FutureLearn course upgrades
I have two of the courses, that I completed with FutureLearn. The printed certificates should be on the way to me. These two courses are :-
Also identified lots of other courses,which demonstrate a commitment to keeping knowledge up to date. These will also be very useful while working as a TA within education settings.
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LibreAdventure Testing 2
LibreAdventure Testing 2
Just been helping with more LibreAdventure testing. Please see my previous post if you are unsure, what this is.
So last week, we found a bug when we were in close proximity to another user,, the video chat didn't work, This has now been fixed for the office areas. The bug is still there, if a users enters the conference areas. A report ticket has been submitted about this.
More of the same next week, hopefully with a few more people testing.
Free Software and Hardware
TAGS
#YearOfTheFediverse,#FediverseRising,#Science,#Technology,#ScienceDaily,#PaigtonLibrarySTEMGroup,#Fedevolution2022
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Zone of Proximal Development
Zone of Proximal Development
I decided to write this, in an attempt to address some issues that I have when contributing to projects. such as free software projects or engaging in the related communities.
As I am currently working as a teaching assistant, our work is based on theories of learning etc. Therefore we follow research and ideas such as Zone of Proximal Development by Lev Vygotsky,
So how is this applicable to contributing to software? The simple answer is people seem to assume that the person who is trying to undertake a task has the same level of understanding as others.
Most of my Open University study was around Science. Therefore using tools such as git, is hardly something that I do daily. I can, just about.
Which for me is sufficient.
On a similar note is tasks like key signing. For most people people seem to use gnupg and a mail client plugin for this. Their mail client can implement this for signing or encrypting e-mails. Since Thunderbird 78, Thunderbird has integrated OpenPGP which is great, only it hides a lot of the complexity,in the back ground, this makes what would probably be a simple tasks much more complex for those who don't really understand what they are doing.
Again, there is an assumption people can 'just do things'
So within ZPD
So for the most part, we should not assume a learner, user or potential contributor can perform all the tasks that is being asked. We need to figure out what they know first and try and help them provide us with what we need.
In general it is far easier to provide face to face support, which is not possible in many cases.
I think as a community, we sometimes need to take a step back and remember what it was like when WE were first learning something new, it is difficult at first, till we find that one tool that make things easier. Until then we probably struggled.
Not everyone is as experienced or confident as you are, so will potentially take a lot longer to figure out something that is designed to help you help them.
We should also not assume that persons level of education is less than ours, a person with a degree in Computing is equally degree qualified a degree in Chemistry (for example). However both can perform complex tasks. but probably can't perform each others tasks. Education is only a factor in this respect.
For most people, they want something to 'just work' and not have to fiddle to get it working or try to explain what they are doing, which if you are not sure, just ends up frustrating when ask questions you can't understand let alone answer.
So trying to get a device working that requires a user to load kernel modules in, is really beyond a lot of people without the pre-requite understanding, on a similar note, When installing Debian 11 on my netbook I found that networking simply didn't work, or the install didn't complete., in fact upgrading from 10 to 11 seems to break networking fully. So trying to ask for help isn't easy, especially when there is no easy way to tell people what the error is.
In the above case the following would most certainly apply
Or in this case they would need face to face assistance and even then the error could be something that a person with expertise can't easily fix.
I am not sure what the solution is, perhaps just to say, please remember, just because you are an expert, doesn't mean others are too.
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Free Software and Hardware
TAGS
#YearOfTheFediverse,#FediverseRising,#Science,#Technology,#ScienceDaily,#PaigtonLibrarySTEMGroup,#Fedevolution2022
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
LibreAdventure Testing
LibreAdventure Testing
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LibreAdventure is a free software implementation of Work Adventure. This is a 2d environment which you can walk round and interact with other users. This is a Free Software Foundation project, so there is integration with the Jit.si video conferencing software to facilitate voice / video communications.
The graphics (while rather 8bit retro) is what makes this really cool. I am not technical enough to run my own implementation. I am using the FSF instance and testing that.
I think this version gives a 2d top down view of the FSF office, I can enter a conference room, or enter other rooms.
LibreAdventure was used as part of LibrePlanet 2021, and will be used at this years conference too.
Free Software and Hardware
TAGS
#YearOfTheFediverse,#FediverseRising,#Science,#Technology,#ScienceDaily,#PaigtonLibrarySTEMGroup,#Fedevolution2022
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Smart windows can significantly reduce indoor pathogens
Smart windows can significantly reduce indoor pathogens
Posted to Mastodon.
The researchers found that, compared to windows with blinds, the smart windows significantly reduce bacterial growth rate and their viability. [1]
Comment
An idea / question from this is could this technology be used on space missions to help protect spacecraft from harmful UV radiation but also take advantage of sanitising properties of UV Radiation. As a quick reference, I have put a link to a wikipedia article below, please note: Wikipedia is not an academic source of information the link is there for reference purposes only.
Perhaps discuss at a STEM group meeting or on a forum. Links
TAGS
#YearOfTheFediverse,#FediverseRising,#Science,#Technology,#ScienceDaily,#ScienceDaily,#SmartWindows,#UVFilters,#Pathogens
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
References
University of British Columbia Okanagan campus. “Smart windows can significantly reduce indoor pathogens: Daylight can disinfect surfaces.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 January 2022. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220119121350.htm.
Journal Reference:
Man In Lam, Kinga Vojnits, Michael Zhao, Piers MacNaughton, Sepideh Pakpour. The effect of indoor daylight spectrum and intensity on viability of indoor pathogens on different surface materials. Life Sciences (accepted), 2022 [abstract]
Smart soil bugs offer farmers an ecofriendly route to controlling crop diseases
Smart soil bugs offer farmers an ecofriendly route to controlling crop diseases*
So given we have managed without chemicals for 1000's of years, this is going back to what we have done before, only the research will allow us to grow crops better based on science based knowledge of soil composition.
Links
TAGS
#YearOfTheFediverse,#FediverseRising,#Science,#Technology,#ScienceDaily,#PaigtonLibrarySTEMGroup,#ScienceDaily,#Crops,#Science,#EcoCropGrowing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Evaluating scientific claims
Six questions physicists ask when evaluating scientific claims
Interesting article, not writing much as to avoid influencing the reading of this. Lets support good Evidence based science.
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Fediverse Rising
This is a copy of my article sent in to the Beach hut article published January 2022
Fediverse Rising
Former President Donald Trump just launched his own social media network. If the login screen looks familiar, that may be because it has the same look and feel of the social media application Mastodon [1]. But what is Mastodon, and why is it important?
Mastodon is a decentralized social media site. This means that instead of one big site, like Facebook, people can run their own “nodes” and the users on each can share information with the rest of the network. There is no advertising, no data collecting, or tracking, so there is more privacy, although this is not to say public posts can’t be “scraped.”
Mastodon sites are federated and there is no single owner of the whole social media service. You can run your own Mastodon server, called an “instance,” and interact with other users on other instances. These communicate through a protocol called ActivityPub. [2] The network of instances, called the Fediverse, consists of instances running the Mastodon software licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License [3] from the free software foundation [4]. An example of Federation is e-mail, there are different providers of e-mail e.g disroot, protonmail and they can all work together.
Just like on mainstream social media such as Facebook and Twitter, you can share pictures, messages, media, and links and can follow other people or topics (using hasthtags) of interest. A project called Trunk [5] helps you find people who like similar interests.
The Fediverse community values user input. The community on socialhub [6] are keen to build a social network system that is welcoming and safe for everyone, one that everyone can collaborate and work together. Some of this community are communicating with the EU / UK governments to ensure legislation and internet governance is fit for purpose and puts users before profits.
References
1. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/
2. https://activitypub.rocks/
3. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html
4. https://www.fsf.org/
5. https://communitywiki.org/trunk
6. https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/
Links
TAGS
#YearOfTheFediverse,#FediverseRising,#Science,#Technology,#ScienceDaily,#PaigtonLibrarySTEMGroup,#Fedevolution2022
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Open Learn – Discovering Chemistry
Anyone looking at undertaking this course with Open Learn, I have set up a thread on discourse to facilitate further discussion.
Chemistry lies at the centre of our modern life, playing a part in areas as diverse as the development of new drugs and materials, analysing our environment through to more mundane activities such as washing your clothes and making your tea. But to truly understand the role chemistry plays you need to have a sound grasp of a number of fundamental principles.
This free course, Discovering chemistry, introduces you to some of these concepts, beginning with the idea that everything that you can see is made of building blocks called atoms. This leads on to a look at the chemical elements and how they are arranged in the Periodic Table, enabling chemists to rationalise patterns in their chemical and physical behaviour.
Next you will consider chemical reactions, specifically how atoms combine with other atoms to form molecules, and how molecules combine with other atoms or molecules to form bigger molecules. You will meet simple (tried and tested) theories to explain the bonding in molecules and at how their shapes may be explained, and indeed predicted. And in a wider sense you’ll be looking at why reactions happen at all and how fast they go.
This is also a beginner’s level course in the language of the chemist; you’ll learn about symbols, formulas and how chemical equations which represent reactions are constructed. Finally you will see how chemists count atoms and molecules, essential for making up solutions of a known concentration in order to carry out a reaction, or performing a chemical analysis.
Quantum science & technology: Highlights of 2021
Just found this, so making a final post for today. These are some of the highlights in the world of Physics in 2021. Lots of things happened in 2021, so lets hope 2022 is equally as exciting.
I have added a link to the discourse forum and also a link to the Tuxiversity science thread, so you can discuss courses and other options for learning.
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#Physics,#Science,#PhysicsWorld,#2021,#News,#Discourse,#Forum, #Qoto,#Tuxiversity,#Education,#Learning,#Discussions