Blockchain and money
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https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=blockchain
Archive of ‘information literacy’ category
deep fakes trusted more the real pictures
People trust AI fake faces more than real ones, research suggests
Researchers behind the study are calling for safeguards to prevent deep fakes.
https://www.freethink.com/technology/ai-fake-faces-trustwortiness
Ethical AI tools
Using AI responsibly is the “immediate challenge” facing the field of AI governance, the World Economic Forum says.
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more on deep fakes in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=deep+fakes
social media and social credit system
One of China’s biggest social networks is revealing user locations to head off ‘bad behaviour’
euters reports that Weibo will begin showing the rough locations of its users using IP addresses to combat “bad behaviour” online. The locations show up on both profiles and posts.
Chinese citizens have long resorted to using VPNs and other privacy tools to help either access non-Chinese services or speak freely online and you can see why.
In a similar view to the Panopticon, visibly showing users that the service knows where they are will lead to self-censorship, reducing the strain on Chinese censors to cover an internet with hundreds of millions of users.
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more on social credit system in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=china+social
autocrats and Soviet children’s literature
To understand modern autocrats, read Soviet children’s literature
The dragons are back, from Ankara to Moscow, hoodwinking their peoples while claiming to protect them from non-existent threats. Some of their subjects tolerate them; many cheer them on. Shvarts captures it all: the lies which tyrants spread to mask their depredations as patriotism, their cynical insistence that resistance is futile and their need to murder those who speak the truth.
Novoed.com and Miro
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
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.
Open Skills Management Toolkit (OSMT)
Western Governors University Releases Open-Source Code to Facilitate Universal Skills Language
he Open Skills Network (OSN), a community of practice focused on skills-based education and hiring that represents more than 1,200 employers, educational providers, and technology companies,
By launching OSMT as an open-source project, WGU has enabled any educational institution, training program, or employer to freely deploy and use OSMT to translate curriculum, training and development programs, and job profiles into real world skills statements to inform educational program and curriculum design, as well as job role and task definitions.
learner-workers are empowered to use their skills as currency. OSMT has been integrated into Concentric Sky’s Badgr micro-credentialing platform, facilitating the creation of digital credentials that align to Open Skills, creating the building blocks for the shift to skills-based education and hiring.
Earth Day
categories: academic library, information literacy
Tools 4 Student Engagement
Edtech Is Looking to Build Tools to Foster Student Engagement. Can That Scale?
With student disengagement and mental health problems on the rise, edtech solutions are trying to help rebuild that student connection.
Organizations like Flatiron School and Stack Overflow make particularly good use of this strategy. Focused on helping software developers build out their skill sets, these businesses facilitate collective learning through group problem-solving and community feedback. “It’s also just [having] people to vent with,” said Kate Cassino, CEO of Flatiron School. “How are you making your way through?”
Handshake, an early career exploration platform for college students, uses student-to-student messaging to help users reach out to others like them on the platform.
Ruben Harris, chief executive officer of Career Karma, a career navigation and mentorship platform, highlighted just how powerful audio rooms can be as a tool to drive meaningful conversation and community. “I can just organize everybody together, and they’ll give you the sauce that you’d never be able to find,” he said. “Someone that comes from an underestimated background that already broke in [to the tech industry] can give you insight.”
Jenn Hofmann is a graduate fellow working on student engagement issues for Stanford University’s Digital Education team.
Academic libraries opinion
categories: academic library, information literacy
https://medium.com/@allisonjaiodell/why-i-left-academic-libraries-26e2a63c8bf2
Why I Left Libraries
Data Architecture: I was an active member of the RBMS Bibliographic Standards Committee, the ARLIS/NA Artists’ Books Thesaurus project, and an OCLC initiative on Web archiving metadata. I used to contribute to development of international schemas, controlled vocabularies, and content standards for free, as a service activity. Meanwhile, I could have earned $134,677 as a data architect.
Web Development: I developed applications and customized discovery layers to help library patrons find resources. I learned several markup and scripting languages in order to take on this extra work for the library, in the hot-hot pursuit of grant funding to list on my CV. I could have earned $88,285 as a front-end developer (the folks who use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build the parts of a website that you see), or $101,021 as a back-end developer (the folks who work with APIs, and transfer data to/from databases).
Data Engineering: Libraries are constantly integrating data from publishers, digitization projects, legacy catalogs, union catalogs, and more. I became a whizz at data wrangling and transformation. I developed countless data pipelines and ETL processes to combine disparate data streams. I should have been earning $112,935 as a data engineer.
User Experience Research: To inform cataloging guidelines, and to better design catalogs and finding aids to meet user needs, I spent a lot of time in libraries researching information-seeking behaviors. I became intimately familiar with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. I ran focus groups, conducted usability tests, and led card-sorting exercises in order to gather insights on how to improve our discovery interfaces and their navigation. As a user experience researcher outside of libraries, I could have earned $140,985.
Fundraising: As a special collections professional, I was routinely asked to give tours and host events, with the goal of building relationships with donors. I cultivated skills in storytelling, and learned to quickly craft narratives about my projects’ efficacy and impact. As an academic and a gig worker, I helped develop numerous grant applications, and served as a principal investigator on several large-sum projects. Overall, I honed techniques that are crucial to fundraising and philanthropy. In the nonprofit sector, I could have earned between $98,765 as a development manager and $102,546 as a director of development.
Project Management: In libraries, I never had less than five major projects going at once. I oversaw several large-scale database and website migrations, making sure that each of my team members’ contributions were completed in sequence and on time, while I myself served as a project contributor. In the tech sector, I could have been working as a project manager — someone whose sole job is to hold others accountable to the development timeline — and earned $87,086.