https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-06-26-researchers-raise-concerns-about-algorithmic-bias-in-online-course-tools
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Students fear for their data privacy after University of California invests in private equity firm
A financial link between a virtual classroom platform and the University of California system is raising eyebrows
https://www.salon.com/2020/07/28/students-fear-for-their-data-privacy-after-university-of-california-invests-in-private-equity-firm/
Instructure has made it clear through their own language that they view the student data they aggregated as one of their chief assets, although they have also insisted that they do not use that data improperly. My note: “improperly” is relative and requires defining.
Yet an article published in the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology, titled “Transparency and the Marketplace for Student Data,” pointed out that there is “an overall lack of transparency in the student information commercial marketplace and an absence of law to protect student information.” As such, some students at the University of California are concerned that — despite reassurances to the contrary — their institution’s new financial relationship with Thoma Bravo will mean their personal data can be sold or otherwise misused.
The students’ concerns over surveillance and privacy are not unwarranted. Previously, the University of California used military surveillance technology to help quell the grad student strikes at UC Santa Cruz and other campuses
https://www.scienceopen.com/document/read?vid=992eaf61-35dd-454e-aa17-f9f8216b381b
This article presents an examination of how education research is being remade as an experimental data-intensive science. AI is combining with learning science in new ‘digital laboratories’ where ownership over data, and power and authority over educational knowledge production, are being redistributed to research assemblages of computational machines and scientific expertise.
Research across the sciences, humanities and social sciences is increasingly conducted through digital knowledge machines that are reconfiguring the ways knowledge is generated, circulated and used (Meyer and Schroeder, 2015).
Knowledge infrastructures, such as those of statistical institutes or research-intensive universities, have undergone significant digital transformation with the arrival of data-intensive technologies, with knowledge production now enacted in myriad settings, from academic laboratories and research institutes to commercial research and development studios, think tanks and consultancies. Datafied knowledge infrastructures have become hubs of command and control over the creation, analysis and exchange of data (Bigo et al., 2019).
The combination of AI and learning science into an AILSci research assemblage consists of particular forms of scientific expertise embodied by knowledge actors – individuals and organizations – identified by categories including science of learning, AIED, precision education and learning engineering.
Precision education overtly uses psychological, neurological and genomic data to tailor or personalize learning around the unique needs of the individual (Williamson, 2019). Precision education approaches include cognitive tracking, behavioural monitoring, brain imaging and DNA analysis.
Expert power is therefore claimed by those who can perform big data analyses, especially those able to translate and narrate the data for various audiences. Likewise, expert power in education is now claimed by those who can enact data-intensive science of learning, precision education and learning engineering research and development, and translate AILSci findings into knowledge for application in policy and practitioner settings.
the thinking of a thinking infrastructure is not merely a conscious human cognitive process, but relationally performed across humans and socio-material strata, wherein interconnected technical devices and other forms ‘organize thinking and thought and direct action’.
As an infrastructure for AILSci analyses, these technologies at least partly structure how experts think: they generate new understandings and knowledge about processes of education and learning that are only thinkable and knowable due to the computational machinery of the research enterprise.
Big data-based molecular genetics studies are part of a bioinformatics-led transformation of biomedical sciences based on analysing exceptional volumes of data (Parry and Greenhough, 2018), which has transformed the biological sciences to focus on structured and computable data rather than embodied evidence itself.
Isin and Ruppert (2019) have recently conceptualized an emergent form of power that they characterize as sensory power. Building on Foucault, they note how sovereign power gradually metamorphosed into disciplinary power and biopolitical forms of statistical regulation over bodies and populations.
Sensory power marks a shift to practices of data-intensive sensing, and to the quantified tracking, recording and representing of living pulses, movements and sentiments through devices such as wearable fitness monitors, online natural-language processing and behaviour-tracking apps. Davies (2019: 515–20) designates these as ‘techno-somatic real-time sensing’ technologies that capture the ‘rhythms’ and ‘metronomic vitality’ of human bodies, and bring about ‘new cyborg-type assemblages of bodies, codes, screens and machines’ in a ‘constant cybernetic loop of action, feedback and adaptation’.
Techno-somatic modes of neural sensing, using neurotechnologies for brain imaging and neural analysis, are the next frontier in AILSci. Real-time brainwave sensing is being developed and trialled in multiple expert settings.
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more on AI in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=artificial+intelligence
What is better: face shield or face mask?
faculty discussion on the issue can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/onlinelearningcollective/permalink/621278065169562/
If you don’t have FB account and/or more info needed, please contact us.
Here more information:
‘Only those with plastic visors were infected’: Swiss government warns against face shields
July 15, 2020
https://www.thelocal.ch/20200715/only-those-with-plastic-visors-were-infected-swiss-government-warns-against-face-shields
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Face Mask vs Face Shield: Which Is More Effective Against Coronavirus?
https://www.ibtimes.com/face-mask-vs-face-shield-which-more-effective-against-coronavirus-3013922
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Is a Face Shield Better Protection Against the Coronavirus Than a Face Mask?
May 28, 2020
https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus/face-shield-coronavirus
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Why Aren’t Face Shields More Popular in California?
June 29, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/article/face-shield-mask-california-coronavirus.html
Canceling Emeritus
Colleen Flaherty July 23, 2020
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/07/23/san-diego-state-faculty-committee-considers-proposal-strip-professors-emeritus
Tenure, once earned, is hard to revoke. That’s the idea behind it. Most institutions nevertheless have processes for stripping a professor of tenure where there is demonstrated incompetence, neglect of duty, academic dishonesty or serious personal misconduct.
Fewer institutions have clearly outlined processes for denuding emeritus professors of that honorary status. The University Senate at San Diego State University this week considered a proposal on adopting one.
No one at San Diego State outwardly opposes the idea of taking back emeritus status when a professor is revealed to have, say, sexually harassed someone or committed some other serious crime. Instead, what rankled professors was proposed language on revoking emeritus status “when it is determined that an individual’s conduct, before or after emeritus status has been granted, causes harm to the university’s reputation.”
Herman, who does not know Hurlbert, also linked his case to the broader “cancel culture” decried by some academics, including the co-authors of a recent (and much criticized) open letter in Harper’s magazine.
“Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial,” that letter says. “Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.”
July 23-24, 2020 11:00am – 2:00pm Eastern
https://www.techlearningevents.com/summit
The Tech & Learning Virtual Leadership Summit is an exclusive, FREE, invitation-only virtual event for top-level executives from school districts around the country with education technology buying responsibilities. Taking the best of Tech & Learning’s in-person Leadership Summits, the Virtual Summit will provide an environment where district leaders can share their successes and challenges in facilitated small group discussions.
A Letter on Justice and Open Debate
July 7, 2020
https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
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A Deeply Provincial View of Free Speech
Many prominent writers and thinkers seem invested in the notion that simply facing strong public criticism is a threat to free speech.
HANNAH GIORGIS
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/07/harpers-letter-free-speech/614080/
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The Harper’s Letter, Bari Weiss And Tucker Carlson: Why Are We Still Talking About ‘Cancel Culture?’
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2020/07/14/the-harpers-letter-bari-weiss-and-tucker-carlson-why-are-we-still-talking-about-cancel-culture/#70e071ac39ca
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Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan and the Harper’s letter: the case for open debate
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/17/opinions/harpers-letter-free-speech-bari-weiss-andrew-sullivan-avlon/index.html
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Public letter in Harper’s sparks furor
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/506846-public-letter-in-harpers-sparks-furor
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Cancel Culture
Illiberalism Isn’t to Blame for the Death of Good-Faith Debate
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/illiberalism-cancel-culture-free-speech-internet-ugh.html
Haas, L. (2019). ETTU?: Notes on Cancel Culture. The New Republic, 250(7-8), 40–. https://mnpals-scs.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01MNPALS_SCS/ppvqcp/cdi_gale_infotracacademiconefile_A594089998
GIL TROY. (2019). Cancel the “Cancel Culture” phenomenon with sincere self-scrutiny. In The Jerusalem Post (Online) (English ed.). The Jerusalem Post Ltd.
https://mnpals-scs.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01MNPALS_SCS/ppvqcp/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_2299562101
Nya Bentley. (2020). Fresh Talk: Does cancel culture even work? In Hartford Courant (Online). Tribune Publishing Company, LLC.
https://mnpals-scs.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01MNPALS_SCS/ppvqcp/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_2370756493
https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/executive-compensation
The Chronicle‘s executive-compensation package includes the latest data on more than 1,400 chief executives at more than 600 private colleges from 2008-17 and nearly 270 public universities and systems from 2010-19. For more, read our highlights of public-college presidents’ compensation. Updated July 16, 2020, with 2019 public-college data.
Reuters releases guide to recognizing deepfake profile photos from r/technology
https://graphics.reuters.com/CYBER-DEEPFAKE/ACTIVIST/nmovajgnxpa/index.html
GAN A generative adversarial network is the name given to dueling computer programs that run through a process of trial and error… One program, the generator, sequentially fires out millions of attempts at a face; the second program, the discriminator, tries to sniff out whether the first program’s face is a fake. If the discriminator can’t tell, Li said, a deepfake is produced.
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more on deepfake in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=deepfake
