Author Archive

22
Jun
2019

bluetooth and surveillance

categories: Digital literacy, iPhone, mobile learning

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/14/opinion/bluetooth-wireless-tracking-privacy.html

Recent reports have noted how companies use data gathered from cell towers, ambient Wi-Fi, and GPS. But the location data industry has a much more precise, and unobtrusive, tool: Bluetooth beacons.

Most people aren’t aware they are being watched with beacons, but the “beacosystem” tracks millions of people every day. Beacons are placed at airports, malls, subways, buses, taxis, sporting arenas, gyms, hotels, hospitals, music festivals, cinemas and museums, and even on billboards.

Companies like Reveal Mobile collect data from software development kits inside hundreds of frequently used apps. In the United States, another company, inMarket, covers 38 percent of millennial moms and about one-quarter of all smartphones, and tracks 50 million people each month. Other players have similar reach.

What is an S.D.K.?A Software Development Kit is code that’s inserted into an app and enables certain features, like activating your phone’s Bluetooth sensor. Location data companies create S.D.K.s and developers insert them into their apps, creating a conduit for recording and storing your movement data.

Beacons are also being used for smart cities initiatives. The location company Gimbal provided beacons for LinkNYC kiosks that provoked privacy concerns about tracking passers-by. Beacon initiatives have been started in other cities, including Amsterdam (in partnership with Google), London and Norwich.

Familiar tech giants are also players in the beacosystem. In 2015, Facebook began shipping free Facebook Bluetooth beacons to businesses for location marketing inside the Facebook app. Leaked documents show that Facebook worried that users would “freak out” and spread “negative memes” about the program. The company recently removed the Facebook Bluetooth beacons section from their website.

Not to be left out, in 2017, Google introduced Project Beacon and began sending beacons to businesses for use with Google Ads services. Google uses the beacons to send the businesses’ visitors notificationsthat ask them to leave photos and reviews, among other features. And last year, investigators at Quartz found that Google Android can track you using Bluetooth beacons even when you turn Bluetooth off in your phone.

Companies collecting micro-location data defend the practice by arguing that users can opt out of location services. They maintain that consumers embrace targeted ads because they’re more relevant.

You can download an app like Beacon Scanner and scan for beacons when you enter a store. But even if you detect the beacons, you don’t know who is collecting the data.

The Times’s guide on how to stop apps from tracking your location. For Android users, the F-Droid app store hosts free and open- source apps that do not spy on users with hidden trackers.

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More on surveillance in this IMS Blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=surveillance

21
Jun
2019

embedded librarian

categories: academic library
Bedi, S., & Walde, C. (2017). Transforming Roles: Canadian Academic Librarians Embedded in Faculty Research Projects. College & Research Libraries, 78(3), undefined-undefined. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.78.3.314
As collections become increasingly patron-driven, and libraries share evolving service models, traditional duties such as cataloguing, reference, and collection development are not necessarily core duties of all academic librarians.1
Unlike our American colleagues, many Canadian academic librarians are not required to do research for tenure and promotion; however, there is an expectation among many that they do research, not only for professional development, but to contribute to the profession.
using qualitative inquiry methods to capture the experiences and learning of Canadian academic librarians embedded in collaborative research projects with faculty members.
The term or label “embedded librarian” has been around for some time now and is often used to define librarians who work “outside” the traditional walls of the library. Shumaker,14 who dates the use of the term to the 1970s, defines embedded librarianship as “a distinctive innovation that moves the librarians out of libraries [and] emphasizes the importance of forming a strong working relationship between the librarian and a group or team of people who need the librarian’s information expertise.”15
This model of embedded librarianship has been active on campuses and is most prevalent within professional disciplines like medicine and law. In these models, the embedded librarian facilitates student learning, extending the traditional librarian role of information-literacy instruction to becoming an active participant in the planning, development, and delivery of course-specific or discipline-specific curriculum. The key feature of embedded librarianship is the collaboration that exists between the librarian and the faculty member(s).17
However, with the emergence of the librarian as researcher… More often than not, librarians have had more of a role in the literature-search process with faculty research projects as well as advising on appropriate places for publication.
guiding research question became “In what ways have Canadian academic librarians become embedded in faculty research projects, and how have their roles been transformed by their experience as researchers?”
Rubin and Rubin20 support this claim, noting that qualitative inquiry is a way to learn about the thoughts and feelings of others. Creswell confirms this, stating:
Qualitative research is best suited to address a research problem in which you do not know the variable and need to explore. The literature might yield little information about the phenomenon of study, and you need to learn more from participants through exploration. [Thus] a central phenomenon is the key concept, idea, or process studied in qualitative research.21
eight participants
As Janke and Rush point out, librarians are no longer peripheral in academic research but are now full members of investigative teams.30 But, as our research findings have highlighted, they are making this transition as a result of prior relationships with faculty brought about through traditional liaison work involving collection development, acquisitions, and information-literacy instruction. As our data demonstrates, the extent to which our participants were engaged within all aspects of the research process supports our starting belief that librarians have a vital and important contribution to make in redefining the role of the librarian in higher education.
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Carlson, J., & Kneale, R. (2017). Embedded librarianship in the research context: Navigating new waters. College & Research Libraries News, 72(3), 167–170. https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.72.3.8530
Embedded librarianship takes a librarian out of the context of the traditional
library and places him or her in an “on-site” setting or situation that enables close coordination and collaboration with researchers or teaching faculty
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Summey, T. P., & Kane, C. A. (2017). Going Where They Are: Intentionally Embedding Librarians in Courses and Measuring the Impact on Student Learning. Journal of Library and Information Services in Distance Learning, 11(1–2), 158–174.
Wu, L., & Thornton, J. (2017). Experience, Challenges, and Opportunities of Being Fully Embedded in a User Group. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 36(2), 138–149.

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

20
Jun
2019

green screen for mobile devices

categories: iMovie, video editing

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more on mobile video editing in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=video+mobile

20
Jun
2019

proctoring and online learning

categories: distance learning, distributive learning, e-learning, online learning

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-04-19-online-courses-shouldn-t-use-remote-proctoring-tools-here-s-why

when the option between taking a course online or in-person is provided, studies show students are more likely to stay in college.

Since the early days of online instruction, the response of many new instructors has been to figure out how to transfer elements of their face-to-face class into the online format. In response, education technology companies have been quick to create products that attempt to replicate in-person teaching. Some examples include learning management systems, lecture capture tools, and early online meeting systems.

online proctoring systems, such as ProctorU or Proctorio, replicate a practice that isn’t effective in-person. Exams are only good for a few things: managing faculty workload and assessing low level skill and content knowledge. What they aren’t good at is demonstrating student learning or mastery of a topic. As authors Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt discuss in their book “Assessing the Online Learner: Resources and Strategies for Faculty,” online exams typically measure skills that require memorization of facts, whereas learning objectives are often written around one’s ability to create, evaluate and analyze course material.

Authentic assessments, rather than multiple choice or other online exams, is one alternative that could be explored. For example, in a chemistry course, students could make a video themselves doing a set problems and explain the process. This would allow instructors to better understand students’ thinking and identify areas that they are struggling in. Another example could be in a psychology course, where students could curate and evaluate a set of resources on a given topic to demonstrate their ability to find, and critically analyze online information. (see Bryan Alexander‘s take on video assignments here: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=bryan+alexander+video+assignments

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

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

15
Jun
2019

AI in education

categories: e-learning, educational technology, information technology, instructional technology, technology

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-01-23-how-much-artificial-intelligence-should-there-be-in-the-classroom

a two-day conference about artificial intelligence in education organized by a company called Squirrel AI.

he believes that having AI-driven tutors or instructors will help them each get the individual approach they need.

the Chinese government has declared a national goal of surpassing the U.S. in AI technology by the year 2030, so there is almost a Sputnik-like push for the tech going on right now in China.

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more on AI in education in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=Artificial+Intelligence+and+education

15
Jun
2019

data driven education

categories: Digital literacy, e-learning, instructional technology

https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/45396/whats-at-risk-when-schools-focus-too-much-on-student-data

The U.S. Department of Education emphasizes “ensuring the use of multiple measures of school success based on academic outcomes, student progress, and school quality.”

starting to hear more about what might be lost when schools focus too much on data. Here are five arguments against the excesses of data-driven instruction.

1) Motivation (decrease)

as stereotype threat. threatening students’ sense of belonging, which is key to academic motivation.

2) Helicoptering

A style of overly involved “intrusive parenting” has been associated in studies with increased levels of anxiety and depression when students reach college.

3) Commercial Monitoring and Marketing

The National Education Policy Center releases annual reports on commercialization and marketing in public schools. In its most recent report in May, researchers there raised concerns about targeted marketing to students using computers for schoolwork and homework.

Companies like Google pledge not to track the content of schoolwork for the purposes of advertising. But in reality these boundaries can be a lot more porous.

4) Missing What Data Can’t Capture

5) Exposing Students’ “Permanent Records”

In the past few years several states have passed laws banning employers from looking at the credit reports of job applicants.
Similarly, for young people who get in trouble with the law, there is a procedure for sealing juvenile records
Educational transcripts, unlike credit reports or juvenile court records, are currently considered fair game for gatekeepers like colleges and employers. These records, though, are getting much more detailed.

15
Jun
2019

social media and students

categories: Facebook, Instagram, social media

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-01-16-here-s-what-happened-when-students-solved-social-media-problems-with-design-thinking

“Social: The New Media.” So I got to work, curating a playlist of videos on topics I wanted them to explore—such as the well-publicised problems with social media platforms and false news

the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), Google’s Applied Digital Skills and the archives of The Sift from the News Literacy Project.

certification with Future Design School, and equipped with their curriculum app,

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more on social media and education in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=social+media+education

more on fake news in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=FAKE+NEWS

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