For a limited time, free registration is being offered to faculty, students, and staff of educational institutions (including K-12 schools/districts, universities, colleges, museums, and libraries) who wish to attend but will NOT be presenting at the conference or publishing in the proceedings. To take advantage of this offer, you must register by April 19, 2020 using an email address associated with your educational institution:
No further Academic Full and Short paper submissions are being considered at this stage.
##### INTERESTED IN VOLUNTEERING OR REVIEWING? #####
A range of volunteer opportunities are available, including conference internships for undergraduate and graduate students. Some of the roles currently available include session chair/facilitator, moderator, audio-visual/technical support, virtual event greeter/usher, virtual event photographer, virtual event videographer/livestreamer, 2D artist / illustrator
Expressions of interest are also being solicited from scholars and practitioners wishing to join the iLRN 2020 Program Committee to peer review papers and proposals received in the late submission round (closing April 19, 2020). The late-round submissions will be no longer than 3 pages in length, and each Program Committee member will be asked to review no more than two submissions.
##### INTERESTED IN SPONSORING OR EXHIBITING? #####
A number of sponsorship and exhibition opportunities are available for organizations to:
– Meet and interact with key educational stakeholders
– Showcase their products and services
– Connect and collaborate with top researchers / scientists
– Build and strengthen customer / client relationships.
Packages range from US$500 for a basic virtual exhibit booth to US$15,000 for an exclusive Gold Sponsorship.
Contact pmiltenoff@stcloudstate.edu if you need more info/support, clarifications. E.g. among the great tools in the list is EdPuzzle (https://edpuzzle.com/). EdPuzzle does very much the same as theVideo Quiz in the MinnState MediaSpace (aka Kaltura); we can help you figure out advantages and disadvantages of the tools, their pedagogical application and make final choice.
Algorithmic test proctoring’s settings have discriminatory consequences across multiple identities and serious privacy implications.
While racist technology calibrated for white skin isn’t new (everything from photography to soap dispensers do this), we see it deployed through face detection and facial recognition used by algorithmic proctoring systems.
While some test proctoring companies develop their own facial recognition software, most purchase software developed by other companies, but these technologies generally function similarly and have shown a consistent inability to identify people with darker skin or even tell the difference between Chinese people. Facial recognition literally encodes the invisibility of Black people and the racist stereotype that all Asian people look the same.
As Os Keyes has demonstrated, facial recognition has a terrible history with gender. This means that a software asking students to verify their identity is compromising for students who identify as trans, non-binary, or express their gender in ways counter to cis/heteronormativity.
These features and settings create a system of asymmetric surveillance and lack of accountability, things which have always created a risk for abuse and sexual harassment. Technologies like these have a long history of being abused, largely by heterosexual men at the expense of women’s bodies, privacy, and dignity.
my note: I am repeating this for years
Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel’s ongoing critique of Turnitin, a plagiarism detection software, outlines exactly how this logic operates in ed-tech and higher education: 1) don’t trust students, 2) surveil them, 3) ignore the complexity of writing and citation, and 4) monetize the data.
Technological Solutionism
Cheating is not a technological problem, but a social and pedagogical problem.
Our habit of believing that technology will solve pedagogical problems is endemic to narratives produced by the ed-tech community and, as Audrey Watters writes, is tied to the Silicon Valley culture that often funds it. Scholars have been dismantling the narrative of technological solutionism and neutrality for some time now. In her book “Algorithms of Oppression,” Safiya Umoja Noble demonstrates how the algorithms that are responsible for Google Search amplify and “reinforce oppressive social relationships and enact new modes of racial profiling.”
Anna Lauren Hoffmann, who coined the term “data violence” to describe the impact harmful technological systems have on people and how these systems retain the appearance of objectivity despite the disproportionate harm they inflict on marginalized communities.
This system of measuring bodies and behaviors, associating certain bodies and behaviors with desirability and others with inferiority, engages in what Lennard J. Davis calls the Eugenic Gaze.
Higher education is deeply complicit in the eugenics movement. Nazism borrowed many of its ideas about racial purity from the American school of eugenics, and universities were instrumental in supporting eugenics research by publishing copious literature on it, establishing endowed professorships, institutes, and scholarly societies that spearheaded eugenic research and propaganda.
Second, another reason that there cannot be a definitive answer to this question is the diversity of stakeholders in online education. Yong Zhao: Does it Work? The Most Meaningless Question to Ask about Online Education https://t.co/LNqv2YYb40pic.twitter.com/SKG1jCyudo
— Ana Cristina Pratas (@AnaCristinaPrts) April 2, 2020
One of the most frequently and persistently asked questions about online education is “does it work” or “is it effective.”
The question is meaningless because there cannot be any definitive answer for a number of reasons.
First, online education (and its variants such a online instruction, online teaching, distance education and distance learning) is a big umbrella that covers a wide array of different practices, which vary a great deal in terms of quality. Comparing the effectiveness of online education with face-to-face education has been the most common research approach to examine the effectiveness of online education. And the answer has been, for a long time, that there is no significant difference between the two. This answer, however, does not mean online is effective or not, it simply means there are plenty of effective and ineffective programs in both online and face-to-face education. In other words, the within variation is larger than the between variation.
Second, another reason that there cannot be a definitive answer to this question is the diversity of stakeholders in online education.
And unfortunately what works for one stakeholder may not work for the others.
Third, even within the same program and with only students as the stakeholder, there cannot be a definitive answer because no program can possibly have the same effects on all students equally.
Fourth, yet another reason that the question cannot have a definitive answer is the multiplicity of outcomes. Education outcomes include more than what has been typically measured by grades or tests.
Fifth, the rapid changes in technology that can be used to deliver online education add to the elusiveness of a definitive answer to the question. While pedagogy, design, and human actors certainly paly a significant role in the experiences of online education, so does technology.
he Intercept reported that Zoom video calls are not end-to-end encrypted, despite the company’s claims that they are.
Motherboard reports that Zoom is leaking the email addresses of “at least a few thousand” people because personal addresses are treated as if they belong to the same company
Apple was forced to step in to secure millions of Macs after a security researcher found Zoom failed to disclose that it installed a secret web server on users’ Macs, which Zoom failed to remove when the client was uninstalled
+++++++++++++
‘Zoom is malware’: why experts worry about the video conferencing platform
A report from Motherboard found Zoom sends data from users of its iOS app to Facebook for advertising purposes, even if the user does not have a Facebook account.
++++++++++++++++
I used to thoroughly love @zoom_us as a platform for collaborating. I still use it. But it’s not something that I would recommend to others anymore. Here’s a thread as to why:
