Searching for "corona virus"

QAnon goes European

QAnon goes European

https://www.politico.eu/article/qanon-europe-coronavirus-protests/

In France, the Yellow Jacket movement has embraced the American movement. In Italy, backers hail from the anti-vaccine community. In Britain, adherents draw from Brexit followers.

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What’s behind the rise of QAnon in the UK?

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-54065470

The FFTCUK Facebook group has now amassed more than 13,000 members.

People were dressed in QAnon shirts or ones displaying the slogan “WWG1WGA”. Short for “Where we go one we go all”, it is the best-known rallying cry for QAnon believers.

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How QAnon Went Global

https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/qanon-europe-germany-lockdown-protests.html

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QAnon Gains Traction in Russia

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/11/30/qanon-gains-traction-in-russia-a72180

Alexandra Arkhipova, an anthropologist at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration who tracks the spread of online conspiracy theories, has found that while there are fewer explicit references to QAnon on Russian-language social media than Covid-19 denialism and 5G fears, its prevalence is spreading.

Data gathered by Arkhipova since August reveals thousands of Russian-language social media posts about QAnon. On VKontakte and Telegram — an encrypted messaging service popular in Russia – groups dedicated to spreading the conspiracy theory in Russia have grown to include tens of thousands of members.

 

Chegg and academic integrity

https://www.dailyemerald.com/news/students-cheat-with-online-learning-service-professors-hope-to-identify-users/article_552d56f4-5a31-11eb-98ae-879264ec0299.html

Services like Chegg have become more accessible to students during unproctored exams in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, causing what UO chemistry professor Shannon Boettcher believes is a “huge problem with academic dishonesty across the nation in the light of remote learning and COVID-19.”

he Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s notice and takedown process requires that service providers remove material that a copyright owner identifies on their website through a valid notice of copyright infringement or become subject to potential secondary liability for assisting with copyright infringement, according to Copyright Alliance.

Chegg Inc. has been sued twice in federal court for claims of copyright infringement, denying allegations in both instances.

Apart from its subscription services, Chegg rents and sells textbooks. The publishing company John Wiley & Sons Inc. filed a lawsuit against Chegg on Dec. 18, 2018, in Manhattan U.S. District Court, alleging that Chegg sold counterfeit versions of its textbooks.

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This $12 Billion Company Is Getting Rich Off Students Cheating Their Way Through Covid

https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2021/01/28/this-12-billion-company-is-getting-rich-off-students-cheating-their-way-through-covid

Chegg is based in Santa Clara, California, but the heart of its operation is in India, where it employs more than 70,000 experts with advanced math, science, technology and engineering degrees. The experts, who work freelance, are online 24/7, supplying step-by-step answers to questions posted by subscribers (sometimes answered in less than 15 minutes).

Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig has profited handsomely. His holdings in Chegg plus after-tax proceeds from stock sales add up to $300 million. Rosensweig, who declined to speak to Forbes, has said that Chegg Study was “not built” for cheating. He describes it instead as the equivalent of an asynchronous, always-on tutor, ready to help students with detailed answers to problems. In a 2019 interview, he said higher education needs to adjust to the on-demand economy, the way Uber or Amazon have.

Throughout the pandemic, schools have spent millions on remote proctoring, a controversial practice in which colleges pay private companies like Honorlock and Examity to surveil students while they take tests.

Chegg Study was enjoying steady growth and little competition. Its only serious rival, privately held Course Hero, is a much smaller operation, valued at $1.1 billion, that generates most of its answers from students.

My note:

such proliferation would not have been possible, if the middle and upper administration has been more supportive of faculty when misconduct is detected. If the administration turns blind eye due to “enrollment” and “retention” priorities and curbs faculty reports regarding academic dishonesty, the industry naturally fills out the gap between a mere syllabus statement and inability to act upon it.

There is plenty of lipservice regarding “personalized learning,” but the reality is overworked faculty, who do not have the opportunity to spend sufficient time with students, less to educate them about plagiarism, cheating and similar “auxiliary” trends besides the content of the course.

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

student data privacy

Russia-linked spyware found on school laptops given to children by government from r/worldnews

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/russia-spyware-school-laptops-b1790759.html

Upon unboxing and preparing them, it was discovered that a number of the laptops were infected with a self-propagating network worm,” one teacher reportedly wrote

Laptops provided to schools in order to support vulnerable children learning from home during the coronavirus pandemic have been found to contain viruses.

Teachers from a Bradford school shared details about suspicious files they found on the machines which appeared to be trying to contact Russian servers, the BBC reported.

The government has sent schools over 800,000 laptops in order to help poorer children get the support they need, but have been roundly criticised about both the quality of the laptops and the time it takes to receive them.

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more on student data privacy and China in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/10/31/students-data-privacy/

China Trolls

Leaked Documents Show How China’s Army of Paid Internet Trolls Helped Censor the Coronavirus from r/worldnews

https://www.propublica.org/article/leaked-documents-show-how-chinas-army-of-paid-internet-trolls-helped-censor-the-coronavirus

At a time when digital media is deepening social divides in Western democracies, China is manipulating online discourse to enforce the Communist Party’s consensus. To stage-manage what appeared on the Chinese internet early this year, the authorities issued strict commands on the content and tone of news coverage, directed paid trolls to inundate social media with party-line blather and deployed security forces to muzzle unsanctioned voices.

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

US Internet

In 2021, we need to fix America’s internet: We pay twice as much as Europe for high speeds, assuming we can even get them from r/technology

IN 2021, WE NEED TO FIX AMERICA’S INTERNET

We pay twice as much as Europe for high speeds, assuming we can even get them

https://www.theverge.com/22177154/us-internet-speed-maps-competition-availability-fcc

Across the country, the FCC and internet service providers are pretending there’s competition in an unimaginable number of places where it doesn’t actually exist.

As FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel wrote for The Verge last March, as many as one in three US households doesn’t have broadband internet access, currently defined as just 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up — which feels like the bare minimum for a remote learning family these days.

early 12 million children don’t have a broadband connection at home, the Senate Joint Economic Committee reported in 2017. And the “homework gap” hits harder if you’re poor, of course: only 56 percent of households with incomes under $30,000 had broadband as of last February, according to the Pew Research Center.

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

Spain tackles fake news

https://english.elpais.com/politics/2020-11-09/spain-to-monitor-online-fake-news-and-give-a-political-response-to-disinformation-campaigns.html

While the text does not mention specific cases, Russian interference has been proven in the 2016 election campaign in the United States, which saw Donald Trump victorious, as well as the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom the same year, which saw voters narrowly decide they wanted their country to leave the European Union.

the text relies on the classification of the European Commission: “Verifiably false or misleading information created, presented and disseminated for economic gain or to intentionally deceive the public.” This includes electoral processes, but also sectors such as health, environment or security. The text underlines that the current coronavirus pandemic has been accompanied by an “unprecedented infodemic,” i.e. a proliferation of fake news.

The document recognizes that the “news media, digital platforms, academic world, technology sector, NGOs and society in general play an essential role in the fight against disinformation, with actions such as its identification and not contributing to its spread, the promotion of activities that raise awareness and training or the development of tools to avoid its propagation.”

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

ed tech companies

Investment continues to flow to ed tech, with $803 million injected during the first six months of the year, according to the industry news website EdSurge. But half of that went to just six companies, including the celebrity tutorial provider MasterClass, the online learning platform Udemy and the school and college review site Niche.

From the outside, the ed-tech sector may appear as if “there’s a bonanza and it’s like the dot-com boom again and everybody’s printing money,” said Michael Hansen, CEO of the K-12 and higher education digital learning provider Cengage. “That is not the case.”

Even if they want to buy more ed-tech tools, meanwhile, schools and colleges are short on cash. Expenses for measures to deal with Covid-19 are up, while budgets are expected to be down.

Analysts and industry insiders now expect a wave of acquisitions as already-dominant brands like these seek to corner even more of the market by snatching up smaller players that provide services they don’t.

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Tech-based contact tracing could put schools in murky privacy territory

https://www.educationdive.com/news/tech-based-contact-tracing-could-put-schools-in-murky-privacy-territory/584881/

  • A white paper from the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) suggests the use of contact tracing technology by schools could erode student privacy and may not be effective in preventing the spread of coronavirus.

Despite the pandemic, schools still must conform to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and other laws governing student privacy. Districts can disclose information to public health officials, for example, but information can’t be released to the general public without written consent from parents.

The Safely Reopen Schools mobile app is one tool available for automating contact tracing. The idea is that if two mobile phones are close enough to connect via Bluetooth, the phone owners are close enough to transmit the virus. The app includes daily health check-ins and educational notifications, but no personal information is exchanged between the phones, and the app won’t disclose who tested positive.

Colleges are also using apps to help trace and track students’ exposure to coronavirus. In August, 20,000 participants from the University of Alabama at Birmingham were asked to test the GuideSafe mobile app, which will alert them if they’ve been in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. The app determines the proximity of two people through cell phone signal strength. If someone reports they contracted the virus, an alert will be sent to anyone who has been within six feet of them for at least 15 minutes over the previous two weeks.

Critics of the technology claim these apps aren’t actually capable of contract tracing and could undermine manual efforts to do so.

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more on ed tech in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=educational+technology

School Leaders Early Exit

https://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2020/08/coronavirus_principal_early_retirement.html

Will the pandemic change the cycle for educational leaders?

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

alternative credentials

Alternative Credentials on the Rise

Interest is growing in short-term, online credentials amid the pandemic. Will they become viable alternative pathways to well-paying jobs?

Paul Fain August 27, 2020

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/08/27/interest-spikes-short-term-online-credentials-will-it-be-sustained

A growing body of evidence has found strong consumer interest in recent months in skills-based, online credentials that are clearly tied to careers, particularly among adult learners from diverse and lower-income backgrounds, whom four-year colleges often have struggled to attract and graduate.

For years the demographics of higher education have been shifting away from traditional-age, full-paying college students while online education has become more sophisticated and accepted.

That has amplified interest in recent months among employers, students, workers and policy makers in online certificates, industry certifications, apprenticeships, microcredentials, boot camps and even lower-cost online master’s degrees.

Moody’s, the credit ratings firm, on Wednesday said online and nondegree programs are growing at a rapid pace.

Google will fund 100,000 need-based scholarships for the certificates, and said it will consider them the “equivalent of a four-year degree” for related roles.

Google isn’t alone in this push. IBMFacebookSalesforce and Microsoft are creating their own short-term, skills-based credentials. Several tech companies also are dropping degree requirements for some jobs, as is the federal government, while the White House, employers and some higher education groups have collaborated on an Ad Council campaign to tout alternatives to the college degree.

One of the most consistent findings in a nationally representative poll conducted by the Strada Education Network’s Center for Consumer Insights over the last five months has been a preference for nondegree and skills training options.

Despite growing skepticism about the value of a college degree, it remains the best ticket to a well-paying job and career. And data have shown that college degrees have been a cushion amid the pandemic and recession.

Experts had long speculated that employer interest in alternative credential pathways would wither when low employment rates went away,….  Yet some big employers, including Amazon, are paying to retrain workers for jobs outside the company as it restructures.

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more on badges, microcredentialing in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=microcredential

Shield vs Mask

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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June 29, 2020

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