y consecuentemente un círculo social con calificaciones igualmente superiores a las de Lacie. Lacie ve en esta invitación la oportunidad de interactuar con personas que podrían calificarla con cinco estrellas y así aumentar su promedio de puntuación social, permitiendo en última instancia acceder a la propiedad de sus sueños. Decide, entonces, aceptar la invitación de su amiga de la infancia.
Ella va a un aeropuerto para viajar a la boda, pero está consternada al saber que su vuelo original ha sido cancelado. El asistente del aeropuerto le informa a Lacie que hay un asiento disponible en otro vuelo, pero necesita un rating de 4.2 para conseguirlo. Luego de los entredichos que sufrió, la puntuación de Lacie no es suficientemente alta como para obtener un asiento en un vuelo alternativo. Por frustración, Lacie causa una escena y la seguridad le da un castigo de 24 horas que reduce temporalmente su puntuación en un punto entero a 3,1 y todos los downvotes que recibe incurrirá en un doble multiplicador. Después de que se le pidiera que saliera del aeropuerto, Lacie se ve obligada a alquilar un coche para hacer las nueve horas de viaje a la boda de Naomi.
A partir de ese momento todo parece caer en picada. Una serie de hechos infortunados provoca que las interacciones sociales de Lacie sean calificadas con puntuaciones muy bajas, haciendo que su ranking social sea aun inferior. En última instancia, Lacie es rechazada para asistir a la boda de su amiga, debido a su bajo ranking social, provocando un escándalo en la receptción de la boda. Todos los asistentes a la misma califican a Lacie con cero estrellas y finalmente su ranking social cae a cero, momento en que es arrestada y encarcelada. Mientras que en su celda, ella comienza a intercambiar insultos con otro preso (Sope Dirisu), y su cólera recíproca da vuelta al placer mutuo mientras que realizan que ahora están libres hablar sin temor.
Desde esta perspectiva, Silvia nos introduce a uno de los conceptos centrales en el pensamiento de Baruch Spinoza: ¿Qué puede un cuerpo? Los afectos son devenires: unas veces nos debilitan, en la medida en que disminuyen nuestra potencia de obrar y descomponen nuestras relaciones (tristeza), y otras nos hacen más fuertes, en la medida en que aumenta nuestra potencia y nos hacen entrar en un individuo más amplio o superior (alegría). Creemos que somos libres en nuestras elecciones únicamente por el hecho que somos conscientes de nuestros deseos, hábitos y necesidades. Aún cuando ignoramos por completo cuál es la génesis de esos deseos, La libertad entendida de esa forma, consiste meramente en saberse atraído a las cosas que le son necesarias, pero desconociendo la naturaleza de esa atracción.
" el niño cree que apetece libremente la leche, y el chico irritado, en cambio, que quiere la venganza, y el tímido la fuga. El borracho, por su parte, cree que habla por libre decisión del alma cosas que después, sobrio, quisiera haber callado; e igualmente el delirante, la charlatana, el niño y muchísimos de esta calaña creen hablar por libre decisión del alma, siendo así que no pueden reprimir el impulso que sienten de hablar." Baruch Spinoza
At the beginning of the school year I always invite my fellow teachers to a number of different On-Line tools presentations. Everybody seems to be interested in learning new tools to maximize teaching and learning outcomes, but G Classroom attracted all attention. Discussion during this year´s presentations focused on two main ideas: the use of the platform (that is where to click to get things done) and some classroom methodologies associated (some intro to flipped).
The following tutorial videos focus on the "where to click to get things done" side of the conversation that took place this morning.
Infographics are visual displays of any kind of data or information with the aim of presenting complex concepts in an eye-catching, quick and clear way. It can be named differently in some specific contexts: "data visualization" or "information design and architecture", are common names for the same concept. The main purpose of creating an infographic is to aid communication in such a way that student´s attention is drawn to focus on a specific topic.
Visualization is a very powerful tool in the classroom. The teacher may create a lesson around a powerful image related to a specific topic, triggering discussion and reflection around a number of concepts. A different approach is to ask students to create visual representations of complex concepts they should learn. Students will distill large amounts of complex information into a visual representation.
In the internet there are a number of tools that will make this possible, the following is one of the many available for free.
Google Apps for Education has been around for many years now. Undoubtedly it has been the best option for schools to help teachers and students share and learn collaboratively. According to Google, GSuite is more than a rename, it is more than a makeover, it is a huge step ahead into collaboration, communication and platforms integration.
Being a teacher is sometimes difficult to keep up with all these news coming from Google. It is always a matter of having enough free time to take PD courses, assist to workshops and many other PD activities. So, for those willing to learn about Gsuit taking a self-paced online course might be the best approach. Following this paragraph, I insert the link to a Gsuite website, where you´ll be able to take several self-paced courses. Clic on the next image.
This post is a new weekly issue for the #edublogsclub challenge 2017. The challenge is to write a post about a weekly prompt published by Ronnie Burt. The topic for this fifth issue is “Free web tools”. If you would like to read past issues of this challenge, please click on the “Tags” menu (right column) and click on the #Edublogsclub label. You may also access the past issues list here.
This week's invitation is to write about “Free web tools”. I mean, free as in “free beer”, in the sense of costing no money. A quite different point of view is that which refers to as “free speech”, in the sense of having the liberty to express yourself. I took some time during the last four days to ask a number of my fellow colleagues the fooling question, “What do you interpret the following sentence? “Access a comprehensive list of free web tools for teachers”. All of them intuitively answered with some variation of “free beer” version. Only one computer technician mentioned the “free speech” flavor. Following their answers I asked a second and third questions: Who do you think is absorbing the costs of having that app online 24/7? Do you think there could be another reason other than altruism, to absorb those costs?
One of the fellow colleagues I invited to answer the questions above is currently teaching economics. She mentioned this quote:
An interesting quote to denote that those offering free web tools might have other means of profit from it. I am open to the idea that profit might not always be money as a direct result, but I think most of the times it boils down to it. The user access the web app being offered, the provider places some ads, and the advertiser pays for every click the user did on the ad. Another approach free web tools providers might use is called Freemium, free basic access and features and paid advanced or enhanced features.
If not based on pure altruism, the use of “free” web tools implicates a form of exchange. Probably you are not paying with money, you might use a large collection of web tools without paying a single dollar. You pay by allowing a provider to use a portion of your screen (your work area, your field of view, your parted attention) to place an ad. It is not the purpose to remind the reader of this post, that whatever comes to your screen takes a little of your attention in a conscious or unconscious way. Jet another more sophisticated currency is your personal information, as it is voluntarily provided by you to get access to those “free” tools, like email address, zip code, name, etc.
This New Year’s thrust list is definitely including some blogging challenges. I'm calling this list a thrust list, in contrast to the common expression "New year's resolutions", I´ll use the word "thrust" because its meaning is more suitable for what I have in mind. A thrust is a propulsive force caused by a jet or rocket engine and that is exactly what I have in mind. I included in the list a number of things I already do, things that somehow need a renewed motivation. Blogging is one of them.
I began the year looking for blogging challenges to reignite an old blog that I have. There were two motivating incidents. Firstly, browsing my Twitter feed I found a Tweet inviting to join the #edublogsclub challenge, Secondly, I was asked to promote strategies for documenting school activities among teachers. These two motivating incidents seemed to be made one for another, I was presented with the chance to unite two objectives into a more comprehensive one. It was a straight forward decision to design a PD to help teachers begin and sustain documentation activities by regularly blogging. This idea is by far not something new in the education world, but it seemed promising given some personal and professional circumstances.
The first motivation thrust mentioned above has already produced some forward motion. I enrolled to take part in the one-year long challenge of blogging every week about a specific prompt. Prompts are out every Tuesday and participants are supposed to compose a post, publish it and share it with the blogging community. Once the post is published, the permalink to access it should be posted as a comment in each respective Ronnie’s (from Edublogs) original post. I’ll take the sharing of the link a couple of steps further, I intend to share the link in my Twitter account using related hashtags and as an update in my Facebook account. I expect to reignite this two SM accounts too.
The second motivation thrust mentioned above, to create a PD opportunity at the school where I work, needs a little more planning time. I expect to get it going by mid-February. For starters, I´m planning a 10 post challenge for beginners. This will be only to help beginners to learn how to use the blogging platform (still in the process of selecting one). After the 10 posts challenge for beginners is finished, participants will have to choose what to their opinion significant milestones are in the learning process of their students and document those milestones. This overall goal is intended as a bias to stimulate teaching practices reflections, as a mean to improve quality standards in the classroom.
The next challenge is to begin planning how to put these ideas ahead.
It is Tuesday again and the #edublogsclub challenge prompt is out. This fourth prompt has a very special meaning for me, because photography is a very serious hobby for me. I spend many hours taking pictures, studying the work of great photographers and seeing tutorials in a number of recognized youtube channels. This is something I already integrated to my daily life that in fact I lately chose my smartphone based on the quality of its main camera, regardless of other features.
I started taking digital pictures many years ago with a 3 MP point-and-shoot camera, which I still use, mainly because I was curious about digital image production. Back in that time, DSLR cameras were way out of my league, I did not have any clue about shutter speed, f numbers or ISO values. Depth of field and Speedlight guide number were mysterious concepts to me. The point-and-shoot was in automatic mode, always. For the record, there is nothing wrong in using a camera, professional or hobbyist, in auto mode. Some recognized professional photographers use it, for instance to take a scratch picture of a scenery to be perfected latter. The deal is to progressively switch to semi-automatic modes and finally to full manual, there is a clear gain in control over picture quality and creativity possibilities.
Now, after this short intro to my post I’d like to come back to the topic of the prompt: including an image. For the remaining of this post, I’ll try to make a point how still images make a meaning.
As educators, we are supposed –among a thousand other things- to be professional communicators. At least to the extent of our subject’s field of knowledge. We spend a great deal of time developing printed/digital documents of various formats, even video and sound formats are expected. In my case, most of those documents include still images (photographs, clipart, diagrams, charts, etc.) I tend to use images for two reasons, one reason is “decorating” a rather boring document, the second one is presenting information otherwise difficult to express with text.
It is interesting to analyze the text to image ratio over a period of time, not so much surprisingly images have taken more space over time. In my opinion this is not always a disadvantage, as long as the imagery contributes to display concrete representations of the ideas being communicated. Text and images go together and the reader creates a compound understanding of the set. Readers do not rely only on the text they are reading, they capitalize on all the visuals, including the text that was treated as an image. Sometimes text and images are highly coupled, and it is impossible to take one away (text or image) without profoundly altering the original message.
Let me get back to one idea expressed above. Text can also be processed, in the sense of word processing, as a constitutive part of visual design. Consider for instance the following image.
Would you consider the content as text or image, or both? It is important to leave apart one technical aspect, the above is in fact an image (it was created and inserted as one image), that can be read as text. Do we understand sufficiently how text and images affect the process of delivering a certain message? I think the answer to this question is better provided by a semiologist.
PS: I regularly post my photographs in my Instagram account.
