Digital Literacy for St. Cloud State University
I’m shocked that Zoom crushed Google in enterprise video conferencing.
Google: 1) owns calendaring, 2) has a video conferencing product, 3) has built video products at incredible scale, & 4) has many of the best engs on earth.
And yet Hangouts is much glitchier/worse than Zoom.
— Leo Polovets (@lpolovets) July 4, 2019
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more on Zoom in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=zoom
Good time to remind you of this twitter search:
filter:follows filter:nativeretweets KEYWORD
Finds only retweets about KEYWORD (from people that you follow).
Very handy for those timeline refresh hiccups where you saw something cool… and then it disappeared.
— Andréa López (@bluechoochoo) July 4, 2019
Data breaches happen way too frequently — here’s how can you maintain your privacy onlinepic.twitter.com/mne1hUdPwZ
— Business Insider (@businessinsider) July 4, 2019
A call for more inter-campus networking on learning design:https://t.co/9GIxMdtswE
— Bryan Alexander (@BryanAlexander) June 26, 2019
a new interdisciplinary field of learning innovation emerging.
Learning innovation, as conceptualized as an interdisciplinary field, attempts to claim a space at the intersection of design, technology, learning science and analytics — all in the unique context of higher education.
professional associations, such as POD, ELI, UPCEA, (https://upcea.edu/) OLC (https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/), ASU GSV (https://www.asugsvsummit.com/) and SXSW Edu (https://www.sxswedu.com/) — among many other conferences and events put on by professional associations.
A professional community of practice differs from that of an interdisciplinary academic network. Professional communities of practice are connected through shared professional goals. Where best practices and shared experiences form the basis of membership in professional associations, academic networks are situated within marketplaces for ideas. Academic networks run on the generation of new ideas and scholarly exchange. These two network models are different.
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https://elearningindustry.com/learning-experience-design-instructional-design-difference
“Learning Experience Design™ is a synthesis of Instructional Design, educational pedagogy, neuroscience, social sciences, design thinking, and User Experience Design.”
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more on LX design in this iMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=learning+design
Did you know that companies use the Bluetooth capabilities on your phone to track your movements in retail stores, gyms, airports, and more? I didn’t.
Turning Bluetooth off doesn’t stop them.
(Re-tweeting because my last tweet contained an error.)https://t.co/qRdcpErVb4
— Susan Fowler (@susanthesquark) June 14, 2019
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
❇️ iMovie for iPhone and iPad has been updated to include a green screen option! It's kind of hidden, so I hope this graphic helps you find it.
🔜 The #ClassyVideos Summer 2019 online workshop begins this week. Learn all sorts of techniques and effects: https://t.co/5AXN1egnqB pic.twitter.com/vetuXXqX0C
— Tony Vincent (@tonyvincent) June 17, 2019
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more on mobile video editing in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=video+mobile
Probably at the top of my list of favorites! Thanks to @edutopia for creating this video that showcases the value of using visuals in the classroom. ❤️❤️❤️❤️ #teaching #TESOL #ELL #EdChat #edutwitter https://t.co/Ly1MwV706z
— 🌍 ναℓєηтιηα gσηzαℓєz (@ValentinaESL) May 18, 2019
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more on visuals in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=visuals
You’ll know the work of @carolecadwalla @guardian.
Here she is @TEDTalks explaining exactly what happens to your privacy in the hands of the tech giants. Please RT far and wide because so far, no one has been held to account. https://t.co/fi3JnKVkl4— Three Women 🎗 (@ThreeWomen_) May 17, 2019
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Facebook still tracks you after you deactivate account https://t.co/JPIkcvYyNe pic.twitter.com/hWAmMFwzCE
— CNET (@CNET) May 19, 2019
https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-is-still-tracking-you-after-you-deactivate-your-account/
Deactivation does nothing for your privacy.
ALFRED NG BY
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more on privacy by Facebook in this IMS blgo
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=Facebook+privacy
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Making the Case for Mindfulness in Your School or District – Free Spirit Publishing Blog https://t.co/Smm4HVneOS
— Roxann Riskin, “Be Curious” (@roxannriskin) May 19, 2019
Facebook’s board works more like an advisory committee than an overseer, because Mark controls around 60 percent of voting shares. Mark alone can decide how to configure Facebook’s algorithms to determine what people see in their News Feeds, what privacy settings they can use and even which messages get delivered. He sets the rules for how to distinguish violent and incendiary speech from the merely offensive, and he can choose to shut down a competitor by acquiring, blocking or copying it.
We are a nation with a tradition of reining in monopolies, no matter how well intentioned the leaders of these companies may be. Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American.
It is time to break up Facebook.
America was built on the idea that power should not be concentrated in any one person, because we are all fallible. That’s why the founders created a system of checks and balances.
More legislation followed in the 20th century, creating legal and regulatory structures to promote competition and hold the biggest companies accountable.
Starting in the 1970s, a small but dedicated group of economists, lawyers and policymakers sowed the seeds of our cynicism. Over the next 40 years, they financed a network of think tanks, journals, social clubs, academic centers and media outlets to teach an emerging generation that private interests should take precedence over public ones. Their gospel was simple: “Free” markets are dynamic and productive, while government is bureaucratic and ineffective.
American industries, from airlines to pharmaceuticals, have experienced increased concentration, and the average size of public companies has tripled. The results are a decline in entrepreneurship, stalled productivity growth, and higher prices and fewer choices for consumers.
From our earliest days, Mark used the word “domination” to describe our ambitions, with no hint of irony or humility.
Facebook’s monopoly is also visible in its usage statistics. About 70 percent of American adults use social media, and a vast majority are on Facebook products. Over two-thirds use the core site, a third use Instagram, and a fifth use WhatsApp. By contrast, fewer than a third report using Pinterest, LinkedIn or Snapchat. What started out as lighthearted entertainment has become the primary way that people of all ages communicate online.
The F.T.C.’s biggest mistake was to allow Facebook to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp. In 2012, the newer platforms were nipping at Facebook’s heels because they had been built for the smartphone, where Facebook was still struggling to gain traction. Mark responded by buying them, and the F.T.C. approved.
The News Feed algorithm reportedly prioritized videos created through Facebook over videos from competitors, like YouTube and Vimeo. In 2012, Twitter introduced a video network called Vine that featured six-second videos. That same day, Facebook blocked Vine from hosting a tool that let its users search for their Facebook friends while on the new network. The decision hobbled Vine, which shut down four years later.
unlike Vine, Snapchat wasn’t interfacing with the Facebook ecosystem; there was no obvious way to handicap the company or shut it out. So Facebook simply copied it. (opyright law does not extend to the abstract concept itself.)
As markets become more concentrated, the number of new start-up businesses declines. This holds true in other high-tech areas dominated by single companies, like search (controlled by Google) and e-commerce (taken over by Amazon). Meanwhile, there has been plenty of innovation in areas where there is no monopolistic domination, such as in workplace productivity (Slack, Trello, Asana), urban transportation (Lyft, Uber, Lime, Bird) and cryptocurrency exchanges (Ripple, Coinbase, Circle).
The choice is mine, but it doesn’t feel like a choice. Facebook seeps into every corner of our lives to capture as much of our attention and data as possible and, without any alternative, we make the trade.
Just last month, Facebook seemingly tried to bury news that it had stored tens of millions of user passwords in plain text format, which thousands of Facebook employees could see. Competition alone wouldn’t necessarily spur privacy protection — regulation is required to ensure accountability — but Facebook’s lock on the market guarantees that users can’t protest by moving to alternative platforms.
Mark used to insist that Facebook was just a “social utility,” a neutral platform for people to communicate what they wished. Now he recognizes that Facebook is both a platform and a publisher and that it is inevitably making decisions about values. The company’s own lawyers have argued in court that Facebook is a publisher and thus entitled to First Amendment protection.
As if Facebook’s opaque algorithms weren’t enough, last year we learned that Facebook executives had permanently deleted their own messages from the platform, erasing them from the inboxes of recipients; the justification was corporate security concerns.
Mark may never have a boss, but he needs to have some check on his power. The American government needs to do two things: break up Facebook’s monopoly and regulate the company to make it more accountable to the American people.
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The push to regulate or break up Facebook ignores the fact that its services do more harm than good
Colin Horgan, May 13, 2019
https://onezero.medium.com/we-dont-need-social-media-53d5455f4f6b
Hughes joins a growing chorus of former Silicon Valley unicorn riders who’ve recently had second thoughts about the utility or benefit of the surveillance-attention economy their products and platforms have helped create. He is also not the first to suggest that government might need to step in to clean up the mess they made
Nick Srnicek, author of the book Platform Capitalism and a lecturer in digital economy at King’s College London, wrotelast month, “[I]t’s competition — not size — that demands more data, more attention, more engagement and more profits at all costs
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more on Facebook in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=facebook