Apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Viber
Felix Krause described in 2017 that when a user grants an app access to their camera and microphone, the app could do the following:
Access both the front and the back camera.
Record you at any time the app is in the foreground.
Take pictures and videos without telling you.
Upload the pictures and videos without telling you.
Upload the pictures/videos it takes immediately.
Run real-time face recognition to detect facial features or expressions.
Livestream the camera on to the internet.
Detect if the user is on their phone alone, or watching together with a second person.
Upload random frames of the video stream to your web service and run a proper face recognition software which can find existing photos of you on the internet and create a 3D model based on your face.
For instance, here’s a Find my Phone application which a documentary maker installed on a phone, then let someone steal it. After the person stole it, the original owner spied on every moment of the thief’s life through the phone’s camera and microphone.
The government
Edward Snowden revealed an NSA program called Optic Nerves. The operation was a bulk surveillance program under which they captured webcam images every five minutes from Yahoo users’ video chats and then stored them for future use. It is estimated that between 3% and 11% of the images captured contained “undesirable nudity”.
Hackers can also gain access to your device with extraordinary ease via apps, PDF files, multimedia messages and even emojis.
An application called Metasploit on the ethical hacking platform Kali uses an Adobe Reader 9 (which over 60% of users still use) exploit to open a listener (rootkit) on the user’s computer. You alter the PDF with the program, send the user the malicious file, they open it, and hey presto – you have total control over their device remotely.
Once a user opens this PDF file, the hacker can then:
Install whatever software/app they like on the user’s device.
Use a keylogger to grab all of their passwords.
Steal all documents from the device.
Take pictures and stream videos from their camera.
Capture past or live audio from the microphone.
Upload incriminating images/documents to their PC, and notify the police.
And, if it’s not enough that your phone is tracking you – surveillance cameras in shops and streets are tracking you, too
You might even be on this website, InSeCam, which allows ordinary people online to watch surveillance cameras free of charge. It even allows you to search cameras by location, city, time zone, device manufacturer, and specify whether you want to see a kitchen, bar, restaurant or bedroom.
Here’s how to evaluate the potential for mobile solutions
Before they set foot in their first class, incoming college students face a maze of requirements and resources that will be critical to their success. So-called “student supports” abound. Yet forty percent of first-year studentsdon’t return the following year, and a growing number report information overload as they navigate campus life amid newfound independence.
The nine in 10 undergraduates who own smartphones are probably familiar with the xkcd about it. College-aged Americans check their devices more than 150 times per day. So it should be no surprise that a growing body of research suggests that mobile solutions can play a critical role in enhancing the student experience.
1. Is the mobile app native?
We’ve all had the frustrating experience of using a smartphone to navigate a page that was designed for a computer. But when designing native mobile apps, developers start with the small screen, which leads to simpler, cleaner platforms that get rid of the clutter of the desktop browsing experience.
As smartphones overtake laptops and desktops as the most popular way for young people to get online, native design is critical for universities to embrace.
2. Is there a simple content management system?
It’s also critical to explore whether mobile apps integrate with an institution’s existing LMS, CMS, and academic platforms. The most effective apps will allow you to draw upon and translate existing content and resources directly into the mobile experience. My note: this is why it is worth experimenting with alternatives to LMS, such as Facebook Groups: they allow ready-to-use SIMPLE mobile interface.
3. Does it allow you to take targeted action?
At-risk or disengaged students often require more targeted communication and engagement which, if used effectively, can prevent them falling into those categories in the first place.
Unlike web-based tools, mobile apps should not only communicate information, but also generate insights and reports, highlighting key information into how students use the platform.
4. Does it offer communication and social networking opportunities?
Teenagers who grew up with chatbots and Snapchat expect instant communication to be part of any online interaction. Instead of making students toggle between the student affairs office and conversations with advisors, mobile platforms that offer in-app messaging can streamline the experience and keep users engaged.
Publisher / Organization: Athabasca University Press
Year founded: 2000
Description: The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning disseminates original research, theory, and best practice in open and distributed learning worldwide.
Publisher / Organization: The University of Illinois at Chicago- University Library
Year founded: 1996
Description: First Monday is among the very first open access journals in the EdTech field. The journal’s subject matter encompasses the full range of Internet issues, including educational technologies, social media and web search. Contributors are urged via author guidelines to use simple explanations and less complex sentences and to be mindful that a large proportion of their readers are not part of academia and do not have English as a first language.
Academic Management: University of Catalonia (UOC)
Year founded: 2004
Description: This journal aims to: provide a vehicle for scholarly presentation and exchange of information between professionals, researchers and practitioners in the technology-enhanced education field; contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge regarding the use of technology and computers in higher education; and inform readers about the latest developments in the application of information technologies (ITs) in higher education learning, training, research and management.
Description: Online Learning promotes the development and dissemination of new knowledge at the intersection of pedagogy, emerging technology, policy, and practice in online environments. The journal has been published for over 20 years as the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN) and recently merged with the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT).
Publisher / Organization: International Forum of Educational Technology & Society
Year founded:1998
Description: Educational Technology & Society seeks academic articles on the issues affecting the developers of educational systems and educators who implement and manage these systems. Articles should discuss the perspectives of both communities – the programmers and the instructors. The journal is currently still accepting submissions for ongoing special issues, but will cease publication in the future as the editors feel that the field of EdTech is saturated with high quality publications.
Description: The Australasian Journal of Educational Technology aims to promote research and scholarship on the integration of technology in tertiary education, promote effective practice, and inform policy. The goal is to advance understanding of educational technology in post-school education settings, including higher and further education, lifelong learning, and training.
DESCRIPTION: The Internet and Higher Education is devoted to addressing contemporary issues and future developments related to online learning, teaching, and administration on the Internet in post-secondary settings. Articles should significantly address innovative deployments of Internet technology in instruction and report on research to demonstrate the effects of information technology on instruction in various contexts in higher education.
Publisher / Organization: British Educational Research Association (BERA)
YEAR FOUNDED: 1970
DESCRIPTION: The journal publishes theoretical perspectives, methodological developments and empirical research that demonstrate whether and how applications of instructional/educational technology systems, networks, tools and resources lead to improvements in formal and non-formal education at all levels, from early years through to higher, technical and vocational education, professional development and corporate training.
Description: Computers & Education aims to increase knowledge and understanding of ways in which digital technology can enhance education, through the publication of high quality research, which extends theory and practice.
Description: TechTrends targets professionals in the educational communication and technology field. It provides a vehicle that fosters the exchange of important and current information among professional practitioners. Among the topics addressed are the management of media and programs, the application of educational technology principles and techniques to instructional programs, and corporate and military training.
Description: Advances in technology and the growth of e-learning to provide educators and trainers with unique opportunities to enhance learning and teaching in corporate, government, healthcare, and higher education. IJEL serves as a forum to facilitate the international exchange of information on the current research, development, and practice of e-learning in these sectors.
Led by an Editorial Review Board of leaders in the field of e-Learning, the Journal is designed for the following audiences: researchers, developers, and practitioners in corporate, government, healthcare, and higher education. IJEL is a peer-reviewed journal.
Description: JCMST is a highly respected scholarly journal which offers an in-depth forum for the interchange of information in the fields of science, mathematics, and computer science. JCMST is the only periodical devoted specifically to using information technology in the teaching of mathematics and science.
Just as researchers build reputation over time that can be depicted (in part) through quantitative measures such as h-index and i10-index, journals are also compared based on the number of citations they receive..
Description: The Journal of Interactive Learning Research (JILR) publishes papers related to the underlying theory, design, implementation, effectiveness, and impact on education and training of the following interactive learning environments: authoring systems, cognitive tools for learning computer-assisted language learning computer-based assessment systems, computer-based training computer-mediated communications, computer-supported collaborative learning distributed learning environments, electronic performance support systems interactive learning environments, interactive multimedia systems interactive simulations and games, intelligent agents on the Internet intelligent tutoring systems, microworlds, virtual reality based learning systems.
Description: JEMH is designed to provide a multi-disciplinary forum to present and discuss research, development and applications of multimedia and hypermedia in education. It contributes to the advancement of the theory and practice of learning and teaching in environments that integrate images, sound, text, and data.
Publisher / Organization: Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE)
Year founded: 1997
Description: JTATE serves as a forum for the exchange of knowledge about the use of information technology in teacher education. Journal content covers preservice and inservice teacher education, graduate programs in areas such as curriculum and instruction, educational administration, staff development instructional technology, and educational computing.
Publisher / Organization: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)
YEAR FOUNDED: 2015
DESCRIPTION: The Journal of Online Learning Research (JOLR) is a peer-reviewed, international journal devoted to the theoretical, empirical, and pragmatic understanding of technologies and their impact on primary and secondary pedagogy and policy in primary and secondary (K-12) online and blended environments. JOLR is focused on publishing manuscripts that address online learning, catering particularly to the educators who research, practice, design, and/or administer in primary and secondary schooling in online settings. However, the journal also serves those educators who have chosen to blend online learning tools and strategies in their face-to-face classroom.
The most commonly used index to measure the relative importance of journals is the annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR). This report is published by Clarivate Analytics (previously Thomson Reuters).
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR indicator) measures the influence of journals based on the number of citations the articles in the journal receive and the importance or prestige of the journals where such citations come from. The SJR indicator is a free journal metric which uses an algorithm similar to PageRank and provides an open access alternative to the journal impact factor in the Web of Science Journal Citation Report. The portal draws from the information contained in the Scopus database (Elsevier B.V.).
Introduced by Google in 2004, Scholar is a freely accessible search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly publications across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.
Introduced by Elsevier in 2004, Scopus is an abstract and citation database that covers nearly 18,000 titles from more than 5,000 publishers. It offers journal metrics that go beyond just journals to include most serial titles, including supplements, special issues and conference proceedings. Scopus offers useful information such as the total number of citations, the total number of articles published, and the percent of articles cited.
Anne-Wil Harzing:
“Citations are not just a reflection of the impact that a particular piece of academic work has generated. Citations can be used to tell stories about academics, journals and fields of research, but they can also be used to distort stories”.
Harzing, A.-W. (2013). The publish or perish book: Your guide to effective and responsible citation analysis. http://harzing.com/popbook/index.htm
ResearchGate is a social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. The community was founded in May 2008. Today it has over 14 million members.
Google Scholar allows users to search for digital or physical copies of articles, whether online or in libraries. It indexes “full-text journal articles, technical reports, preprints, theses, books, and other documents, including selected Web pages that are deemed to be ‘scholarly. It comprises an estimated 160 million documents.
Academia.edu is a social-networking platform for academics to share research papers. You can upload your own work, and follow the updates of your peers. Founded in 2008, the network currently has 59 million users, and adding 20 million documents.
The ORCHID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a nonproprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely identify scientific and other academic authors and contributors. It provides a persistent identity for humans, similar to content-related entities on digital networks that utilize digital object identifiers (DOIs). The organization offers an open and independent registry intended to be the de facto standard for contributor identification in research and academic publishing.
The Scopus Author Identifier assigns a unique number to groups of documents written by the same author via an algorithm that matches authorship based on a certain criteria. If a document cannot be confidently matched with an author identifier, it is grouped separately. In this case, you may see more than one entry for the same author.
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more on metrics in this iMS blog
Course title: IM 554 Developing Skills for Online Teaching and Learning
Topic for this week: Game-based learning, Virtual Reliability, and Augmented Reality
Audience: IM Graduate students working for K12 schools or in business
7:20 to 8:20 PM, Thursday, March 29. Instructor: Yun Claire Park
definitions and delineation of gaming and gamification
the connection to BYOD
What do we want to learn this year/today?
more on gaming and gamification
more on realities
what is VR – virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) is “a computer technology that uses virtual reality headsets or multi- projected environments, sometimes in combination with physical environments or props, to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that simulate a user's physical presence in a virtual or imaginary environment” (“Virtual Reality” n.d.) VR is accomplished by using headsets, such as HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and Samsung Gear VR. The use of the headsets creates (and enhances) digitally constructed “reality,” thus providing excellent opportunities for simulations and learning through training and practice. Among a myriad of other definitions, Noor (2016, 34) describes Virtual Reality (VR) as “a computer-generated environment that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world or imagined worlds. The user wears a headset and through specialized software and sensors is immersed in 360- degree views of simulated worlds.”
from our book chapter: Video 360: The new type of visualization to help patrons enter the era of VR, AR and Mixed Reality (under review).
what is AR – augmented reality
“Augmented Reality (AR) supplements the physical environment with computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics, or other useful information – essentially overlaying the digital information on top of the physical world. Some consider the smartphone popular game “Pokemon Go” a form of consumer AR.”
from my book Chapter 12: VR, AR and Video 360: A Case Study Towards New Realities in Education by Plamen Miltenoff (under review)
The anti-fake news bill, which must be approved by parliament, calls for penalising those who create, offer, circulate, print or publish fake news – or publications containing fake news – with a 10-year jail term, a fine of up to 500,000 ringgit (£90,000) or both.
The bill defines fake news as “any news, information, data and reports which is, or are, wholly or partly false whether in the form of features, visuals or audio recordings or in any other form capable of suggesting words or ideas”.
It covers all media and extends to foreigners outside Malaysia if Malaysia or its citizens are affected.
Ek, 35, started Spotify in 2006 because he thought he could stamp out the piracy that had ravaged the music business. He was right.
More than 70 million people now pay Spotify an average of about $5 a month to access 35 million songs, plus playlists and podcasts. In private transactions, investors have valued the company at more than $20 billion.
There’s only one small flaw in the business model: Spotify doesn’t make any money. The service has reported higher losses in three consecutive years despite quadrupling sales. It’s hard to be profitable when music-rights holders collect more than 75¢ on every dollar that comes in.
Pandora Media Inc.hasn’t been profitable in six years as a public company. Deezer SA, a European service once seen as a Spotify rival, called off an initial public offering in 2015. If you don’t remember Grooveshark, MOG, Songza, or Rdio, it’s because they shut down or were bought by larger companies. Meanwhile, the tech giants don’t mind losing money on music if it helps sell other stuff
Ek is optimistic. “The music industry today is quite inefficient when it comes to breaking artists, when it comes to promoting and marketing artists,” he said at the investor presentation. “There is a tremendous opportunity in connecting these 3 million artists we have today with these 160 million-plus users that we have.” The question now is whether investors think he can do that and how much profit he can wring out each time he does.
The key campus tech issues are no longer about IT (in the past e.g.: MS versus Apple). IT is the “easy part” of technology on campus. The challenges: people, planning policy, programs, priorities, silos, egos, and IT entitlements
How do we make Digital Learning compelling and safe for the faculty? provide evidence of impact, support, recognition and reward for faculty; communicate about effectiveness of and need for IT resources.
technology is not capital cost, it is operational cost. reoccurring.
Visualization:
underlying issues; can i do this? why should i do this? evidence of benefit?
the more things change, the more things stay the same. new equilibrium.
change: from what did you do wrong to how do we do better. Use data as a resources, not as a weapon. there is a fear of trying, because there is no recognition or reward
Machiavelli: 1. concentrate your efforts 2. pick your issues carefully, know when to fight 3. know the history 4. build coalitions 5. set modest goals – and realistic 6. leverage the value of data (use it as resource not weapon) 7. anticipate personnel turnover 8. set deadlines for decisions
Colleagues,
We apologize for the short notice, but wanted to make you aware of the following opportunity: provide
From Ken Graetz at Winona State University:
As part of our Digital Faculty Fellows Program at WSU, Dr. Kenneth C. Green will be speaking this Thursday, March 22nd in Stark 103 Miller Auditorium from 11:30 to 12:30 on “Innovation, Infrastructure, and Digital Learning.” We will be streaming Casey’s talk using Skype Meeting Broadcast and you can join as a guest using the following link: Join the presentation. This will allow you to see and hear his presentation, as well as post moderated questions. By way of a teaser, here is a recent quote from Dr. Green’s blog, DigitalTweed, published by Inside Higher Ed:
“If trustees, presidents, provosts, deans, and department chairs really want to address the fear of trying and foster innovation in instruction, then they have to recognize that infrastructure fosters innovation. And infrastructure, in the context of technology and instruction, involves more than just computer hardware, software, digital projectors in classrooms, learning management systems, and campus web sites. The technology is actually the easy part. The real challenges involve a commitment to research about the impact of innovation in instruction, and recognition and reward for those faculty who would like to pursue innovation in their instructional activities.”
Dr. Green is the founding director of The Campus Computing Project, the largest continuing study of the role of digital learning and information technology in American colleges and universities. Campus Computing is widely cited as a definitive source for data, information, and insight about IT planning and policy issues affecting higher education. Dr. Green also serves as the director, moderator, and co-producer of TO A DEGREE, the postsecondary success podcast of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He is the author or editor of some 20 books and published research reports and more than 100 articles and commentaries that have appeared in academic journals and professional publications. In 2002, Dr. Green received the first EDUCAUSE Award for Leadership in Public Policy and Practice. The EDUCAUSE award cites his work in creating The Campus Computing Project and recognizes his, “prominence in the arena of national and international technology agendas, and the linking of higher education to those agendas.”
