Month: December 2019

Replied to When A Stumble Goes Viral by Kevin’s Meandering Mind | Author | dogtrax (dogtrax.edublogs.org)

My son was running an event he had not run before at his high school indoor track meet the other day. We were cheering him on — he’s fast — when he took a turn and began to stumble. He fell to the track but then muscled his way back to his feet and crossed the finish line, unhurt but very frustrated.


The next day, he told us that a friend on the track team had been shooting video of his race, caught the stumble, and had remixed the footage for Tik Tok. My son said he was fine with it. The video clip does not show my son’s face or any other identifying features. It’s shot from the back. Strangely, the friend edited the video to indicate to the audience in the opening frame it was him (the friend) in the video. Maybe this was to protect my son’s privacy.

Kevin, I was left wondering about the ethics of sharing. I imagine that ‘technically’ videoing the incident is ok, even if it does seem a bit weird. However, sharing is a different problem. It reminds me of danah boyd’s discussion of Star Wars kid in her book It’s Complicated.

The “Star Wars Kid” video is a classic example of a widely viewed video that was shared online to embarrass a teen. In 2002, a fourteen-year-old heavyset boy created a home video of himself swinging a golf ball retriever as though it was a light saber from Star Wars. A year later, a classmate of his found this home video, digitized it, and put it up online. Others edited the video, setting the action to music and dubbing in sound effects, graphics, and other special effects. The resultant “Star Wars Kid” video spread rapidly and received extensive media attention. It became the source of new memes and mocking video spin-offs. Even comedians like Weird Al Yankovic and Stephen Colbert produced their own renditions. Although people gained attention for spreading the video or creating their own versions, the cost of this mass attention was devastating to the teenager in the video. His family sued his classmates for emotional duress because of
the ongoing harassment he faced.

The “Star Wars Kid” video exemplifies how mass public shaming is a byproduct of widespread internet attention and networked distribution. Teenagers commonly face a lesser version of this when they receive unexpected and unwanted attention, when they become the target of a rumor, or when others share their content beyond its intended audience. Social media complicates the dynamics of social sharing and gossip because it provides a platform for information to spread far and wide, and people are often motivated to spread embarrassing content because others find it interesting. Spreadable media can be used to drum up productive attention, but it can also be used to shame.

Bookmarked Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines, tracking the locations of hundreds of thousands (Washington Post)

The systems highlight how widespread surveillance has increasingly become a fact of life: Students “should have all the rights, responsibilities and privileges that an adult has. So why do we treat them so differently?”

As someone who supports schools with attendance, I understand to a degree where this is all coming from. However, this does not mean it is right. Along with the take-up of video surveillance as perpetuated by companies such as Looplearn, the use of phones as a means of tracking is raising a lot of questions about the purpose and place of technology within learning.

The Chicago-based company has experimented with ways to make the surveillance fun, gamifying students’ schedules with colorful Bitmoji or digital multiday streaks. But the real value may be for school officials, who Carter said can split students into groups, such as “students of color” or “out-of-state students,” for further review. When asked why an official would want to segregate out data on students of color, Carter said many colleges already do so, looking for patterns in academic retention and performance, adding that it “can provide important data for retention. Even the first few months of recorded data on class attendance and performance can help predict how likely a group of students is to” stay enrolled.

What is most disconcerting is the hype around such data.

The company also claims to see much more than just attendance. By logging the time a student spends in different parts of the campus, Benz said, his team has found a way to identify signs of personal anguish: A student avoiding the cafeteria might suffer from food insecurity or an eating disorder; a student skipping class might be grievously depressed. The data isn’t conclusive, Benz said, but it can “shine a light on where people can investigate, so students don’t slip through the cracks.”

Here I am reminded of the work by Cathy O’Neil in regards to big data.

Replied to Opinion | Be Paranoid About Privacy (nytimes.com)

We need to take back our privacy from tech companies — even if that means sacrificing convenience.

I really like your point about being sloppy Kara.

We’re digitally sloppy, even if it can be very dangerous, as evidenced by a disturbing New York Times story this week about an Emirati secure messaging app called ToTok, which is used by millions across the Middle East and has also recently become one of the most downloaded in the United States.

This is what I was trying to touch upon in my post on being better informed.

I think the challenge is that there is always more that we can do. I guess something is better than nothing.

Liked It’s always the little things… (Discours.es)

I’d love to see a lot more money poured into Free Software to solve some of the problems I’ve outlined above. A lot of it is due to a combination of:

  1. The massive mismatch between the number of developers working on Free Software projects, compared to the number of designers.
  2. The increasing amount of vendor lock-in, and decreasing interest in standards of interoperability .
  3. Duplication of effort and fragmentation across the Free Software landscape. Some of this is political, some social, and some (to be quite honest) because of ignorance.

We can do a lot better than this. I’d like to help, but right now I have more problems and questions than I do answers.

Bookmarked We asked teenagers what adults are missing about technology. This was the best response. (MIT Technology Review)

But teens don’t use social media just for the social connections and networks. It goes deeper. Social-media platforms are among our only chances to create and shape our sense of self. Social media makes us feel seen. In our Instagram “biographies,” we curate a line of emojis that feature our passions: skiing, art, debate, racing. We post our greatest achievements and celebrations. We create fake “finsta” accounts to share our daily moments and vulnerabilities with close friends. We find our niche communities of YouTubers.

Taylor Fang provides a perspective of teen use of technology. As always, it’s complicated.
Bookmarked Smartphones Transformed India. Now Indians Are Turning Them Against The Modi Government. (BuzzFeed News)

Cheap data and inexpensive smartphones brought millions of people online in India this decade. As the country’s government cracks down, protesters are using the internet to resist.

Pranav Dixit discusses the rise of smartphones in India across the last decade.

“The changes that the smartphone brought to the West were incremental,” Ravi Agrawal, CNN’s former Indian bureau chief and author of the book India Connected, told BuzzFeed News. “If you were a middle-class American, chances are that you already had a PC, a telephone line, a camcorder, a music player. Getting a smartphone consolidated the things you already had.” For Indians, he said, the smartphone was people’s first camera, television, library, and newspaper. “For Westerners, the smartphone has been evolutionary, but for Indians, it has been revolutionary.”

This has come on the back of cheap Android devices that have flooded the market and free access from companies like Google.

More so than Apple, Google shaped the modern Indian internet. The company went to the grassroots and got its hands dirty, doing more than throwing free Wi-Fi at Indians. Over the last few years, Google has made its products available in more than a dozen Indian languages, reworked Android keyboards to work better with Indic language scripts, and even trained its voice assistant to understand Hinglish, a mixture of Hindi and English that millions of Indians use colloquially, which trips up Alexa and Siri regularly.

Access to the internet has subsequently given people a voice. The government response has been to control these tools to stamp out dissent.

In India, shutting down the pipes that power dissent has been the go-to move for officials, big and small, for years. According to the Software Freedom Law Center, which tracks internet shutdowns in the country, India tops the world in digital clampdowns. By its estimate, India had turned off the internet in various parts of the country 376 times at the time this article was published — 104 times in 2019 alone.

Replied to 2020 – The Year of the Radical Instructional Designer – Etale – Exploring Futures & Innovations in Education with Bernard Bull (etale.org)

Even so, it is still too limiting for me and it is why I identify as a designer more than an instructional designer. There is just too much philosophical and ideological baggage associated with the phrase, even with the word “instructional.” I will hesitantly reference instructional design, but I much prefer to think more broadly. In that sense, I offer an alternative definition for the radical instructional designer as ”a person who builds upon deep beliefs and values while contributing to the creation of learning experiences, environments, solutions, possibilities, frameworks, models, tools, and systems.

I like your point about values Bernard. Too often what we value is left silent to what we expect to happen. This is what I liked about the Modern Learning Canvas. By giving a place for ‘pedagogical beliefs’ next to ‘outcomes’, the canvas helps to place everything in perspective.
Liked Blog Diet: A Starter List For Your RSS Reader (WARREN ELLIS LTD)

I exported my subscruptions, and damn, there are a LOT of dead blogs out there. Here is a selection of blogs from the list of ones I think are still active. Like I say, it’s just a bit of my active subscriptions list, but maybe you’ll find something you want to follow.

Liked The dead won’t shut up: on Star Wars, The Rise of Skywalker (Bryan Alexander)

The movie theater showing Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker began by screening 35 minutes of trailers. At first I thought this was because they had us trapped. Then, once I saw The Rise of Skywalker, I realized it was a kind of preemptive consolation prize.

Yes, there will be spoilers aplenty in this post. If you really want to see the thing and don’t want to have details revealed, please stop reading and come visit afterwards when you need a hug.

Replied to What if These 50+ Activities Made Up 90% of Every School Day? – Etale – Exploring Futures & Innovations in Education with Bernard Bull (etale.org)

I envision learning environments where one or more of the following 50+ items make up the bulk of every school day. I see schools where learning is rich, inspiring, meaningful, and transformational; and where the dragons of tests and grades no longer demand fear and submission. I envision a learning environment that is deeply human and humane, one that is responsive to the needs, callings, passions, proclivities, perspectives, and voices of all learners.

With such an extensive list Bernard, I wonder if there is a corresponding list of items that should not be taking up 90% of our time?
Replied to Good thoughts, good words, good deeds (daily-ink.davidtruss.com)

What if we were to nurture the good in any faith we have, be it a faith in God, a faith in humanity, or faith in ourselves to be loving, thoughtful, and kind. We are put on this earth for a relatively short time, how can we maximize the good that we do while we are here?

Great message David. This reminds me of a tale I saw posted on Twitter:

Replied to https://boffosocko.com/2019/12/23/55762858/#content++4 by Chris AldrichChris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)

For most of my bookmarks, likes, reads, etc. I use a plugin that scrapes my post and saves a copy of the contents of all the URLs on my page to the Internet Archive so that even in the event of a site death, a copy of the content is saved for me for a later date.

Chris, I was wondering what plugin you use to store copies of the links to Archive.org?
Replied to 2019 in Review: Blog Reading by john john (johnjohnston.info)

Read Write Collect is my main education hosepipe filter. Aaron reads and comments on a huge range of educational and web tech blogs wrapped in a tasty IndieWeb coating.

Thank you for the shout-out John. I am glad you find it all of use. I have found it a much more mindful and meaningful exercise than when I used to publish everything straight to Twitter.
Bookmarked Beneath modern Melbourne, a window opens into its ancient history (the Guardian)

Researchers are drilling into remnant billabongs across the city to document the landscape as it was under Aboriginal management

Along with Zach Hope’s article on buried Melbourne, Jack Banister’s discussion on Melbourne lush waterways provides a perspective of another world.

By analysing the sediment – from the traces of pollen, and layers of charcoal and organic matter, to the DNA of lost creatures and micro-organisms – with the local Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung elders and community, Fletcher will add to the collective knowledge of this secluded spot.

This touches on what Tim Flannery has described as a ‘temperate Kakadu‘.

Listened Dolly Parton’s America (with Jad Abumrad) by Written By Charlie Harding from switchedonpop.com

There are icons, and then there’s Dolly Parton. The country singer-turned-actress-turned-cultural phenomenon has produced a nearly unparalleled body of work, in both quantity (Parton is the sole or co-author of more than three thousand songs) and in legacy. Despite releasing her first album over 60 years ago, Parton’s songs are still covered and performed live by today’s pop artists. Presidential candidates are still selecting her songs as official walk-on music. So what is it exactly that makes her music so enduring? Today, we select four essential Dolly songs for dissection and try to answer that big question with the help of composer, longtime radio-maker and host of the new hit podcast, Dolly Parton’s America—Jad Abumrad. Whether or not you identify as a Dolly Parton fan, or even a country music fan, we think you’ll love this one.

Listened Episode 175: Vampire Weekend,Song Exploder | Vampire Weekend from Song Exploder

In this episode, Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend takes “Harmony Hall” apart. I spoke to him along with producer Ariel Rechtshaid, and the two of them detailed winding path the song went down, over several years, before it finally took shape.

I am always fascinated with the journey of songs, especially that Ezra Koenig planted the seed in a recording on his phone in 2011. I was reminded of Robyn discussing how she spends hours riffing on melodies, in the same way Koenig discusses trying different variations of the chord sequeence over time to find the right sound and rhythm to work with. I also like how sometimes it takes a fresh set of ears to put the pieces together. In this case it was producer Ariel Rechtshaid.
Listened In Our Time – Tutankhamun – BBC Sounds from BBC

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the discovery in 1922 of Tutankhamun’s 3000 year old tomb and its impact on the understanding of ancient Egypt, both academic and popular. The riches, such as the death mask above, were spectacular and made the reputation of Howard Carter who led the excavation. And if the astonishing contents of the tomb were not enough, the drama of the find and the control of how it was reported led to a craze for ‘King Tut’ that has rarely subsided and has enthused and sometimes confused people around the world, seeking to understand the reality of Tutankhamun’s life and times.


With


Elizabeth Frood –
Associate Professor of Egyptology, Director of the Griffith Institute and Fellow of St Cross at the University of Oxford


Christina Riggs –
Professor of the History of Visual Culture at Durham University and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford


And


John Taylor –
Curator at the Department of Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum

Replied to Who’s Afraid of the Sound of Tik Tok? (w Cat Zhang) (switchedonpop.com)

EPISODE 145
Bass distorted to the edge of audibility; voices croaking out dark and violent lyrics; a hacked-together DIY aesthetic. This isn’t a fringe musical movement, this is the sound of Tik Tok, the video app used by millions in Generation Z. And soon enough it might also be the sound of pop as…

After listening to your discussion with Cat Zhang about TikTok, I was left wondering whether Hudson Mohawke’s production of BANKS recent album reflected this dirty aesthetics or if this is in fact a reference to SoundCloud rap?