eMadrid in the IEEE EDUCON 2012

Some members of the eMadrid project presented the progress of their researching activities in the Third IEEE EDUCON conference, hosted in Marrakech (Morocco) between past 17-20 April 2012. It was on Thursday 19 in the morning when, under the title “Will m-Learning bring Disruption into Education? Advances from the eMadrid Excellence Network”, different partner representatives showed the progress of their research activities.

Open Linked Data and Learning: Semantic Technology Accelerator

Date

2012-01-20

Speaker

Ricardo Alonso Maturana (GNOSS)

Summary

Identify, characterize and explain examples of an approach of education that it´s thinking for improving education, enrich and accelerate learning for students using the possibilities of the tools of web 3.0 (social networking for learning, working and semantic technologies). This is not the traditional e-learning system, which too often has become an educational system to do the same thing in the classroom by other ways.

What Brings Linked Data Web to OpenCourseWare (OCW) Repositories

Date

2012-01-20

Lecturer

Edmundo Tovar (UPM) y Óscar Corcho (UTPL, GICAC-UPM)

Summary

OpenCourseWare (OCW) is one of the most successful emerging initiatives in the global promotion of free and unrestricted access to university knowledge. This initiative has had a major impact and has prompted many international prestigious universities have joined this movement, creating their own projects in coordination with OCW Consortium. The repository and the organization and internal structure of an OCW are diverse, and respond to the vision of each university. There is no standardized way to implement OCW initiatives, so that one of the greatest challenges facing OCW initiatives in general, as the OCW Universia in particular, is the heterogeneity of existing OCW repositories. The lack of interoperability makes the discovery, reuse and remix of OCWs.

Wikimedia World: Supporting Free Knowledge

Date

2011-12-16

Speaker

María Sefidari Huici (Wikimedia España)

Summary

The talk will offer a view of the Wikimedia movement and how the Wikimedia Foundation came into existence, how it evolved, its activities and its plans for the future. We will also talk about the Wikimedia chapters, its initiatives and projects to promote free knowledge, and consider some activities developed by the young Spanish chapter, Wikimedia España.

Wikipedia: Free Knowledge and Learning Innovation

Date

2011-12-16

Speaker

José Felipe Ortega Soto (URJC)

Summary

Wikipedia has become a global success, with more than 400 million unique visitors per month and nearly 20 million articles in more than 270 languages. However, despite this impressive coverage there are still many chances for contributing and improving its content in many areas of knowledge. This represents an great opportunity for Higher Education students who are in an excellent situation to create new articles and leverage the quality of existing ones. At the same time, they can get involved in a lively debate with other editors interested in similar topics and learn useful skills and social aptitudes like summarization, writing style, reaching consensus, contrasting information sources, etc. Targeting a wide audience is yet another factor that brings in extra motivation for students to take their participation seriously. This presentation introduces some alternatives for integrating Wikipedia in university classes, along with the main advantages and challenges perceived from both students and instructors.

From Chaos to Order: The Way The Wikipedia Works and Is Organized

Date

2011-12-16

Speaker

Miguel Vidal López (URJC)

Summary

The Wikipedia is among the ten most popular websites of the world, but not many people knows about its inner workings: if it has rules or editorial criteria, if it’s required any kind of credential, if there are mediations or filters, who or how decisions are taken, if it has an owner and who is the holder of its intellectual property rights, the way conflicts are managed, the works that librarians and bureaucrats do, if it’s an educative platform or any kind of techno- political experiment, etc. It’s not always known its function. Even the expression “free encyclopedia” has led to bad interpretations, as if the project were exempt of objectives or rules. Unfortunately, several myths and errors get around without never reaching to understand the reasons why so many people dedicates their time to contribute to this project in an almost anonymous way. We won’t find in this presentation brainy thoughts but the mere practical experience of passion and the thousands of hours dedicated to contribute a bit to this huge expression of the free cooperation and the human wit, not without the miseries, greatness, contradictions and hopes of the people which make it.

Moodle, Free Software and Education

Date

2011-05-06

Lecturer

Eneko Arriaga (CV & A Consulting)

Summary

Moodle is the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) most used in the world by all types of organizations. Moodle is Free Software and has been a pioneer in establishing a business model in which local partners give certified professional services and support a product product development organization. This talk will analyze the keys to its success and future potential, explaining the business model of the central organization and the partners. It will also destroy most common myths that hamper the progress of Moodle and Free Software in general.

Proceedings of the Institute of Educational Technology of the Ministry of Education for the integration and/or developing of open source applications

Date

2011-05-06

Lecturer

Ismail Ali Gago (ITE-Cedec)

(The speaker could not attend the event due to causes beyond his responsibility. Diego Ruiz Hernandez, his partner at the ITE-Cedec, held the presentation.)

Summary

The Institute of Educational Technology of the Ministry of Education is the department responsible for curriculum integration of Information and Communication Technologies in primary and secondary schools. This Institution works in three distinct areas: the development of digital educational content, on-line teacher training, including the development and implementation of training materials and e-learning platforms and the development of digital tools and applications that can be used in schools. It is actively involved in the repository of digital educational materias and contents called Agrega, in the design and implementation of training courses for teachers using an open source LMS like Moodle, and developing and implementing improvements to this LMS. Training courses and training content are released under Creative Commons licenses, and finally it is working in the improvement of applications for content creation, as eXe Learning, in the integration of digital whiteboard and videoconference systems like OpenMeetings, and developing streaming system based entirely on open source software. During this presentation we will show some of these developments.

Libertexto: improving the reading and studying of electronic texts

Date

2011-05-06

Lecturer

Rafael Ibáñez Molinero (UNED)

Summary

The digital revolution is changing our reading habits in a radical way. However, reading on screens still has many disadvantages compared to reading on paper. A major one is the difficulty of the interaction with the text. Active reading or studying texts on paper usually involves a series of steps: “working” on the text (highlighting, tagging, annotating, etc.) and then writing an outline or summary. Libertexto condenses these steps into one, because while working on the text, a schema is automatically formed. In addition, the reader can enrich the documents with images, notes, links, etc. Thus, the reader forms his/her own structured and enriched text from the documents. Libertexto has a clear educational application: reading becomes a more active and significant process, improving understanding and facilitating the study. Libertexto is a Mozilla Firefox add-on and it is under the GPL license. See more information at Libertexto.

IT teaching labs with Free Software: the GsyC (URJC) experience

Date

2011-05-06

Lecturer

José Centeno González (URJC)

Summary

The Department of Telematic Systems and Computing (GSyC) is responsible for teaching subjects about 50 degrees and master's degree related to the Telecommunication Engineering and Computer Engineering, teaching classes at two different campuses. Practice classes of almost all of these subjects are at least 50% of teaching time thereof. These practices are carried out in 4 laboratories totaling more than 150 campus computers under OS GNU / Linux. Laboratories are multidisciplinary, and remian open to students 12 hours a day, so they can work in them outside of school hours. This conference will talk about the installation, maintenance and configuration computer tools, user accounts, files system, backup systems, examinations systems under restricted conditions of connectivity and relationship problems between the type of tools and practices required in the subjects and security and maintenance policies of University Computing Services.

eMadrid at the IEEE EDUCON 2011

Last April 4, 2011 eMadrid project members presented the progress of their researchs at the second IEEE EDUCON conference, hosted by Princess Sumaya University for Technology in Amman, Jordan, from 4 to 6 of this month. Under the heading "Open Learning - advances in eMadrid network of excellence", there have been presentations by members of the University Carlos III of Madrid, Complutense University of Madrid, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid and National Distance Learning University.

Educational digital game development for mobile devices: the project for Android

Date

10/15/2010

Lecturer

Javier Torrente (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

Summary

In recent years a growing interest even on the application of digital games as educational material. On the other hand we have also assisted the growth of mobile technologies and their potential to develop new ways of learning. One of the research group's latest <e-UCM> Complutense University of Madrid focuses on how to take full advantage of both trends through a common, ubiquitous learning based on digital games.

An experience of m-learning: gymkhanas with smartphones

Date

15/10/2010

Lecturer

Gregorio Robles Martínez (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos)

Summary

The smartphones are now part of our daily life. We offer new possibilities as they integrate communication, geo, cameras, speedometers, etc.

The talk will show how we have used these phones-and-functionality to implement scavenger hunts, games that involve overcoming successive tests.

Benefits of the Use of MIT Courseware

Date

16/04/2010

Lecturer

Stephen Carson (MIT OpenCourseWare Consortium)

Summary

The intervention will present recent data that show the advantages of using MIT OCW materials in different segments of the public. MIT OpenCourseWare shares the academic basics (academic programs, teaching notes, assignments and examinations) with virtually all undergraduate and graduate courses MIT 1970 in total.

Using eduCommons for the production of content on the OCW UPM Office

Date

16/04/2010

Lecturer

Edmundo Tovar, Jesús Jara (UPM)

Summary

Will present the main lines of action of the Office OCW UPM then describe the experience in the use of CMS in eduCommons OCW website UPM in the process of describing the process of publishing subjects.

UNED Open Courses: Innovation methodological, organizational and technological

Date

16/04/2010

Lecturer

Salvador Ros (UNED)

Summary

In September 2006, the UNED signed a collaboration agreement between the UNED and the Santander Group which is launching the Portal UNED-OWC (Open Course Ware) aimed at transferring knowledge to the Company via the Internet. In early 2007, establishing the Directorate of Advanced Technology by the Center for Innovation and Technological Development, CINDETEC, making clear the Office OCW University's bid for the materials in open.

Influence of Free Software in Education, The blogs planet case

Date

14/04/2010

Lecturer

Gregorio Robles

Authors

Gonzalez Barahona, Jesús M.; Gregorio Robles

Description of an approach for Open Educational Resources based on semantic technologies

Date

14/04/2010

Lecturer

Edmundo Tovar

Authors

Chicaiza, Janneth; Lopez, Jorge, Martinez, Oscar, Nelson Stone, Nelson, Tovar, Edmundo

Augmented Learning Android phones?

Date

19/02/2010

Lecturer

Pedro de las Heras Quirós

Summary

The research group GSyC / LibreSoft URJC has developed an interface type 'magic lens' to improve in several aspects used in commercial applications of mobile augmented reality that have come onto the market in 2009 (Wikitude, Layar, Sekai Camera Across).