Temos recebido emails de leitores e leitoras queixando-se da falta de novas publicações no cartesiusrenatus. Aceitamos que temos andado muito calados quando muita coisa importante se está passando e que merece grandes comentários e descodificação.
A razão deste fato é que andamos em formação para depois podermos melhor servir a comunidade lusófona e anglófona. Logo viremos à superfície com mais qualidade na aprsentação e distribuição do blog. Watch this space!
Aproveitamos a oportunidade para apresentar os nossos cumprimentos aos numerosos leitores na Rússia, Estados Unidos, Brasil, Reino Unido e Portugal. É curioso como podemos ter tantos leitors na Rússia, Deve por lá haver grande interesse pela língua lusófona.
Morte aos catedráticos tristes, arrogantes e anacrónicos.
O artigo que se segue em Inglês descreve como a forma de comunicação de saberes tem beneficiado pouco com a revolução dos multimédia. Parece que muitos catedráticos e não só ficaram colados ao passado e ainda utilizam métodos anacrónicos de ensino.
diga-se de passagem que é preciso muita formação, investimento e força de vontade para os professores dominarem as técnicas de utilização de recursos tecnológicos complementares na provisão de aulas. Não é fácil e muito professores estão-se nas tintas sobre isso e refugiam-se na facilidade continuando a leccionar alunos a dormir nos cantos dos anfiteatros sobretudo depois de uma noitada de farra. A qualidade do ensino sofre e os alunos ficam a nadar, frustrados e cada ida às aulas transforma-se numa grande seca. Mas isto não é um padrão generalizado.
Felizmente também há muitos professores interessantíssimos, cujas aulas são verdadeiros espetáculos de transmissão de saberes. Ninguém dorme porque esses mestres conseguem manter o aluno atento e desperto a todo o momento! Ninguém dormia nas aulas magistrais de cultura clássica do Dr Jorge Deserto! Que grande comunicador! Nas aulas deste Mestre você não se via grego, mas saía de lá grego, grande sapiente sobre Esparta, Atenas e o Ateneu, passando pelos célebres dramaturgos do Rei Édipo, da Íliada e da Odisseia entre outros.
O artigo refere que a internet está a revolucionar o ensino e exalta os milhões de artigos didáticos da célebre free wikipedia, a qual toda a população Mundial poderá consultar na internet em frações de segundo. O acesso talvez seja mais complicado nos países de censura, onde as ditaduras controlam todo o tráfico de informação digital em movimentação pela fibra opica.
Os Portugueses não têm problemas desses e têm acesso a tudo e mais alguma coisa. Os Salazares são hoje figuras anacrónicas do triste historial português, sem chance alguma de retorno, embora ainda haja cabeças doentias de beatos falsos, nostálgicos de obscurantismo a chorar por esse passado morto. Que tristeza! Esta gente vai mesmo enlouquecer se é que não deram já em malucos!
Então você ainda não sabe abrir um computador, ainda é informaticamente analfabeto? Não diga isso a ninguèm porque parece mal. Está à espera de quê para abrir os olhos e fazer-se à vida, ao mundo e ao desenvolvimento ? verá depois que valeu a pena. Se você fosse desses não estaria agora lendo este artigo.
1 May 2013
Last updated at 10:29
Jimmy Wales says "big-brand" universities will have to adapt to online learning
"I think that the impact is going to be massive and transformative," says Mr Wales, describing the importance of the MOOCs (massive open online courses) that have signed up millions of students.
"It's also been slower than anyone would have anticipated. But I'm not a person who thinks that people will be able to just go online and get a complete education without the guidance of the teacher. That sort of simplistic model shouldn't be our framework."
Instead he thinks that universities need to use online technology where it really works.
And from his own experience as a student, the traditional university lecture should have been condemned decades ago and replaced with an online video recording that can be stopped and started.
Recorded lectures "I was taking an advanced calculus class and my instructor was reputed to be a fabulous researcher, but he barely spoke English. He was a very boring and bad teacher and I was absolutely lost and in despair.
"So I went to the campus tutoring centre and they had Betamax tapes of a professor who had won teaching awards. Basically I sat with those tapes and took class there. But I still had to go to the other one and sat there and wanted to kill myself.
Online courses provide such libraries of video lectures, supplemented with interactive information, that can be used at any time on a tablet computer or laptop.
And Mr Wales suggests the future model of higher education will be to allow students to use recordings of lectures - and to use the teaching time to discuss and develop what students have been watching.
"It seems much more effective and is the direction I think we're going to go."
Wikipedia itself is central to this changing landscape in which huge amounts of high-quality information are available free anywhere with an internet connection.
The sheer scale of the information and the volume of its consumption has no parallel in history. Wikipedia's latest internet traffic is running at more than 21 billion page impressions per month.
But he says it remains uncertain whether universities will be ready to change. "There's a certain inertia in the system."
Adapt or die "The really interesting challenge for big-brand universities is whether they are going to move into that space. If we thought of universities as normal businesses we would say, 'Will they be able to adapt to the PC revolution?' It's that kind of question. Will Harvard or MIT, Oxford or Cambridge, be able to adapt? Or will Microsoft come out of nowhere?
Wikipedia's mobile site has reached more than 3 billion page views per month
"It's going to be really fascinating to see it unfold."
In terms of technology in education, he says we should look at how it's being driven by interest in home schooling.
"In the US, for younger children, the home schooling movement is huge.
"There are a load of online educational resources, they're booming. Parents are looking for the best education for their kids, they realise these tools are working. There's a marketplace for it long before the traditional school is going to think about it."
Mr Wales himself grew up in a small private school run by his mother and grandmother in Alabama. There were four other children in his grade.
"It was like a one-room schoolhouse, the kind of place Abe Lincoln went to school," he says.
"Education was our life, something incredibly valued by my family."
Developing world An important part of Wikipedia's future focus, he says, is going to reach the modern world's version of isolated school houses in the developing world.
In wealthier countries there might be the luxury of a debate about whether Wikipedia is better or worse than printed encyclopaedias. But Mr Wales wants to support languages in Africa where there have never been encyclopaedias in the first place.
"We've still got a long way to go. I'd say we've increasingly turned our focus to the languages of the developing world. It's really of great importance. Our goal is a free encyclopaedia for everyone in their own language."
He rejects the idea that Wikipedia's instant knowledge represents some kind of dumbing down. It has long been accused of being the hidden hand in countless school and university assignments.
But Mr Wales says it plays a vital democratic role in allowing ordinary people to become informed in a way that would never have been possible before.
If there is a story in the news, people can find out the background for themselves. "We can see it in our traffic. There's a massive spike.
"In some rose-coloured view of the past we all went home and read books about it. The truth is that we didn't.
"It's remarkable that people now have the opportunity. It's not a Utopian state, but people have the possibility to do their own research."
Pub quiz Mr Wales also defends what Wikipedia represents for free speech in countries with censorship and a lack of human rights.
Do not expect Wikipedia's chief to follow the Young Ones on a television quiz
"The impact of the knowledge we bring is important, but what is
much more deeply political is the concept of Wikipedia, that ordinary
people should be able to participate in the grand human dialogue.
"It's a very subversive idea in a society that is top-down and 'do as your masters tell you,'" he says.
The online encyclopaedia is now 12 years old, launched in the same month as iTunes and when Greece adopted the euro. It has grown to 26 million articles and has more than 500 million individual users a month.
Wikipedia's next development will be to make it easier for a wider variety of people to write and edit articles, with an editing tool that is more user-friendly.
"For people who aren't computer geeks, it's intimidating. The user base of active editors tend to be computer-savvy. We want to diversify, so they can be geeks but not computer geeks."
Of course, there's still a big unanswered question. How would the king of Wikipedia get on in a pub quiz? Would he have to illicitly check his smartphone under the table?
"I've declined to go on a TV quiz show. There's no upside for me. Unless I get every single question right I'm going to be subject to mockery. Because I'm meant to be the encyclopaedia guy."
Jimmy Wales: Boring university lectures 'are doomed'
Jimmy Wales says "big-brand" universities will have to adapt to online learning
The
boring university lecture is going to be the first major casualty of
the rise in online learning in higher education, says Wikipedia founder
Jimmy Wales.
The custodian of the world's biggest online encyclopaedia
says that unless universities respond to the rising tide of online
courses new major players will emerge to displace them, in the way that
Microsoft arrived from nowhere alongside the personal computer."I think that the impact is going to be massive and transformative," says Mr Wales, describing the importance of the MOOCs (massive open online courses) that have signed up millions of students.
"It's also been slower than anyone would have anticipated. But I'm not a person who thinks that people will be able to just go online and get a complete education without the guidance of the teacher. That sort of simplistic model shouldn't be our framework."
Instead he thinks that universities need to use online technology where it really works.
And from his own experience as a student, the traditional university lecture should have been condemned decades ago and replaced with an online video recording that can be stopped and started.
Recorded lectures "I was taking an advanced calculus class and my instructor was reputed to be a fabulous researcher, but he barely spoke English. He was a very boring and bad teacher and I was absolutely lost and in despair.
"So I went to the campus tutoring centre and they had Betamax tapes of a professor who had won teaching awards. Basically I sat with those tapes and took class there. But I still had to go to the other one and sat there and wanted to kill myself.
Continue reading the main story
WIKIPEDIA HIGHS AND HOAXES
- Most recent monthly figures, for March 2013, show a new high of more than 21 billion page views
- Biggest region for readers is Europe, almost twice as large as North America
- 78,000 regular editors
- Hoax entries included a biography of blues singer Snow Blind Driveway; wet floor warning signs dating to 220BC; Reich Corps of the Trombone set up by Goebbels; and that Brierfield in Lancashire was the inspiration for JRR Tolkien's evil land of Mordor
- Most edited and most vandalised entry is for George W Bush
- Deleted categories include "Permanent residents of hell" and "Guys who used to have long hair"
- Most visited entry in a single day remains Michael Jackson when news broke of the singer's death
"I thought at that time, in the
future, why wouldn't you have the most entertaining professor, the one
with the proven track record of getting knowledge into people's heads?
"We're still not quite there. In university you're still
likely to be in a large lecture hall with a very boring professor, and
everyone knows it's not working very well. It's not even the best use of
that professor's time or the audience."Online courses provide such libraries of video lectures, supplemented with interactive information, that can be used at any time on a tablet computer or laptop.
And Mr Wales suggests the future model of higher education will be to allow students to use recordings of lectures - and to use the teaching time to discuss and develop what students have been watching.
"It seems much more effective and is the direction I think we're going to go."
Wikipedia itself is central to this changing landscape in which huge amounts of high-quality information are available free anywhere with an internet connection.
The sheer scale of the information and the volume of its consumption has no parallel in history. Wikipedia's latest internet traffic is running at more than 21 billion page impressions per month.
But he says it remains uncertain whether universities will be ready to change. "There's a certain inertia in the system."
Adapt or die "The really interesting challenge for big-brand universities is whether they are going to move into that space. If we thought of universities as normal businesses we would say, 'Will they be able to adapt to the PC revolution?' It's that kind of question. Will Harvard or MIT, Oxford or Cambridge, be able to adapt? Or will Microsoft come out of nowhere?
Wikipedia's mobile site has reached more than 3 billion page views per month
In terms of technology in education, he says we should look at how it's being driven by interest in home schooling.
"In the US, for younger children, the home schooling movement is huge.
"There are a load of online educational resources, they're booming. Parents are looking for the best education for their kids, they realise these tools are working. There's a marketplace for it long before the traditional school is going to think about it."
Mr Wales himself grew up in a small private school run by his mother and grandmother in Alabama. There were four other children in his grade.
"It was like a one-room schoolhouse, the kind of place Abe Lincoln went to school," he says.
"Education was our life, something incredibly valued by my family."
Developing world An important part of Wikipedia's future focus, he says, is going to reach the modern world's version of isolated school houses in the developing world.
In wealthier countries there might be the luxury of a debate about whether Wikipedia is better or worse than printed encyclopaedias. But Mr Wales wants to support languages in Africa where there have never been encyclopaedias in the first place.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Jimmy WalesWhat is much more deeply political is the concept of Wikipedia, that ordinary people should be able to participate in the grand human dialogue. It's a very subversive idea in a society that is top-down”
Wikipedia operates in 286
different languages, but the content is very unevenly spread. There are
more than 4 million articles in English, while Xhosa, spoken by almost 8
million people in South Africa, only has 147 articles.
"Our role in languages of the developing world is quite different from our role in English."We've still got a long way to go. I'd say we've increasingly turned our focus to the languages of the developing world. It's really of great importance. Our goal is a free encyclopaedia for everyone in their own language."
He rejects the idea that Wikipedia's instant knowledge represents some kind of dumbing down. It has long been accused of being the hidden hand in countless school and university assignments.
But Mr Wales says it plays a vital democratic role in allowing ordinary people to become informed in a way that would never have been possible before.
If there is a story in the news, people can find out the background for themselves. "We can see it in our traffic. There's a massive spike.
"In some rose-coloured view of the past we all went home and read books about it. The truth is that we didn't.
"It's remarkable that people now have the opportunity. It's not a Utopian state, but people have the possibility to do their own research."
Pub quiz Mr Wales also defends what Wikipedia represents for free speech in countries with censorship and a lack of human rights.
Do not expect Wikipedia's chief to follow the Young Ones on a television quiz
"It's a very subversive idea in a society that is top-down and 'do as your masters tell you,'" he says.
The online encyclopaedia is now 12 years old, launched in the same month as iTunes and when Greece adopted the euro. It has grown to 26 million articles and has more than 500 million individual users a month.
Wikipedia's next development will be to make it easier for a wider variety of people to write and edit articles, with an editing tool that is more user-friendly.
"For people who aren't computer geeks, it's intimidating. The user base of active editors tend to be computer-savvy. We want to diversify, so they can be geeks but not computer geeks."
Of course, there's still a big unanswered question. How would the king of Wikipedia get on in a pub quiz? Would he have to illicitly check his smartphone under the table?
"I've declined to go on a TV quiz show. There's no upside for me. Unless I get every single question right I'm going to be subject to mockery. Because I'm meant to be the encyclopaedia guy."
