January 2018 archive

21
Jan
2018

De Vos personalized learning common core

categories: educational technology, information technology

Betsy DeVos Touts Personalized Learning, Slams Common Core and Reform Efforts

By Jenny Abamu     Jan 16, 2018

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-01-16-betsy-devos-touts-personalized-learning-slams-common-core-and-reform-efforts

U.S. Education Secretary spared no words in her critique of education reform efforts during the Bush and Obama administrations. “I don’t think there is much we can hold onto, from a federal level, that we can say was a real success,”

This is not the first time DeVos has praised personalized learning. The education secretary visited Thomas Russell Middle School in Milpitas, Calif

Her vision of personalized learning has plenty of detractors. Educators and administrators have already begun to voice their reservations about personalized learning in schools. At a gathering of educators in Oakland last October speakers decried what they described as the privatization of public education through the introduction of technology initiatives such as personalized learning. More recently, former AltSchool educator Paul Emerich wrote a blog post titled, “Why I Left Silicon Valley, EdTech, and ‘Personalized’ Learning,” where he offered critiques of the personalized learning movement in his school. The post touched on concerns about his workload and interactions with students.

Parents are raising pressure too. In at least two states, their concerns over screen-time and digital content used in online educational platform has forced districts to suspend the implementation of technology-enabled personalized learning programs such as Summit Learning.

De Vos pointed to previous federal-led education funding programs as a “carrot” that made little or no impact. Her critique is not unfounded: A report published last year by the Education Department’s research division found that the $7 billion School Improvement Grants program made “no significant impacts” on test scores, high school graduation rates or college enrollment.

Common Core is currently adopted in 36 states, according to EdWeek’s Common Core Tracker, last updated September 2017.

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DeVos: ‘Common Core Is Dead’; A Large Online Charter School Is Shut Down

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/01/20/578705608/devos-common-core-is-dead-a-large-online-charter-school-is-shut-down

One of the largest online charter schools in the country closed this week amid a financial and legal dispute with the state of Ohio.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in a keynote address this week to the American Enterprise Institute.
She also cited a survey by the American Federation of Teachers that 60 percent of its teachers reported having moderate to no influence over the content and skills taught in their own classrooms.
That same survey also noted that 86 percent of teachers said they do not feel respected by DeVos.

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more on personalized learning in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=personalized+learning

more on Common Core in this blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=Common+core

19
Jan
2018

revising wwii

categories: information literacy, instructional technology

In ‘Munich,’ Neville Chamberlain Gets The Best Of Hitler

January 19, 20184:54 AM ET

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/19/578899804/in-munich-neville-chamberlain-gets-the-best-of-hitler

My note:

with Dunkirk (2017) – IMDb

and the Darkest Hour (2017) – IMDb

Britain is seriously looking into its WWII history

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more on history in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=history

19
Jan
2018

free speech and privacy

categories: information literacy, information technology, social media

IT’S THE (DEMOCRACY-POISONING) GOLDEN AGE OF FREE SPEECH

Jan 16, 2018

https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-tech-turmoil-new-censorship/

My note: the author uses the 1960 military junta in Turkey as an example. Here it is the 2014 “modern” ideological fight of increasingly becoming dictatorial Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan against his citizens by shutting off Twitter: http://time.com/33393/turkey-recep-tayyip-erdogan-twitter/
Here is more on civil disobedience and social media: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=civil+disobedience

until recently, broadcasting and publishing were difficult and expensive affairs, their infrastructures riddled with bottlenecks and concentrated in a few hands.

When protests broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, a single livestreamer named Mustafa Hussein reportedly garnered an audience comparable in size to CNN’s for a short while. If a Bosnian Croat war criminal drinks poison in a courtroom, all of Twitter knows about it in minutes.

In today’s networked environment, when anyone can broadcast live or post their thoughts to a social network, it would seem that censorship ought to be impossible. This should be the golden age of free speech.

And sure, it is a golden age of free speech—if you can believe your lying eyes. Is that footage you’re watching real? Was it really filmed where and when it says it was? Is it being shared by alt-right trolls or a swarm of Russian bots?
My note: see the ability to create fake audio and video footage:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2017/07/15/fake-news-and-video/

HERE’S HOW THIS golden age of speech actually works: In the 21st century, the capacity to spread ideas and reach an audience is no longer limited by access to expensive, centralized broadcasting infrastructure. It’s limited instead by one’s ability to garner and distribute attention. And right now, the flow of the world’s attention is structured, to a vast and overwhelming degree, by just a few digital platforms: Facebook, Google (which owns YouTube), and, to a lesser extent, Twitter.

at their core, their business is mundane: They’re ad brokers

They use massive surveillance of our behavior, online and off, to generate increasingly accurate, automated predictions of what advertisements we are most susceptible to and what content will keep us clicking, tapping, and scrolling down a bottomless feed.

in reality, posts are targeted and delivered privately, screen by screen by screen. Today’s phantom public sphere has been fragmented and submerged into billions of individual capillaries. Yes, mass discourse has become far easier for everyone to participate in—but it has simultaneously become a set of private conversations happening behind your back. Behind everyone’s backs.

It’s important to realize that, in using these dark posts, the Trump campaign wasn’t deviantly weaponizing an innocent tool. It was simply using Facebook exactly as it was designed to be used. The campaign did it cheaply, with Facebook staffers assisting right there in the office, as the tech company does for most large advertisers and political campaigns.

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more on privacy in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=privacy

more on free speech in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=free+speech

18
Jan
2018

Overstream

categories: distributive learning, educational technology, instructional technology, technology literacy

Overstream: free online subtitle editor

Overstream is a free online editor for creating and synchronizing subtitles to any online video (YouTube, Google Video, MySpace Video, Veoh, Blip.tv, Archive.org and Vimeo.com), store subtitles on the Overstream server, and send the link to the subtitled video to other users, friends or colleagues.

Overstream supports all languages, however, in order to work, the language must be installed on the viewer’s computer.
Both javascript and cookies need to be enabled in your browser in order for this website to work as intended. Also, the Overstream Editor and Player require Flash Player version 8 or above to be installed.

For more information, visit the FAQ section of the webste http://www.overstream.net/help.php

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more on subtitles in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=subtitles

18
Jan
2018

why cryptocurrencies are unstable

categories: announcement

5 key reasons bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies have lost a stunning $370 billion in 10 days

Published: Jan 17, 2018 3:58 p.m. ET

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/5-key-reasons-bitcoin-other-cryptocurrencies-have-lost-a-stunning-365-billion-in-10-days-2018-01-17

market cap

Here’s a quick rundown of the factors contributing to the carnage:

1). South Korea

Seoul has said that the government intends to crack down on the trading of cryptoassets. Officials have also floated the idea of taxes on crypto trading and other measures to tighten its grip on market considered by some as supporting money laundering and dangerous speculative investing. By some measures, South Korea represents about a fifth of the virtual-trade volume.

2). Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that more oversight of cryptocurrencies may be needed “This is the prerogative of the Central Bank at present and the Central Bank has sufficient authority so far. However, in broad terms, legislative regulation will be definitely required in future,” he said, according to Russian news agency TASS.

3). China

Beijing, which already has taken a hard line against the bitcoin community, which uses computing power to support the network and create new bitcoin through mining, has said it also is exploring further regulations or restrictions around digital-asset trading.

4). Bitconnect $BCC

The cyber currency known as Bitconnect, which has long drawn a critical eye from cryptocurrency investors because of its use of loans and the manner in which it solicits new investors, shut down. Bitconnect also promised a return of a quarter of a percentage point daily.

5). Bitcoin futures

Futures for bitcoin on exchange platforms are set to expire this month.

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more on cryptocurrencies in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=cryptocurrency

17
Jan
2018

Social Media Making us dumber

categories: Digital literacy, information literacy, social media

Social Media Is Making Us Dumber. Here’s Exhibit A.

By JESSE SINGAL

My note: the genesis of #FakeNews, #tribalism

The idea that Mr. Pinker, a liberal, Jewish psychology professor, is a fan of a racist, anti-Semitic online movement is absurd on its face, so it might be tempting to roll your eyes and dismiss this blowup as just another instance of social media doing what it does best: generating outrage.

But it’s actually a worthwhile episode to unpack, because it highlights a disturbing, worsening tendency in social media in which tribal allegiances are replacing shared empirical understandings of the world.

What social media is doing is slicing the salami thinner and thinner, as it were, making it harder even for people who are otherwise in general ideological agreement to agree on basic facts about news events.

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