Category: Articles

Ethics & the Internet of Things

October 31, 2016 /

The ‘Internet of Things’ Faces Practical and Ethical Challenges

Opening scene, Carnegie Mellon professor asking his IoT-connected device if he has time to get coffee: example of outsourcing of knowledge, our decision-making power to a machine, reminiscent of many of the ideas put forth by Nicolas Carr in The Shallows.

Carnegie Mellon received Google seed funding to work on Internet of Things (IoT) project  putting tiny network-connected nodes in all sorts of items/devices across campus: cafes, offices (if opted in), public spaces, etc. IoTs have begun in other places like Songdo, South Korea where “street lamps adjust their brightness according to the number of pedestrians in the area”.

“Along with enthusiasm, the concept of the Internet of Things has drawn criticism from cyber­security experts and others for the privacy concerns it raises.” And potentials to abuse such a network.

Uh, yeah

Article ran 10/23 – DoS attack on Dyn DNS provider was 10/21.

In terms of privacy, “for the most part, people have to take action to ensure their privacy.” First you would need to even be aware that info was being collected at all, which most people are not. And in other instances, you cannot opt out data collection unless your device is turned off.

Why does a college campus need this level of connectivity (AKA surveillance)? Why do we need to be able to outsource knowledge and decision making about where to park or whether or not we have enough time to get coffee? Do we really need a level of control over our lives to the point that we don’t want to spend an extra 5 minutes standing in line, potentially talking to a colleague or student? #guh

Acknowledging Ed Tech

October 31, 2016 /

Ignore Ed Tech at Your Peril

From The Chronicle of HE by Jonathan Rees, professor of history at Colorado State University at Pueblo.

Basic idea: Must acknowledge these massive changes to life, environment, social/cultural structure and, through this acknowledge carefully consider how to use/integrate technology into our teaching.

“do your best to keep abreast of technological developments and incorporate the ones that fit your teaching style and educational objectives. You might even consider changing those things if you are intrigued by a particular technological development that would require you to make adjustments.”

“It’s not that anything you’ve done before is somehow less effective, it’s that the overall environment in which you’ve been teaching has changed…That does not mean that you must adopt virtual reality or go extinct. Instead, you should try to gradually adapt your classes to this new environment, because your students have plenty of alternatives that they didn’t have before. Your choices in light of developments in ed tech — including the choice to do nothing — have consequences”

Positive Reflection on Working at a Teaching College

October 31, 2016 /

Why You Might Love Working at a Teaching College

From Chronicle of Higher Ed

James Lang’s reflections on working at a teaching college and attending a conference about rewards of such a position:

“We all talked about how our institutions gave us the opportunity to make a palpable, positive difference to the young people who enrolled in our courses and visited our offices. We all worked with large populations of first-generation college students and with students who worked long hours to help pay for school. We all took great satisfaction in helping them discover new opportunities in their lives.”

“At teaching institutions, though, making such a difference constitutes the main focus of our work. We are drawn to the job from a devotion to students — we are evaluated on it and rewarded for it in the tenure-and-promotion process. It constitutes the fuel that fires our passions. I see it every semester in the dedication of my colleagues, and I heard it from the mouths of every professor or administrator who spoke at that conference.”

More about teaching at a teaching college on this blog: Teaching at teaching-intensive institutions

Ed Tech: Investments without Research

August 4, 2016 /

Which Ed-Tech Tools Truly Work? New Project Aims to Tell Why No One Seems Eager to Find Out in The Chronicle of Higher Ed on 7/1/2016

The bottom line: Investments in Ed tech are often made without any research or evidence about the efficacy of the product and (perhaps therefore) many ed tech companies don’t see a need to conduct research about their product.

Ed tech developers and investors pay little attention to whether or not their products are effective. They “don’t see a financial payoff in spending their time or their limited financial resources on academic studies” to learn whether or not their products have the effects they claim. If research is done, it may never see the light of day if the ed tech company doesn’t like the results, “Most ed-tech studies that are now undertaken at schools of education tend to be performed as consulting projects, an approach that allows the companies that sponsor them to treat the output as proprietary information that may never get published”

UVA put together the Jefferson Education Accelerator, an ed tech incubator that brings together professors, business leaders, ed administrators, and policy makers. These individuals will spend the next year investigating the “political, financial, and structural barriers that keep companies and their customers from conducting and using efficacy research when creating or buying ed-tech products.”

After looking through the website, the outcome and goals of the Jefferson Education Accelerator project remains unclear. According to the “About Us” page, the Accelerator plans to “establish a network of educators, researchers, entrepreneurs and investors who believe in the potential of education technology, are dedicated to improving educational outcomes, and understand the rigors of testing implementations in the real-world.” How bringing these people together will improve educational outcomes is murky and raises the question: what sort of improved “educational outcomes” are we talking about? If part of the the focus is on developing a network, its important to note that the “Who We Are” section lists a group of ten individuals who range from higher ed administrators, tech investors, CEOs, former governors, and start-up founders and is notably devoid of professors or minorities (7 white men and 3 white women).

While I usually find focuses on efficacy as sign of pervading neoliberalism in higher education (which pertains here, too) it is important to understand what student’s are getting from these ed tech tools. If the tools “personalize” learning using some adaptive software,  does this lead to better student outcomes? More over what is an “improved outcome”?  A better grade? Is that the only measurement of success? Is success the ability to get “the right answer”? The ability to synthesize information? The ability to solve a real-world problem using the knowledge and skills gained in school?

Moreover, since they are the ones using it, how do students feel about the technologies that are supposed to be improving their education? Do they enjoy learning on these platforms? What affordances do student’s perceive in these educational technologies? If we are going to talk about efficacy, its equally important to talk about students’ perceptions and uses of these technologies.

Audrey Watters Interview

August 4, 2016 /

Interview with Audrey Watters on how “Ed Tech Is a Trojan Horse Set to ‘Dismantle’ the Academy”

Discusses: Silicon Valley Narrative, the rise of personalization in conjunction with rising individualism, issue of public funding, going college to get a job vs. engage in intellectual endeavors

On tension between job+skills vs. intellectual exploration: “no amount of technological innovation right now really gets at that prestige question.”

From The Chronicle: “She’s arguing that professors should actually do more with technology, to get more involved and be more savvy. Don’t just put photos on Facebook or put work on commercial platforms, she argues: Set up your own website. Have a domain of your own.”

More in her new podcast: Tech Gypsies

Tech, Truth, and Tension

August 4, 2016 /

How Technology Disrupted the Truth in The Guardian on 7/12/2026

“When a fact begins to resemble whatever you feel is true, it becomes very difficult for anyone to tell the difference between facts that are true and “facts” that are not.”

“When “facts don’t work” and voters don’t trust the media, everyone believes in their own “truth” – and the results, as we have just seen, can be devastating.” (in reference to Brexit)

Relates to ideas presented by Kevin Patrick Lynch in his book The Internet of Us concerning “google-knowing” aka easy acceptance of receptive knowledge and changes in evidence-based reasoning.

Caught “between the open platform of the web as its architects envisioned it and the gated enclosures of Facebook and other social networks; between an informed public and a misguided mob.” This brings up questions about the difference between”public” v “private” on the web.  Very few online spaces are truly public forums for sharing/participating. Most spaces are privatized, where the user has no control over the space and in participating, they submit to the rules, functions, guidelines, and architects of that space. Moreover, what does this mean for our access to media and the news, especially when this access is controlled via algorithms designed to show up specific/popular headlines?

If “we cannot agree on what those truths are, and when there is no consensus about the truth and no way to achieve it, chaos soon follows.”  This can be seen in the recent polarization of views in the election and beyond. For example, on Facebook, people are fed certain stories by their newsfeed and the circle of friends who post such stories. (There has also been criticism of this polarization, see here and here.) In the echo chamber of facebook and social media, we see/hear what we want to see/hear because we are friends with people who typically agree with us. According to the Guardian article, “Increasingly, what counts as a fact is merely a view that someone feels to be true – and technology has made it very easy for these “facts” to circulate with a speed and reach that was unimaginable in the Gutenberg era”.

“Nowadays it’s not important if a story’s real, the only thing that really matters is whether people click on it.” –ex-Gawker blogger Neetzan Zimmerman on the present state of news reporting.

The Guardian article suggests that this demonstrates how  “we are in the midst of a fundamental change in the values of journalism – a consumerist shift.” News is no longer about creating an informed public as a democratic necessity but rather focuses on getting hits, clicks, and shares.

#majorugh

Teaching with Buzzfeed

August 4, 2016 /

Professors Assign Students to Post to BuzzFeed. You’ll Never Believe What Happens Next from The Chronicle of Higher Education on 8/2/2016

Professors assign students to create a post on Buzzfeed’s public publishing platform with the goal to make the post go viral. Some students and professors succeed.

Professors using Buzzfeed come from various disciplines claiming “‘It’s a fun way to learn…If you’re talking to your neighbor, or you’re talking to somebody who does not have as much education, this is just another way to still provide that information, but just in a different way — and also in a quick way.'” (Sarai E. Coba, a doctoral candidate in human development and family studies)

Brings to mind points made by Hyde et. al. in chapter, “What is Collaboration Anyway” about mechanisms of coordination and questions of knowledge transfer between participants.

“The Vanishing Big Thinker” – Social Science and the Public Intellectual

August 4, 2016 /

Notes on The Vanishing Big Thinker in The Chronicle for Higher Education 7/28/2016

“The academic job market focuses ever more intently on contributions to scholarship over participation in public discussion.”

Focuses on humanistic social science as a way to be a public intellectual…”subject matter under study deals with what might be called the eternal questions faced by human beings and the worlds in which they live, such as wealth and poverty, good and evil, the individual and the collective, religion, power, leadership, war, and peace”.

Writing for the average person as opposed to engaging in scholarly publishing circuit.Little technical jargon, clarity in language. However this is not common in academia nor is it rewarded (along with teaching).

Highlights book The Academic Revolution  (1968) by Reisman and Jencks  which focused on “two emerging trends that were transforming the contemporary university: the rise of the meritocracy in faculty appointments and student admissions and the solidification of faculty control over what it taught and studied…the more America became a modern and cosmopolitan society, the authors argued, the greater the likelihood that the center of the university would lie with graduate schools and the research they produced.”

  • Book unlikely to get published in today’s academic market – personal reflections, unsubstantiated (yet insightful) hypotheses, lack of graphs/charts, picked up by non-academic publisher

“The modern research university has become increasingly susceptible to the belief that there is only one correct form of knowledge.”

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