All Things Education

How to Write and Collaborate on LaTeX Documents Online

2015-10-04T13:00:00.004+02:00

LaTeX is one of the best options to write scientific papers. However, collaboration on a paper among many authors is usually not fun. Below are a number of tools that offer online editing and collaboration for creating LaTeX documents. They all offer a free option, and a paid one, with features varying depending on the service provided. For those who are looking for a free option with many collaborators, Overleaf and Papeeria seem like good options.

[Wikipedia]

1. Overleaf

Overleaf offers a decent free option with unlimited projects and collaborators, and limited storage. You can get more storage by inviting people to use it.

Overleaf

2. Papeeria

Papeeria also offers a nice free option with unlimited public projects and one active private project.

Papeeria

3. ShareLaTeX

ShareLaTeX offers free unlimited projects but with only one collaborator.

ShareLaTeX

4. Authorea

Authorea offers only one free project with unlimited collaborators and reviewers.

Authorea

5. cloudTeX

cloudTex offers a free plan with only one private article and unlimited public articles and collaborators.

cloudTeX

References

Wikipedia: Comparison of TeX Editors

النسخة العربية

How to add a font to Blogger

2015-07-02T14:47:00.000+02:00

Although Blogger already provides a number of different web fonts, it is sometimes useful to add new fonts, e.g. Arabic fonts or other languages that don't have good standard fonts. You can add any font to Blogger in these easy steps.

Wikipedia

Step 1

Convert your font into formats readable by web browsers. For example, if you have .ttf (true type font) file or .eof (embedded open font) file, you need to generate other formats as well. Two of the websites that provide this service online are below. You need to upload your font file, and then the generator will provide you with a zip file with all the generated font files and sample .css and .html files.

Font2Web

Fonts Squirrel

Step 2

You need to upload the font files generated by any of the services above to a server. Specifically, you will need to copy the files .eot, .svg, .ttf, and .woff. If you have a website or a server, that is fine. Otherwise, you can just upload them to your Dropbox account. Put them in a public folder, and make note of their "Public Link", which you can get by right-clicking on a file and choosing "Copy Public Link". It is something like "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/xyz/file_name.ttf" where xyz is some number specific to your folder and username.

Step 3

Go to your blog, and open Template->Customize then choose Advanced->Add CSS. Then copy/paste code like the following (replace your font name instead of "Font Name"):

@font-face {
 font-family: 'Font Name';
 font-style: normal;
 src:
  url(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9991107/Font_Name.eot) format('embedded-opentype'),
  url(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9991107/Font_Name.woff) format('woff'),

  url(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9991107/Font_Name.svg) format('svg'),
  url(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9991107/Font_Name.ttf) format('truetype');
}

.post-body, h1.title, h2, .description, body, h3.post-title {
  font-family: 'Font Name', serif;
}

Resources

Google web fonts
More comprehensive instructions: How to add and use custom fonts in blogger

How to add argmin and argmax to LyX

2015-06-23T11:35:00.001+02:00

To use argmin and argmax in LyX (or LaTeX in general), simply add the following three lines in the LaTeX preample from Document -> Settings as show below:

\usepackage{amsmath} 
\DeclareMathOperator*{\argmin}{argmin}
\DeclareMathOperator*{\argmax}{argmax}

and then use it in any equation as \argmin or \argmax.

References

Free Multilingual Children's Books

2015-06-09T08:40:00.001+02:00

Keeping your children used to reading during the summer vacation is beneficial in terms of helping them retain their reading and comprehension skills. These two websites contain a lot of free multilingual books to help keep your children busy in the summer.

Picture from Pixbay

Unite for Literacy

A website with lots of picture and story books for children in multiple languages. Also contains audio narrations that enable kids to listen and read at the same time.

International Children's Digital Library

A website managed by a nonprofit foundation that contains lots of free children's books in many different languages, including English, Spanish, and Arabic.

Ancient History Encyclopedia

2015-06-08T14:35:00.000+02:00

Ancient History Encyclopedia is an excellent resource for high quality information about ancient world history. It's run by a British nonprofit organization, and is the most visited dedicated history website. It contains articles, videos, interactive maps, and books on natural history. And most of the content is licensed with a Creative Commons license, so it can be used with proper attribution.

Teaching Coding for Kids

2015-06-06T11:37:00.001+02:00

You can teach your kids how to code and program starting at 4 years old. They can start learning concepts such as "algorithm" i.e. a sequence of steps to solve a given problem. These two websites contain several resources and tutorials to help you teach coding for children.

Picture from Pixbay

Code.org

It is a non-profit organization, that aims to teach coding for children. It contains may activities:

Hour of Code: hour long lessons that teach kids the principles of coding using blocks, and contains themes such as Frozen and أو Angry Birds.
Lessons to teach kids how to build a simple game called Flappy Birds.
A series of lessons for kids starting at 4 years old and up to ten years old.
Links and resources for lessons and tutorials from other websites. الوصلات والروابط للمزيد من المواد التعليمية علي مواقع أخري.
Links and resources for other educational materials for teachers and educators.

Scratch

Scratch is a visual programming language that is provided free of charge by MIT. It aims to enable children to create interactive stories, games, or animations, and share them online.

There are a number of other resources that constitute a community for Scratch:

Scratch Ed: an initiative from Harvard University that delivers a hub for educators and teachers to share resources and tutorials about how to use Scratch.
Scratch Junior: a simplified version of Scratch suitable for kids in the age of 5-7 years old. It provides an app for Android and Apple tablets.

How to Add Creative Commons License to Blogger

2015-06-01T09:22:00.000+02:00

Creative Commons is one of the most common public licenses on the Internet, that allow for sharing and disseminating knowledge. Here are a few steps to add your license to both the footer of the whole blog and/or to the footer of each post.

Step 1: Choose your license

Go to the Creative Commons' website, and choose your license, then copy the HTML code.

Step 2: Add to your blog's footer

Go to your blog's "Layout", click on "Add Gadget" on the bottom, and choose "HTML/Javascript" gadget. Then "paste" your chosen license's HTML code there.
More detailed information in this blog post.

Step 3: Add to your posts' footer

To add the logo add to each post's footer, go to "Template" and "Edit HTML". Look for this

<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>

and add just the "anchor" tag, something like the following, before its </div>

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /></a>

which would look something like this:

<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
  <span class='post-location'>
    <b:if cond='data:top.showLocation'>
      <b:if cond='data:post.location'>
        <data:postLocationLabel/>
        <a expr:href='data:post.location.mapsUrl' target='_blank'>
          <data:post.location.name/>
        </a>
      </b:if>
    </b:if>
  </span>
  <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">
      <img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" />
  </a>
</div>

More Information

How to Add Syntax Highlighting to Blogger

2015-05-30T12:40:00.001+02:00

Code Prettify is an excellent Javascript-based syntax highlighter that supports many different languages and styles. To add it to Blogger, simply follow these two steps:

Step 1

Add the following before the </head> tag in your blog's template:

<script src="https://cdn.rawgit.com/google/code-prettify/master/loader/run_prettify.js"></script>

Step 2

To add "inline" code, enclose it with

<code class="prettyprint"> 
  your code 
</code>

This looks something like this: <p> some html paragraph </p>

To add block code, enclose it with

<pre class="prettyprint"> 
  your code 
</pre>

This looks something like this:

<p> some html paragraph </p>

More Information

Much more information, e.g. to choose the language, change the style, ... etc., can be found at Code Prettify

How to add Open Graph Meta Tags to Blogger

2015-05-29T18:15:00.000+02:00

Open Graph meta tags from Facebook allow some control over how the snippet is generated by Facebook when the page is shared. This nice article explains how to generate these meta tags automatically from within blogger. In summary, follow two steps by editing the HTML template.

Step 1

Add the Open Graph's XML namespace in the HTML tag:

xmlns:og='http://ogp.me/ns#'

which will look something like that:

<html b:version='2' class='v2' expr:dir='data:blog.languageDirection' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xmlns:b='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/b' xmlns:data='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/data' xmlns:expr='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr' xmlns:og='http://ogp.me/ns#'>

Step 2

Add the following lines before the </head> tag:

<!-- Open Graph Meta Tags BEGIN -->
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName' property='og:title'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl'>
  <meta expr:content='data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl' property='og:image'/>
</b:if>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.title' property='og:title'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.canonicalUrl' property='og:url'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.metaDescription'>
  <meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' property='og:description'/>
</b:if>
<!-- Open Graph Meta Tags END -->

More Information

Learn 50 Languages for FREE

2015-05-20T07:50:00.000+02:00

The 50Languages.com website offers 100 free short lessons in 50 different languages. Choose your mother tongue, an then choose which languages you would like to learn, and gain access to free 100 dual language mp3 files to download or listen to online.

Example languages:

More details here: http://www.goethe-verlag.com/book2/EM/

TED-Ed: Lessons Worth Sharing

2015-05-17T13:55:00.000+02:00

TED-Ed is a nice initiative from TED, where educators and film makers come together to create video lessons explaining or uncovering topics, ranging from philosophy and history to mathematics and technology. Also includes the ability to build lessons, where you can design questions that engage students and groups of learners. This can be done for YouTube videos or TED-Ed original videos.

Best Free Online Classes

2015-05-11T09:51:00.000+02:00

This is a list of websites offering free online classes and resources for education and free tutoring:

From Universities

edX: Online courses from top universities.
Udacity: a collection of university-level free online courses in Computer Science in Engineering from Stanford professors.
Coursera: a collection of free university-level online interactive classes from Stanford professors in various subjects including Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, ... etc.
MIT Open Courseware: freely available course materials from MIT.
Lagunita: a collection of online courses from Stanford.
Stanford Engineering Everywhere: a collection of free engineering courses from Stanford.
Open Yale Courses: freely available video/audio courses from Yale.
CMU Open Learning Initiative: a collection of courses from CMU.
Berkeley Webcast: freely available video/audio recordings of courses from University of California Berkeley.
Notre Dame Open Courseware: open courseware from the University of Notre Dame.
UCLA Webcast: freely available video/audio courses from the University of California Los Angeles.
Harvard Open Learning Initiative: freely available video/audio courses from Harvard.
UCSD Podcast: freely available courses from the University of California San Diego.
Oxford Podcast: freely available video/audio lectures from Oxford.
Khan Academy: a website with over 3000 short videos (and counting) about everything from Math to Physics to History to Economics and Finance.

From Others

Connexions: a collection of free educational materials organized in small chunks (modules) and collected into courses.
Open Course Library: a library of free open source courses in various subjects.
Open Culture: a comprehensive list of free online video/audio courses and free online textbooks in various subjects.
Utubersity: a collection of free online video lectures, documentaries, and conferences.
Do It Yourself Scholar: a blog about free educational resources.
Flat World Knowledge: a publishing house that makes freely available a collection of high quality college-level textbooks in different subjects from Physics to Economics

Best Free Screen Casting (Screen Recording) Software

2015-05-11T09:21:00.000+02:00

This is a list of the best free screen casting/recording software that can be used to record videos and tutorials:

VSDC Free Video Editor

One of the best free screen recording and video editing software.
Has several utilities to take screen shots, screen recordings, and webcam recordings.
Includes a more sophisticated video editor that can handle picture-in-picture and other advanced effects easily.
Compares favorably to Camtasia Studio, but is completely free.
Can export to many formats, as well as import many formats.
Has a screen annotation tool too.
The only draw back is that it can not record both the screen and webcam at the same time.

URL: http://www.videosoftdev.com/free-video-editor

Active Presenter

One of the best free screen recording software.
The free edition contains most of the functionality of the paid version, except for several exporting options.
Can export to mp4 videos that can be uploaded to YouTube.
Includes a basic video editor to touch up the recorded presentation.
Lacks an option to record the webcam together with the screen.

URL: http://atomisystems.com/activepresenter/

BlackBerry Flashback Express

Another good free option for screen recording.
Can record both the screen and the webcam.
However, the free version lacks any video editing capabilities.

URL: http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/BBFlashBack_FreePlayer.aspx

Screencast-o-matic

A website where you can record online for free, with a paid subscription option.
Can record both the webcam and the screen.
The free version allows recording of only up to 15 minutes.
Also the free version adds a watermark on the published video.
Has on-screen drawing and editing capabilities in the paid version.

URL: http://screencast-o-matic.com/

Screenr

Another website to record online for free.
The free option has a limit of only 5 minutes.

URL: https://www.screenr.com/

Microsoft Expression Encoder

A free software from Microsoft to record the screen.
There is a Pro version, but it is not sold anymore by Microsoft.
Has some nice video editing capabilities.
Can record both the screen and webcam.

URL: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27870

Best Free Screen Marking (Annotation) Software

2015-05-11T09:18:00.000+02:00

This is a list of the best free tools that can be used to annotate or draw on the screen for presentations of tutorials.

Screen Marker

A very simple and free screen annotation tool.
Can annotate over anything on the screen.

URL: http://www.screenmarker.com/

Demo Helper

Another free and simple screen drawing and annotation tool.

URL: http://stefanstools.sourceforge.net/DemoHelper.html

ZoomIt

A free screen zoom and annotation tool.
Can zoom to any part on the screen and annotate.

URL: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx

Free Online Design and Analysis of Algorithms Course

2012-03-06T21:51:00.001+02:00

Coursera is offering a free online Design and Analysis of Algorithms I class taught by Stanford University professor Tim Roughgarden. The class will start on March 12, 2012 and already has a couple of lectures on its website.

Details

Free Online Natural Language Processing Course

2012-03-06T21:31:00.000+02:00

Coursera is offering a free online Natural Language Processing (NLP) class taught by Stanford University professors Dan Jurafsky and Christopher Manning. The class will start on March 12, 2012 and already has a couple of lectures on its website.

NLP Class. Source.

Details

Don't Lecture Me: Teaching through Discussions

2012-02-29T04:39:00.001+02:00

An inspiring APM documentary discussing a new method of teaching college students: discussions. The basic idea is that instead of the professor standing in front of the class and lecturing them, she would tell the students to simply discuss the material and ask each other questions about it. The students then begin discussing the material with one another, and since some of them have just understood the new concept begin taught very recently, they are more likely to explain it to those who have trouble getting it right.

The full transcript is available here and the online audio is here and the downlaodable mp3 file is here.

Eric Mazur teaching his class at Harvard. (Photo: Emily Hanford)

Details

Western Culture: Political, Economic, and Social Thought

2012-02-28T17:51:00.001+02:00

Dr Charles Anderson from the University of Wisconsin presents a series of 54 lectures exploring the history of Western culture though philosophers and thinkers dating from Socrates in ancient Greece and up to John Keynes in the twentieth century. A very interesting set of lectures that brings to life those thinkers and projects the effect and influence of their thought on current affairs.

The full series is available for free on iTunes University (iTunes required).

Dr Charles Anderson. Source.

A brief list of thinkers/philosophers/personalities covered: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus Christ, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Hegel, Karl Marx, John Dewey, and John Maynard Keynes.

Open Yale Courses

2012-02-27T23:35:00.000+02:00

Yale University is offering a number of freely available online courses though its Open Yale Courses initiative. The courses cover topics such as Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Political Science, Sociology, and Economics. A list of the courses is available here and they are also available on YouTube.

Open Yale Courses. Source.

Details . Arabic Version

CMU's Open Learning Initiative

2012-02-27T19:06:00.003+02:00

Carnegie Melon University is offering a number of free courses in its Open Learning Initiative. The courses include Biology, Statistics, Chemistry, and French.

Details . Courses

Nova: Fabric of the Cosmos

2012-02-27T04:03:00.001+02:00

Acclaimed physicist Brian Greene presents, The Fabric of the Cosmos, an amazing 4-part Nova series that tries to explain modern physics for the layman, starting from Einstein's special relativity theory and up to quantum mechanics and the super string theory.

The Fabric of the Cosmos. Source.

The series is available to watch for free at PBS Nova.

PBS Documentary: The War of 1812

2012-02-27T03:49:00.003+02:00

Re-enactments of the War of 1812. Source.

The war of 1812 is a little known war fought between 1812-1815 between the United States and the British Empire. Its results are celebrated in some places and forgotten in others. The 2-hour PBS documentary The War of 1812 goes through the history of the war and its repercussions existing till this very day. You can watch the video online for free at PBS Video. More information about the war is available on Wikipedia.

MITx: MIT's Online Learning Initiative

2012-02-26T20:21:00.003+02:00

MIT is offering this semester its brand new open learning initiative: MITx. It's basically a course that's taught entirely online, together with quizzes, exames, discussions, and even a certification of completion at the end. In addition, MIT plans to make the software platform freely available for other higher education institutions to offer similar classes.

The program will start with the electronics class 6.002x, and will be taught by Prof. Anant Agrawal together with Gerald Sussman and Piotr Mitros.

Details . Arabic Version

Flat World Knowledge: Free College Textbooks

2012-02-26T07:41:00.000+02:00

Flat World Knowledge is a publishing house offering college textbooks with a new twist. They offer a new business model, whereby they offer the textbooks online for free. Yes! Completely freely available college textbooks for all students to read from. However, if you need a hardcopy you can order a low-cost copy online, or even customize your copy.

They offer high quality textbooks in various subjects, including:

Details . Arabic Version

Free Online Courses from Top Universities

2012-02-26T06:53:00.001+02:00

A lot of top universities in the world are now offering completely free high quality audio and/or video courses. Here is just a sample:

MITx: MIT's online learning initiative.
MIT Open Courseware: freely available course materials from MIT.
Open Yale Courses: freely available video/audio courses from Yale.
Berkeley Webcast: freely available video/audio recordings of courses from University of California Berkeley.
Notre Dame Open Courseware: open courseware from the University of Notre Dame.
Stanford Engineering Everywhere: a collection of free engineering courses from Stanford.
UCLA Webcast: freely available video/audio courses from the University of California Los Angeles.
Harvard Open Learning Initiative: freely available video/audio courses from Harvard.
UCSD Podcast: freely available courses from the University of California San Diego.
Oxford Podcast: freely available video/audio lectures from Oxford.
Khan Academy: a website with over 3000 short videos (and counting) about everything from Math to Physics to History to Economics and Finance.
Udacity: a collection of university-level free online courses in Computer Science in Engineering from Stanford professors.
Coursera: a collection of free university-level online interactive classes from Stanford professors in various subjects including Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, ... etc.