quickandhandytips.com

HouseKeeping

nmaximo7 — Tue, 11 May 2010 18:53:13 +0000

I have been doing a little housekeeping on the site. There are a few changes that I think are worth mentioning. They are all related to some new content that you can access on the top of the webpage.

You have fast and easy access to a lot of very interesting links if you click on very useful as well as on Direcciones Interesantes related to search engines, web 2.0, GNU/Linux, free software, etc. Let me be clear, these resources are done for my students for academic purposes but I think it is very useful to have them freely available for everyone at anytime.

Please, let me know what you think about that, how you would improve it, etc. Your comments encourage me and help me to keep going.

Videos Free Software and Linux

nmaximo7 — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:15:26 +0000

This post is realised by my pupils Kristian Orre, Miguel Muñoz Sánchez and Adam El Azrak Centeno. I hope you may enjoy it. It’s a collection of movies about free software and GNU/Linux.

This is a movie about how GNU/Linux and free software was created

Free Software

Free Software 2

Free Software 3

Free Software 4

Free Software 5

Free Software 6

Free Software 7

Free Software 8

Free Software 9

Alternative free software

About free software and GNU/Linux

Richard Stallman interviewed about free software

Richard Stallman has started is singing carieer

Alternatives to Google

nmaximo7 — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:09:36 +0000

Talks from Ted

nmaximo7 — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:30:42 +0000

I am really impressed with Ted: Ideas worth spreading and I enjoyed speeches like this one by Richard St. John where he explains what the secret of success is. I found these talks very inspiring indeed. It may be used as a listening exercise for ESL students but also just for helping us to keep going, to better ourselves or understand our world a little better and try to make a difference – why not?. There are talks about almost any topic such as global issues, technology, culture, science, etc.

Traduce

Conceptual Maps

nmaximo7 — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:08:25 +0000

I would like to talk about conceptual maps. I think it’s a wonderful tool to learn new ideas, concepts, facts, etc, as well as a extraordinary way to express yourself very plainly and visually. Conceptual maps help us to represent the concept and focus on the relationships between the main concepts and ideas rather than losing yourself in the details. No wonder they are used in so many areas, contexts and circumstances, they are used in schools, universities, business, corporations and organizations as useful tools for discussing, sharing and collaborating.

My favourite tools are:

Mindomo, a web 2.0 application that allows you to make 7 private maps for free. Other options “in the cloud” are bubbls.us (let’s make some bubbles), gliffy and minmeister.

IHMC CMap Tools. As you can read on its web page “The IHMC CmapTools program empowers users to construct, navigate, share and criticize knowledge models represented as concept maps” and it’s FREE. One of the best options without any doubt.
FreeMind is also a nice option, it’s written in Java and free too.
I also enjoy using VYM. His web page shows a good example of how a conceptual map should be.

Diagramming software

nmaximo7 — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:40:32 +0000

If you want to create professional-quality flowcharts, diagrams, floor plans, technical drawings, etc. and you don’t want to install any applications on your computer you can use Gliffy – but it’s not the only one.

griffy

There are many other options available out there (Lovely Charts, Cacoo). For instance, Dia is a wonderful multi-platform (GNU/Linux, Windows) application under the GPL license. It’s a Visio alternative and allows you to draw “entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams”. Dia is perhaps the most comprehensive tool because it can be used in many areas and purposes.

If you are concerned about data modeling (entity relationship diagrams), you can try out MySQL Workbench and GNUFerret. I should warn you that Ferret is actually in the 0.7 version so in my humble opinion it’s not a final product yet.

If you are thinking about modeling with UML you may consider: Umbrelo UML, ArgoUML, BOUML and Gaphor. Other alternatives are Visual Paradigm for UML Community Edition, JUDE/Community – Free UML Modeling Tool, MonoUML and Kivio. You should pay a visit to an excellent blog called Blog Software Development with Linux which describes these tools in deep.

What do you think? Do you have another tool that you want to share with us? I’d really appreciate your comments.

Traduce

Operating system in the cloud

nmaximo7 — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:46:02 +0000

The Internet is evolving very fast. It is also changing the way that we think about computers and operating systems. It used to be that all the attention was focused in a powerful personal computer and a good operating system full of applications – not any more!

As time goes by, I find more and more web services that are free (or rather let’s say “no costs” that is more accurate), simple, multi-platform (you just need a web browser and you can get access on a PC, mobile device, e-book reader, etc.) and they are also very useful and easy to share with friends or partners . This post is about operating systems in the cloud. I covered eyeOs a few months ago but there are many alternatives out there that are worth mentioning.

G.ho.st is a Must Go if you are interested in this idea. They offer you 15 GB of free storage along with a full operating system with different applications such as Zoho and Think Free as office suites, Meebo as multi-protocol instant messenger, and a ton of games and widgets.
g.ho.st
Another cool alternative is icloud. I have a big complaint about this option. They have Internet Explorer as their favorite choice related to web browser. What planet are you from?
If you want to play with Windows 3.1 or just remember what it was like to use this operating system which was one of the most popular in its day, you can check michaelv.org out.

What do you think? I would really appreciate your comments, suggestions, etc. They help me keep going.

Traduce

Geography

nmaximo7 — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:54:46 +0000

Geography is a very interesting subject but it’s full of names that make it tricky to learn and not as enjoyable as it should be . However, there are many resources than can help you improve the learning experience and make it more fun and significant.

First of all, I should mention Google Earth. Is there anyone who isn’t familiar with it? It gives you a satellite image from all around the world, historical pictures, the ocean floor and outer space.

Secondly, you can use Google map, Map of the World, and HRW World Atlas as three good repositories of free maps.

MyGreatWorld

MyGreatWord, Maps4Kids and Earth.org can also be used as good websites to get children interested. Other resources worth mentioning that are closely related are Geology.com and Geographical Association.

Stop disaster is an educational game which purpose is to provide useful information and awareness of the problems that we, as human beings, are facing.

Finally, I am very impressed with Free Technology for Teachers. They have good posts for every subject including Geography.

Finding good stuff

nmaximo7 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:41:50 +0000

We all know how great Google is. It allows you to type two or three words or even sentences and find useful links related to these words. However, more often than not, there are many pages that Google suggests that are not incredibly useful.

Of course, there are many tricks or ideas to help the search engine: type only essentials words, avoid punctuation marks (:, ?, !, ;,…), use define: word to find a word’s definition or filetype: [pdf | mp3 | ....] to find PDF, music, etc. If you want to refine your search results visit the following link in Free Technology for Teachers, they also recommend Scoopler, OneRiot, Google Wonder Wheel (click first on Show Options and then Wonder wheel in the Standard View section) and Google News Timeline as well as many others. My post Are there any alternatives to Google is also a good way of finding other options available like Spezify.

I also like Delicious, it’s a site that’s worth a try. They define it as social bookmarking and I think it really is. As it’s formed for personal bookmarks you will find links relevant to people and therefore more likely to include the information you are looking for.

Finally, I strongly recommend that you search for tags, as it’s the way people have categorised and organised their bookmarks as well as using the same website to keep track of your own bookmarks.

Happy surfing!

Utilities in Ubuntu (To be continued…)

nmaximo7 — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:45:59 +0000

There are many utilities in Ubuntu related to many purposes. Let me introduce you to some which are useful and interesting.

BleachBit “deletes unnecessary files to free valuable disk space, maintain privacy, and remove junk”.
Googlizer searches in your favourite browser for whatever is on the clipboard using the Google search engine.
APTonCD allows you to create a CD o DVD with all your packages and then install them in a non-conected machine or install them in a computer o network .
Simple Backup Suite offers you a powerful but simple solution for storing and restoring your data.
GParted, is a partition editor, i.e., it allows you to create, reorganise, and delete disk partitions.
Sysinfo displays useful information about your hardware and software.