Searching for "big data"
The climate changed again and began to warm, inspiring the rise of the Roman Empire. The warming trend allowed Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) to conquer and civilize Europe.
The climate change resulted in a sharp trend to a colder climate, which inspired the barbarian invasions (migration) into the Roman Empire where they moved south as the north grew severely colder.
the geologists discovered “a gradual drying between about 100 and 700 A.D. , with sharp drops in rainfall at 100 A.D. and 400 A.D.
6 ways climate change and disease helped topple the Roman Empire
No cookie consent walls — and no, scrolling isn’t consent, says EU data protection body from r/programming
No cookie consent walls — and no, scrolling isn’t consent, says EU data protection body
unambiguous message from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which has published updated guidelines on the rules around online consent to process people’s data.
The regional cookie wall has been crumbling for some time, as we reported last year — when the Dutch DPA clarified its guidance to ban cookie walls.
as the EDPB puts it, “actions such as scrolling or swiping through a webpage or similar user activity will not under any circumstances satisfy the requirement of a clear and affirmative action”
++++++++++++++++++++++
more on privacy on this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=privacy
Failure to Lead (what your team will never tell you)
Craig Janssen Jun 17, 2019
leadership is about people, not production. it doesn’t matter how big of an expert you are in your field, mastery isn’t the same as influence.
The problem is that the people on your team aren’t you. Not only are their strengths and talents different — their output is different.
So, you wind up putting controls in place.
controls are temporary in their results. They don’t create loyalty or a following.
Not only that, but the controls work against you because by their very nature, they make people feel as if they aren’t trusted. And that lack of trust is a huge limiter on your influence.
Trust has to be given before it is received, and there is no influence without trust.
why do so many organizations rely on control to produce output? In short, because control is far easier to achieve than influence. control like sugar. It’s easy to get. It’s addictive. It’s tasty. It feels good and feeds our ego. It provides instant rewards — so we often ignore that it’s not a long-term strategy. Besides, control is a quick fix when it comes to output.If control is sugar, then influence is more like protein. It’s full of the building blocks for muscle. It takes time and consistency to build. But it also has more strength and staying power.
+++++++++++++
More on leadership in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=leadership
| REALITIES360 CONFERENCE AND EXPO: THE PREMIER AR/VR EVENT FOR LEARNING
As the new year begins, it’s important to look towards what’s coming in 2020. The augmented and virtual reality landscape is shifting rapidly, and it’s crucial to fully understand what place AR and VR have in your organization’s L and D strategy. Take time at the front of the new year to come up with a clear and informed strategy on how AR and VR should, can, and will impact learning in your organization. Spend a few days taking a deeper dive into the topic by joining us March 31 – April 2, 2020 in Orlando at Realities360 Conference and Expo.
Learn more: http://elgd.co/r20-conal
FEATURED KEYNOTE: HOW XR WILL SHARE THE FUTURE OF ENTERPRISE
We’ve just added a new keynote to the lineup! During this focused keynote, Stephanie Llamas will explore how XR is on its way to revolutionizing enterprise and what this means for the enterprise XR industry as a whole. She will look at the key opportunities for content creators, where commercial organizations are investing their money, and finally, the ROI. You’ll leave this keynote with insights into how to take advantage of XR’s enormous opportunities and how the market’s future will affect your bottom line.
Learn more: http://elgd.co/r20-conal-keynotes
ADDED BONUS: ACCESS TO LEARNING SOLUTIONS 2020
Realities360 is co-located with Learning Solutions Conference and Expo, the learning and development event that takes ideas beyond theory and into practice. Your Realities360 registration includes access to everything offered at Learning Solutions Conference – including 120+ additional L and D focused sessions to choose from, and much more!
Learn more about Learning Solutions: http://elgd.co/r20-conal-lscon
LAST CHANCE TO SAVE BIG!
Register and pay by NEXT FRIDAY, February 7, and save $150 with the Last Chance registration discount – in addition to all other discounts you may qualify for!
Plus, employees of academic institutions save an additional 25% off registration!
REGISTER NOW > http://elgd.co/r20-conal-reg
Enquiries: service@eLearningGuild.com |
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It: It’s taken 3 billion images from the internet to build a an AI driven database that allows US law enforcement agencies identify any stranger. from r/Futurology
Until now, technology that readily identifies everyone based on his or her face has been taboo because of its radical erosion of privacy. Tech companies capable of releasing such a tool have refrained from doing so; in 2011, Google’s chairman at the time said it was the one technology the company had held back because it could be used “in a very bad way.” Some large cities, including San Francisco, have barred police from using facial
But without public scrutiny, more than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using Clearview in the past year, according to the company, which declined to provide a list. recognition technology.
Facial recognition technology has always been controversial. It makes people nervous about Big Brother. It has a tendency to deliver false matches for certain groups, like people of color. And some facial recognition products used by the police — including Clearview’s — haven’t been vetted by independent experts.
Clearview deployed current and former Republican officials to approach police forces, offering free trials and annual licenses for as little as $2,000. Mr. Schwartz tapped his political connections to help make government officials aware of the tool, according to Mr. Ton-That.
“We have no data to suggest this tool is accurate,” said Clare Garvie, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology, who has studied the government’s use of facial recognition. “The larger the database, the larger the risk of misidentification because of the doppelgänger effect. They’re talking about a massive database of random people they’ve found on the internet.”
Law enforcement is using a facial recognition app with huge privacy issues Clearview AI’s software can find matches in billions of internet images. from r/technology
Part of the problem stems from a lack of oversight. There has been no real public input into adoption of Clearview’s software, and the company’s ability to safeguard data hasn’t been tested in practice. Clearview itself remained highly secretive until late 2019.
The software also appears to explicitly violate policies at Facebook and elsewhere against collecting users’ images en masse.
while there’s underlying code that could theoretically be used for augmented reality glasses that could identify people on the street, Ton-That said there were no plans for such a design.
Banning Facial Recognition Isn’t Enough from r/technology
In May of last year, San Francisco banned facial recognition; the neighboring city of Oakland soon followed, as did Somerville and Brookline in Massachusetts (a statewide ban may follow). In December, San Diego suspended a facial recognition program in advance of a new statewide law, which declared it illegal, coming into effect. Forty major music festivals pledged not to use the technology, and activists are calling for a nationwide ban. Many Democratic presidential candidates support at least a partial ban on the technology.
facial recognition bans are the wrong way to fight against modern surveillance. Focusing on one particular identification method misconstrues the nature of the surveillance society we’re in the process of building. Ubiquitous mass surveillance is increasingly the norm. In countries like China, a surveillance infrastructure is being built by the government for social control. In countries like the United States, it’s being built by corporations in order to influence our buying behavior, and is incidentally used by the government.
People can be identified at a distance by their heart beat or by their gait, using a laser-based system. Cameras are so good that they can read fingerprints and iris patterns from meters away. And even without any of these technologies, we can always be identified because our smartphones broadcast unique numbers called MAC addresses.
China, for example, uses multiple identification technologies to support its surveillance state.
There is a huge — and almost entirely unregulated — data broker industry in the United States that trades on our information.
This is why many companies buy license plate data from states. It’s also why companies like Google are buying health records, and part of the reason Google bought the company Fitbit, along with all of its data.
The data broker industry is almost entirely unregulated; there’s only one law — passed in Vermont in 2018 — that requires data brokers to register and explain in broad terms what kind of data they collect.
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It from r/technews
Until now, technology that readily identifies everyone based on his or her face has been taboo because of its radical erosion of privacy. Tech companies capable of releasing such a tool have refrained from doing so; in 2011, Google’s chairman at the time said it was the one technology the company had held back because it could be used “in a very bad way.” Some large cities, including San Francisco, have barred police from using facial recognition technology.
+++++++++++++
on social credit system in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=social+credit
This startup claims its deepfakes will protect your privacy
++++++++++++
more on deep fake in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=deep+fake
+++++++++++++++++++++
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/17/chinas-education-system-produces-stellar-test-scores-so-why-do-students-head-abroad-each-year-study/
Education scholars have already critiqued PISA as a valid global measure of education quality — but analysts also are skeptical about the selective participation of Chinese students from wealthier schools.
Second, Chinese students, on average, study 55 hours a week — also No. 1 among PISA-participating countries. This was about 20 hours more than students in Finland, the country that PISA declared to have the highest learning efficiency, or reading-test-score points per hour spent studying.
But PISA analysis also revealed that Chinese students are among the least satisfied with their lives.
Students look overseas for a more well-rounded education
Their top destination of choice, by far, is the United States. The 1.1 million or so foreign students in the United States in 2018 included 369,500 Chinese college students
hostility in U.S.-China relations could dampen the appeal of a U.S. education. Britain, in fact, recorded a 30 percent surge in Chinese applicants in 2019, challenging the U.S. global dominance in higher education.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/12/03/us-students-gain-ground-against-global-peers.html
Immigrant students, who made up 23 percent of all U.S. students taking PISA, performed significantly better compared to their native-born peers in the United States than they did on average throughout the OECD countries.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/news/pisa-rankings-2019-four-chinese-regions-top-international-student-survey/ar-BBXGCZU
The survey found that 15-year-old students from Beijing, Shanghai, and the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang ranked top for all three core subjects, achieving the highest level 4 rating.
Students from the United States were ranked level 3 for reading and science, and level 2 for math, while teens from Britain scored a level 3 ranking in all three categories.
++++++++++++++++
Looking for Post-PISA Answers? Here’s What Our Obsession With Test Scores Overlooks
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-12-03-looking-for-post-pisa-answers-here-s-what-our-obsession-with-test-scores-overlooks
Andreas Schelicher, director of education and skills at the OECD—the Paris-based organization behind PISA wrote that “students who disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement ‘Your intelligence is something about you that you can’t change very much’ scored 32 points higher in reading than students who agreed or strongly agreed.”
Those results are similar to recent findings published by Carol Dweck, a Stanford education professor who is often credited with making growth mindset a mainstream concept.
“Growth mindset is a very important thing that makes us active learners, and makes us invest in our personal education,” Schleicher states. “If learning isn’t based on effort and intelligence is predetermined, why would anyone bother?”
It’s “absolutely fascinating” to see the relationship between teachers’ enthusiasm, students’ social-emotional wellbeing and their learning outcomes, Schleicher notes. As one example, he noted in his summary report that “in most countries and economies, students scored higher in reading when they perceived their teachers as more enthusiastic, especially when they said their teachers were interested in the subject.”
In other words, happy teachers lead to better results. That’s hardly a surprising revelation, says Scheleicher. But professional development support is one thing that can sometimes be overlooked by policymakers when so much of the focus is on test scores.
+++++++++++++++++
https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/
+++++++++++
+++++++++++
more on Estonia in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=estonia
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/29/751116338/china-intercepts-wechat-texts-from-u-s-and-abroad-researcher-says
Chinese cyberspace is one of the most surveilled and censored in the world. That includes WeChat. Owned by Tencent, one of China’s biggest companies, the chat-meets-payment app has more than 1 billion monthly users in China and now serves users outside the country, too, although it does not divulge how many. Researchers say its use abroad has extended the global reach of China’s surveillance and censorship methods.
“The intention of keeping people safe by building these systems goes out the window the moment you don’t secure them at all,” says Victor Gevers, co-founder of the nonprofit GDI Foundation, an open-source data security collective.
Every day, Gevers scans the Internet for vulnerabilities to find unsecured databases, and he has exposed a large number of them, particularly linked to China.
++++++++++
more on WeChat and surveillance in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=wechat
Gestalt principles in User Interface design.
How to become a master manipulator of Visual Communication.
Jan 16, 2018 Eleana Gkogka
https://medium.muz.li/gestalt-principles-in-ui-design-6b75a41e9965
Great designers understand the powerful role that psychology plays in visual perception. What happens when someone’s eye meets your design creations?
Gestalt (form, shape in German) is a group of visual perception principles developed by German psychologists in 1920s. It is built on the theory that “an organized whole, is perceived as greater than the sum of its parts”.
four key ideas:
Emergence
People tend to identify elements first in their general outlined form. Our brain recognizes a simple, well-defined object quicker than a detailed one.
Reification
People can recognize objects even when there are parts of them missing. Our brain matches what we see with familiar patterns stored in our memory and fills in the gaps.
Multi-Stability
People will often interpret ambiguous objects in more than one ways. Our brains will bounce back and forth between the alternatives seeking certainty. As a result, one view will become more dominant while the other one will get harder to see.
Invariance
People can recognise simple objects independently of their rotation, scale and translation. Our brain can perceive objects from different perspectives, despite their different appearance.
Proximity
Elements arranged close to each other are perceived as more related than those placed further apart. This way different elements are viewed mainly as a group rather than as individual elements.
the Common Region principle
A good Common Region example would be the card UI pattern; a well defined rectangular space with different bits of information presented as one. Banners and tables are good examples as well.
Similarity
Elements sharing similar visual characteristics are perceived to be more related than those not sharing similar characteristics.
We can use the principle of Similarity in navigation, links, buttons, headings, call to actions and more.
Closure
A group of elements are often perceived to be a single recognisable form or figure. The Closure also occurs when an object is incomplete, or parts of it are not enclosed.
We can use the Closure principle in Iconography, where simplicity helps with communicating meaning, swiftly and clearly.
Symmetry
Symmetrical elements tend to perceived as belonging together regardless of their distance, giving us a feeling of solidity and order.
It’s good to use Symmetry for portfolios, galleries, product displays, listings, navigation, banners, and any content-heavy page.
Continuation
Elements arranged in a line or a soft curve are perceived to be more related than those arranged randomly or in a harsh line.
The linear arrangement of rows and columns are good examples of Continuity. We can use them in menus and sub-menus, lists, product arrangements, carousels, services or process/progress displays.
Common Fate
Elements moving towards the same direction are perceived as more related than those moving in different directions, or not moving at all.
We can use the Common Fate principle in expandable menus, accordions, tool-tips, product sliders, parallax scrolls and swiping indicators.
User Interface Design isn’t all about pretty pixels and sparkly graphics. It’s mainly about communication, performance and convenience.
+++++++++++++
more on ID in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=instructional+design
https://www.cnet.com/news/wi-fi-6-will-upgrade-your-workhorse-wireless-network/
Wi-Fi 6, the consumer-friendly new name for the tech standard actually called 802.11ax,
wireless chip designer Qualcomm is betting big on Wi-Fi 6
“Cord cutting is real. What was typically one TV in the average home is now five or six different screens,” Patel said. “There’s a tremendous amount of content sourced through the home that wasn’t before. There’s a congestion problem.”
One of Wi-Fi 6’s biggest advances is OFDMA — orthogonal frequency division multiple access, if you must know — an efficiency-boosting technology purloined from mobile networks. Another is MU MIMO, short for multiple user, multiple input, multiple output. And then there’s 1024 QAM — quadrature amplitude modulation — which bumps up data rates by 30%.
- Double the range — though Qualcomm has built-in mesh networking technology that’ll let multiple wireless access points cooperate to bathe your house in Wi-Fi radio signals.
- Triple the speed — useful not just for watching 4K video but also for uploading from our phones.
- Better reliability — good for avoiding video chats plagued by stuttering.
Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon says Wi-Fi 6 and 5G networks complement each other.
++++++++++++
more on 5G in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=5g