OpenLearn Courses

Education & Development course

Am I ready to be a distance learner? Introductory level Education & Development course Last accessed: 04 February 2021

Essay and report writing skills Introductory level Education & Development course Last accessed: 27 February 2021

Encouraging book talk in the school library Introductory level Education & Development course Last accessed: 14 August 2018

Science, Maths & Technology course

Galaxies, stars and planet Introductory level Science, Maths & Technology course Last accessed: 27 October 2020

Health and safety in the laboratory and field Introductory level Science, Maths & Technology course Last accessed: 18 August 2018

In the night sky: Orion Introductory level Science, Maths & Technology cours Last accessed: 30 June 2020

The Moon Introductory level Science, Maths & Technology course Last accessed: 10 February 2019

The Sun Introductory level Science, Maths & Technology course Last accessed: 31 December 2019

The evolving Universe Introductory level Science, Maths & Technology course Last accessed: 27 December 2019

Particle physics Introductory level Science, Maths & Technology course Last accessed: 10 November 2020

Simple coding Introductory level Science, Maths & Technology course Last accessed: 28 October 2020

Sociology course

Children’s rights Intermediate level Sociology course Last accessed: 16 November 2018

Environmental Studies course

Energy resources: Tidal energy Intermediate level Environmental Studies course Last accessed: 28 October 2020

Money & Business course

Facilitating group discussions Introductory level Money & Business course Last accessed: 16 August 2018

Mathematics & Statistics course

Numbers, units and arithmetic Introductory level Mathematics & Statistics course Last accessed: 27 January 2021

Education course

Teaching assistants: support in action Introductory level Education course Last accessed: 11 September 2018

REFERENCES

• OpenLearn
• Open University

TAGS

#OpenLearn,#OpenUniversity,#Learning,#Education, #Development

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Right to repair video

The free software foundation have released their latest animated video to look at the right to repair.

Credits

LENGTH: 3:11 PRODUCER & DIRECTOR: Brad Burkhart STORY: Brad Burkhart ANIMATOR: Zygis Luksas

REFERENCES

• Free Software Foundation

TAGS

#YearOfTheFediverse,#fsf,#RightToRepair,#FightToRepair,#PeerTube,#Video,#Education,#Campaign

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

School for Africa

School For Africa is an initiative by a Kenyan teacher to help educate some of the poorest kids in the world. You can follow the project at [1]:

REFERENCES

• School for Africa
• Jonathan Mburugu
• Jonathan Mburugu
• Fediverse ID : @[email protected]

Other resources that may be useful for this project

• Digital Skills Framework
• CodeClub
• PinePhone
• PineBook
• Purism – Librem-5
• Project GutenBerg
• Open Street Map

TAGS

#YearOfTheFediverse,#SchoolForAfrica #Africa #Education #Schools #Development #Charity #Kenya #Activism, #pinebook, #pinephone,#Librem,#Purism

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Remote education

With the current Covd19 crisis in the UK, getting worse (again), Areas entering tier 4, (highest lockdown), Schools are closing and in some cases using remote education.

This brings up the prospect of them using non free tools, that when it comes to privacy may not be as private as first thought.

There is a really good article here on the GNU website, that explains the problem.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation have an event coming up on privacy on campus

It would be great if there could now be a big push to promote free and open source tools, to help level up education, and actually safeguard children, young people and adults from data harvesting etc.

So what, free, open source and privacy / rights respecting remote tools can we use for teaching?

• https://meet.jit.si/
• https://bigbluebutton.org/
• Moodle

I am now involved in an effort to take the digital skills framework (UK) and look at how we can achieve this using free and open source software. This project can be found on Codeberg

#education,#privacy,#safeguarding,#data,#children, #youngpeople,#adults,#skills,#freesoftware,#dataprotection,#safeguarding,#freedom.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Active galaxies Review

So following on from the post on December 1st this is a quick review of the active galaxies lecture from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

This lecture, presented by Dr Mitchell Revalski, is really interesting, looking at how supermassive black holes, despite their small size compared to the galaxy they reside in.

Energy from these can push away surrounding gas, and heat this up which reduces star formation as gas needs to cool to form stars.

so scales are pretty huge:

First lets look at what a light year is

Citation : spaceplace.nasa.gov

For most space objects, we use light-years to describe their distance. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion km). That is a 6 with 12 zeros behind it! 

1 pc = 1 parsec = 3.26 light years

Supermassive black hole < 1pc

Bulge = 1 = 3 kpc (kilo parsec)

disk 30 kpc

circumgalactic area 50kpc

So even though these black holes are very small, they have a big influence on what surrounds them.

We know this is happening thanks to the research that led to the 2020 Nobel prize.

Well worth watching and the link is above.

Next lecture 19th Jan – The Darkest Secrets of the Universe Speaker: Raja Guhathakurta (UC Santa Cruz)

#astronomy,#science,#space,#telescope,#scsci,#talk, #solarsystem,#galaxy,#blackhole,#supermassive,#stars, #gravity,#light,#matter,#atoms,#emissions,#aabsorption, #spectrum,#gamma,#xray,#visible,#invisible,#parsec, #lightyear,#distance,#galactic,#bulge,#spacetelescope, #groundtelescope,#astronomers,#education,#public

The search for life on Mars

One of the advantages of being a higher education student or in my case alumni is you get to join groups. I have just been watching a live webcast on the experiments that are being used onboard Mars rovers to look for possible indicators that Mars once supported life.

Exploring the Habitability of Mars with the Curiosity and Rosalind Franklin rovers and Orbital Missions

I am not sure if there is a recording of this going up, but the link to a some more information is here.

I am currently undertaking Particle Physics but there is also a really interesting series of lecutures on AstroBiology I want to check out too.

#OpenUniversity,#OU,#space,#science,#mars,#curiosity,#rover,#talks,#education,#chemistry,#biochemistry,#biology, #orgnaic,#OrganicMolecules,#NASA,#JPL,Rovers, #RosalindFranklin.#OrbitalMissions

Basic IT course update 8

So further to my previous update on the Level 1 Digital skills course. The certificate for this has arrived.

This has now been scanned in and uploaded to my new LinkedIn profile

#education,#courses,#digital,#skills,#level1

Debian Academy Update 21/9/2020

So a quick update. I am currently working on a Moodle course to help teach how to edit and create presentations in LaTeX / Beamer. We can use this as part of the Debian Academy project. Still work in progress. But hopefully this course will help others.

Please see the Wiki page for details.

#debian,#teams,#academy,#education

Debian Academy update

As posted about on the 14th September I am involved in the DebianAcademy.

In addition making various related presentations in LaTeX / Beamer. I am currently working on a Moodle course how to do this.

So the LaTeX template, is being used as part of the course, and it can also be used as a basis for other presentations.

So far this is work in progress.

In other news I have submitted an article to the Torbay Weekly to promote the DebianAcademy and reach out to a few more potential contributors.

#debian,#teams,#academy,#education,torbayweekly,#moodle, #latex,#beamer,#course,#lessons,#article

Debian Academy

As I have started on my Paignton Code Club blog I am now part of the Debian Academy team.

I have been working on some presentations to help promote this.

Please join the team mailing list to ask questions and find out more. I am also on the team IRC channel on oftc.

Please see the Wiki page for details.

#debian,#teams,#academy,#education