2022 archive

VR teaching climate change

Virtual reality: A new frontier in climate change learning

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20220413115741390

Located in a building renovated over the past two years, the Dreamscape Learn centre welcomed 1,000 students in this, the first full semester. In place of traditional biology laboratory time, these students attend labs in the state-of-the-art virtual learning centre that cost US$20 million, paid for by Dreamscape Immersive, philanthropy and ASU.

What we’re doing with the alien zoo is replacing conventional biology labs with these highly immersive laboratory modules in which students get to enter into a virtual world and really deal with the way real scientists collect data, look at problems, collaborate, come up with solutions, try the solutions and then come up with other hypotheses.”

Making the abstract concrete

As is the case in many video games, the avatars can travel back in time, in this case to Britain at the start of the Industrial Revolution, when widespread burning of coal began increasing the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. We have an amazing tool, Schlosser told the conference, to put students next to where things happened, next to where they might look into the future. Doing this makes the abstract become concrete.

new EU legislation for Google, Meta

Google, Meta, and others will have to explain their algorithms under new EU legislation

The Digital Services Act will reshape the online world

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/23/23036976/eu-digital-services-act-finalized-algorithms-targeted-advertising

The EU has agreed on another ambitious piece of legislation to police the online world.

  • argeted advertising based on an individual’s religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity is banned. Minors cannot be subject to targeted advertising either.
  • “Dark patterns” — confusing or deceptive user interfaces designed to steer users into making certain choices — will be prohibited. The EU says that, as a rule, canceling subscriptions should be as easy as signing up for them.
  • Large online platforms like Facebook will have to make the working of their recommender algorithms (used for sorting content on the News Feed or suggesting TV shows on Netflix) transparent to users. Users should also be offered a recommender system “not based on profiling.” In the case of Instagram, for example, this would mean a chronological feed (as it introduced recently).
  • Hosting services and online platforms will have to explain clearly why they have removed illegal content as well as give users the ability to appeal such takedowns. The DSA itself does not define what content is illegal, though, and leaves this up to individual countries.
  • The largest online platforms will have to provide key data to researchers to “provide more insight into how online risks evolve.”
  • Online marketplaces must keep basic information about traders on their platform to track down individuals selling illegal goods or services.
  • Large platforms will also have to introduce new strategies for dealing with misinformation during crises (a provision inspired by the recent invasion of Ukraine).

hese tech companies have lobbied hard to water down the requirements in the DSA, particularly those concerning targeted advertising and handing over data to outside researchers.

college recruitment with Facebook ads

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2022-04-25-facebook-makes-it-cheap-to-market-to-new-students-but-it-costs-colleges-dearly

complex campaigns that crossed the boundaries of social media, like Facebook, and our own channels, like university websites or institutional email.

Facebook celebrates its 18th birthday this year. Anxiety about its ethics has been around almost since its infancy, and privacy issues surfaced as early as 2007.

According to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer survey of more than 36,000 people in 28 countries, only 37 percent of respondents state that they trust social media as a source for general news and information.

The implications of this for colleges and universities are twofold. We’ve aligned ourselves with a partner that is in direct opposition to the values higher education claims to hold dear: truth, curiosity, democracy, critical thinking and debate.

The public perception of higher ed has been eroding over the last two decades. Which organizations we align with—both at the institutional and industry level—matters. Would you choose an advertising or branding agency with Facebook’s track record?

owning in Metaverse

Can you truly own anything in the metaverse? A law professor explains how blockchains and NFTs don’t protect virtual property

https://theconversation.com/amp/can-you-truly-own-anything-in-the-metaverse-a-law-professor-explains-how-blockchains-and-nfts-dont-protect-virtual-property-179067

claim that tokens provide indisputable proof of ownership, which can be used across various metaverse apps, environments and games. Because of this decentralization, some also claim that buying and selling virtual items can be done on the blockchain itself for whatever price you want, without any person or any company’s permission.

Despite these claims, the legal status of virtual “owners” is significantly more complicated.

It is in these lengthy and sometimes incomprehensible documents where metaverse platforms spell out the legal nuances of virtual ownership. Unlike the blockchain itself, the terms of service for each metaverse platform are centralized and are under the complete control of a single company. This is extremely problematic for legal ownership.

For example, on one day you might own a $200,000 digital painting for your apartment in the metaverse, and the next day you may find yourself banned from the metaverse platform, and your painting, which was originally stored in its proprietary databases, deleted. Strictly speaking, you would still own the NFT on the blockchain with its original identification code, but it is now functionally useless and financially worthless.

History Eastern Europe

Plokhy, S. (2011). The “New Eastern Europe”: What to Do with the Histories of Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova? East European Politics and Societies, 25(4), 763-769. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0888325411398914

my note: this 2011 article, suddenly becomes relevant, considering the current situation in Ukraine. My opinion as a historian is that further “decentralization” of the 20th century definition of “Eastern Europe,” as contested as it is (e.g., are Poland, the Czech R, Slovakia, and Hungary “Central Europe” or “Eastern Europe?” Are the Balkans In EE?), will further exacerbate the debate around the definition.
on the other hand, the author may have a point, by claiming Central European and Balkan countries are now generally referred as the “European Union,” but that also is not as simple, considering the exclusion of some former Yugoslav/Balkan countries.

other complexities (similarly to the downfall of Yugoslavia): religion[s], ethnicity, geopolitical issues.

“Thus, the NEE is not just a figment of current geopolitical imagination. There are geographic, cultural, ethnic, and historical factors that set it apart from its neighbors. But can history as a discipline and we as its practitioners benefit from this new conceptualization of the old Eastern Europe?”

 

 

 

 

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