Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Work”
some thoughts on Gab pushback against research on Gab
I’m not going to link to it, but I am fascinated by a recent post on the Gab blog where Andrew Torba announced some new features to help Gab users push back against research on the platform. Not only do I have two or three ongoing projects using Gab data (one is in the very, very early stages and—ironically—uses Gab blog posts), but some of what Torba wrote also aligned with some of the (fortunately mild) trolling my co-author, Amy Chapman, and I have experienced because of my work on the far-right-influenced DezNat hashtag in Mormon Twitter.
job post: instructional communication lecturer position at University of Kentucky
My unit (the School of Information Science) at the University of Kentucky teaches all of the composition and communication courses for the College of Communication and Information, and I just received word this morning that we’re hiring a full-time lecturer for these courses. I feel conflicted about the existence of the lecturer position at UK, but I can say with some fconfidence that lecturers are valued, respected members of the SIS faculty.
linkblog: my thoughts on 'Schools Are Spending Billions on High-Tech Defense for Mass Shootings - The New York Times'
edtech,gun violence,mass shootings,school shootings,technology,surveillance
link to ‘Schools Are Spending Billions on High-Tech Defense for Mass Shootings - The New York Times’
linkblog: my thoughts on 'Diverse and inclusive stock photos for your next presentation, learning design, etc – George Veletsianos, PhD'
Really appreciated George’s post here. Looking forward to trying these out in future slide decks.
link to ‘Diverse and inclusive stock photos for your next presentation, learning design, etc – George Veletsianos, PhD’
new publication: examining pseudonymous academic Twitter accounts
I’m happy to report that a paper of mine (in collaboration with David E. Williams at the University of Saskatchewan) has just been published in The Internet and Higher Education. We topic modeled 77,514 tweets from 59 academically-themed but anonymous or pseudonymous Twitter accounts. This resulted in five broad topics, and we followed up with a qualitative analysis of the 100 most-representative tweets from each of those topics to generate some narrower codes.
linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Silver Bullet of Anti-Shooter Educational Technologies — Civics of Technology'
Solid thinking by researchers I respect and admire. I especially appreciate the point that no solution exists outside politics.
link to ‘The Silver Bullet of Anti-Shooter Educational Technologies — Civics of Technology’
linkblog: my thoughts on 'Software to detect school threats online is costly but mostly ineffective.'
This kind of social media surveillance has been bothering me for years. I’m happy it’s getting some attention, even if the impetus for that attention is such a tragedy. This is edtech and our discipline needs to treat it as such.
link to ‘Software to detect school threats online is costly but mostly ineffective.’
why I will (probably?) always agree to write a letter of recommendation for a student
Today, I heard from a student that I had a couple of semesters ago asking for a letter of recommendation for a master’s program. I only had the student in one class, his attendance was spotty, and I didn’t have a lot of sustained interactions with him, so I am questioning whether I would be the best letter writer for him. However, while I said as much to the student in my reply, I also told him that despite all of that, I would still be willing to write him a letter.
linkblog: my thoughts on 'After Uvalde, social media monitoring apps struggle to justify surveillance - The Verge'
This article may make its way into a chapter I’m writing on how assumptions about education shape our understanding of what appropriate data collection looks like. As Audrey Watters has written, this kind of thing is very much edtech, and we need to be critical about how we deploy it. Even if it did work, I’m not sure the surveillance would be worth it. If it doesn’t work, all the more reason to be skeptical.
a culmination of previous work, or a steppingstone for the future?
Like in many PhD programs, my comprehensive exams included an element that was intended to help me prepare for my dissertation proposal, dissertation, and dissertation defense. Building off of my research interests and experiences up to that point, my advisor wrote me a lengthy question asking me to define and describe simulation games—the intent, of course, being that at least some of this could be worked into a literature review for a dissertation.
linkblog: my thoughts on 'Accused of Cheating by an Algorithm, and a Professor She Had Never Met - The New York Times'
Why can’t we just learn to assess differently? There’s so much about proctoring software that ought to be worrying us.
link to ‘Accused of Cheating by an Algorithm, and a Professor She Had Never Met - The New York Times’
new(ish) publication: investigating offerings and downloads on TeachersPayTeachers
I got word that a recent publication of mine was now published in an issue of Learning, Media, and Technology. It has actually been available online first for the past ten months, but since I haven’t been good about blogging about recent publications, I figured this was as good a chance as any to write a post about it. This piece is called “Lifting the Veil on TeachersPayTeachers.com: An Investigation of Educational Marketplace Offerings and Downloads” and is a collaboration with Catharyn Shelton,Matt Koehler, and Jeff Carpenter.
interview with WEKU on Buffalo shooting and social media content moderation
Last week, I was interviewed by a reporter at WEKU about social media and content moderation in the context of the horrific recent shooting in Buffalo, and I was pleased to see the interview appear on the WEKU website this morning.
I wish that the headline didn’t frame this as a question of “free speech”—and that I’d perhaps been more forceful in emphasizing that these really aren’t questions of free speech so much as content moderation.
quoted in Salt Lake Tribune on LDS missionaries' use of social media
Last week, I got the chance to chat with Salt Lake Tribune religion reporter Peggy Fletcher Stack about Latter-day Saint missionaries use of social media videos, and I was pleased to see the article published on Sunday. I hadn’t been paying attention to online missionary videos, but the subject fit nicely with the reading I’ve been doing on platform and platform values recently:
Both kinds of accounts “are drawing from the internet/influencer cultures of these platforms,” [Greenhalgh] says.
linkblog: my thoughts on 'Intel Wants To Add Unproven ‘Emotion Detection’ AI To Distance Learning Tech | Techdirt'
The only way to make emotion detection tech worse is, of course, to make it ed tech.
link to ‘Intel Wants To Add Unproven ‘Emotion Detection’ AI To Distance Learning Tech | Techdirt’
linkblog: my thoughts on 'Columbia Professor Expresses Doubts over University Ranking - The New York Times'
This is why I’m skeptical of terms like data driven decision making, which are meant to sound objective but cannot live up to their rhetorical power.
link to ‘Columbia Professor Expresses Doubts over University Ranking - The New York Times’
linkblog: my thoughts on 'George Washington University apologizes for tracking locations of students, faculty | TheHill'
Certainly not the worst news I’ve read this morning, but still tremendously worrying.
link to ‘George Washington University apologizes for tracking locations of students, faculty | TheHill’
linkblog: my thoughts on 'Proctorio subpoenas digital rights group in legal spat with student - The Verge'
Boo on Proctorio.
link to ‘Proctorio subpoenas digital rights group in legal spat with student - The Verge’
linkblog: my thoughts on 'A Network of Fake Test Answer Sites Is Trying to Incriminate Students – The Markup'
Let me get this straight: Invasive surveillance isn’t enough, now companies are creating opportunities to cheat just so they can ding them and take credit for stopping it?
link to ‘A Network of Fake Test Answer Sites Is Trying to Incriminate Students – The Markup’
linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pluralistic: 16 Feb 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'
Doctorow tackles the grossest parts of ed tech. It’s a great read.
[link to ‘Pluralistic: 16 Feb 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow’](https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/
linkblog: just finished 'College Prep Software Naviance Is Selling Advertising Access to Millions of Students – The Markup'
Ed tech should not be ad tech.
link to ‘College Prep Software Naviance Is Selling Advertising Access to Millions of Students – The Markup’
linkblog: just finished 'Amazon Paid for a High School Course. Here’s What They Teach.'
So much ugh. Big Amazon presence here in KY, so wonder when we’ll start to see this.
link to ‘Amazon Paid for a High School Course. Here’s What They Teach.’
linkblog: just finished 'Students Are Learning To Resist Surveillance: Year in Review 2021 | Electronic Frontier Foundation'
Such an important read.
link to ‘Students Are Learning To Resist Surveillance: Year in Review 2021 | Electronic Frontier Foundation’
linkblog: just finished 'Personalized Learning Debates Put Too Much Emphasis on Technology, School Leaders Say'
Lots in here that reminds me of Watters’s comments on personalization.
link to ‘Personalized Learning Debates Put Too Much Emphasis on Technology, School Leaders Say’
linkblog: just finished 'Report - Sharing Student Data Across Public Sectors: Importance of Community Engagement to Support Responsible and Equitable Use - Center for Democracy and Technology'
Looking forward to reading—and citing—this full report.
link to ‘Report - Sharing Student Data Across Public Sectors: Importance of Community Engagement to Support Responsible and Equitable Use - Center for Democracy and Technology’
linkblog: just finished 'Automated Proctoring Swept In During Pandemic. It’s Likely to Stick Around, Despite Concerns | EdSurge News'
Glad UK is stepping back from proctoring, but worried about the foothold it’s gained.
link to ‘Automated Proctoring Swept In During Pandemic. It’s Likely to Stick Around, Despite Concerns | EdSurge News’
linkblog: just read 'Ed Tech Usage is Up. So Are Parent Privacy Concerns'
Interesting read on an important subject.
link to ‘Ed Tech Usage is Up. So Are Parent Privacy Concerns’
linkblog: just read 'Inequitable Access: An Anti-Competitive Scheme by Textbook Publishers | Electronic Frontier Foundation'
OER forever. This article makes me sad.
link to ‘Inequitable Access: An Anti-Competitive Scheme by Textbook Publishers | Electronic Frontier Foundation’
linkblog: just read 'Kids who grew up with search engines could change STEM education forever - The Verge'
Very interesting to think about how mental models re: file storage may be changing.
link to ‘Kids who grew up with search engines could change STEM education forever - The Verge’