Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Work”
unexpected research ethics implications of Twitter's 'general amnesty' for suspended accounts
- kudos:For over three years now, I’ve been getting increasingly involved with research projects that involve the online far right in one way or another. One of the most interesting ways that I’ve developed as a researcher during this time is having to think through in greater detail my commitments to research ethics. Because my research typically focuses on public social media data, I am rarely required to obtain informed consent from those whom I study.
quoted in EducationWeek about 'Gas' social media app
- kudos:A few weeks ago, thanks to a recommendation from my colleague and friend Josh Rosenberg, I was contacted by Alyson Klein at EducationWeek to talk about the “Gas” social media app that’s become popular among high schoolers lately. Klein’s article was published last night, and I was happy to see that I’d been quoted in the article. To be honest, I wasn’t familiar with the app before Klein reached out, but it only took a few minutes of research for me to figure out that I didn’t like it very much.
new publication: LGBTQ+ communities and far right social media
- kudos:I’m pleased to share that a study I contributed to—Gayservatives on Gab: LGBTQ+ Communities and Far Right Social Media—is now available (open-access!) through the Social Media + Society journal. Dr. Evan Brody is the lead author on the study, and we were lucky enough to have support from PhD student Mehroz Sajjad. Here’s the abstract for the study: In the United States, LGBTQ+ individuals are often imagined as inherently politically progressive, but this assumption overlooks the experiences of self-identified LGBTQ+ conservatives.
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As my tenure application continues to make its way through that process, I’ve thought a lot about how grateful I am that my unit is the right size pond for this fish.
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In a training last week, we discussed the trend of journals’ checking manuscripts with plagiarism software. People shared examples where editors couldn’t accept perfectly good reasons for authors to reuse material unless a certain software score was also reached.
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The Black Friday email I got from ClassDojo today is representative of everything wrong with the ed tech industry.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Facebook Pulls Its New ‘AI For Science’ Because It’s Broken and Terrible'
- kudos:Very interesting read. link to ‘Facebook Pulls Its New ‘AI For Science’ Because It’s Broken and Terrible’
new publication: an autoethnography on French, data science, and paradigm change
- kudos:I’m pleased to share the publication of a new chapter of an edited volume. The chapter in question is “I’m a French teacher, not a data scientist”: Culture and languages across my professions, and it’s part of a volume called Cultures and languages across the curriculum in higher education. According to the CLAC Consortium, Culture and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) is a: a curricular framework that provides opportunities to develop and apply language and intercultural competence within all academic disciplines through the use of multilingual resources and the inclusion of multiple cultural perspectives.
new presentation: reactionary Mormons and religious authority online
- kudos:Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the 2022 meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion to present research with Amy Chapman on how the reactionary DezNat movement on Mormon Twitter conceptualizes and claims—but ultimately problematizes—religious authority in the online sphere. We presented in one of the sessions sponsored by the Mormon Social Science Association and were lucky enough to have some good conversations and receive some helpful feedback.
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Yesterday’s conference presentation went well, but despite a nagging suspicion that I’d prepared too many slides, I didn’t take the time to trim and wound up skipping a chunk of the talk. Alas.
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Doing a research presentation at a conference today. The slides are essentially a fancy HTML doc (thanks to remarkjs), and I’m proud that I figured out how to get Font Awesome SVGs to display in-line with text.
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Sounds like my tenure application has completed unit-level review and is on its way to college review. I guess there’s time for a sigh of relief before I start holding my breath again.
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Kiddo is coming with me to class this afternoon, which is fun—but complicated by the fact that my lecture today is the most controversial and ‘adult’ of the semester for this class. Still, maybe a kid will have important insight on controversies surrounding content moderation?
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I feel like I am constantly fine-tuning how I do assessments in my classes. I want to trust students and avoid policing them, but I’m frustrated when they respond to this approach by acting like it exempts them from attending class and participating.
when niche research pays off
- kudos:In my second-to-last year of grad school, I was asked to give a research talk as part of my program’s prospective student day. My talk was representing the “educational technology” part of the program, and the incomparable Kristy Robinson gave a talk reresenting the “educational psychology” part (to this day, when I’m struggling with a bout of imposter syndrome, I still remind myself that my grad program let me present alongside someone of Kristy’s caliber, so I must have something going for me).
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Just made a pact with an academic colleague that we wouldn’t hold back from telling each other that it’s time to retire and make room for new faculty.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'School Facebook Pages and Privacy Concerns: What Educators Need to Know'
- kudos:Josh is doing important work here—the kind of work that edtech researchers often don’t consider as being in their purview. Glad to see this getting coverage. link to ‘School Facebook Pages and Privacy Concerns: What Educators Need to Know’
why I put email back on my phone
- kudos:Since the beginning of COVID-19, I’ve been dismantling a lot of my productivity and organization systems, trying to put less pressure on myself to get things done and be more mindful in how I spend my time. Several months ago—I cannot remember exactly when—this culminated in taking email off my phone and pivoting away from the excellent Things 3 task management app to a more paper notebook-driven approach to keeping track of what I need to get done.
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The best figure I’ve ever included in a scholarly publication was a screenshot of a joke I made in a tweet and was especially proud of. The screenshot happened to demonstrate a Twitter feature I was trying to explain, which seemed justification enough.
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I am rereading through old FoxTrot comic strips and bookmarking all the tech ones I think I might use in lectures next semester. Wish I’d done this years ago.
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I’m taking the lead on the format and details of a small academic organization’s first online conference. I’d love to hear from folks who have attended successful, truly international online academic conferences about what made them work! All advice welcome!
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I put in an earbud an hour or two ago so I could listen to music while preparing class readings, and I’m only now realizing that I never hit play.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'CI’s DiGiacomo views information, media literacy as tool to preserve democracy | UKNow'
- kudos:Glad that my colleagues’ interesting work is getting recognition from our university. link to ‘CI’s DiGiacomo views information, media literacy as tool to preserve democracy | UKNow’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Citizens' social media can provide an antidote to propaganda and disinformation'
- kudos:I fall victim to this despite being a Mastodon fan. Appreciate the reminder to be more careful with language. link to ‘Citizens’ social media can provide an antidote to propaganda and disinformation’
thank you, Seymour Papert
- kudos:This morning, kiddo was pretending to be a robot, so when I needed her to switch her attention from, say, getting dressed to brushing her teeth, I’d have to pretend to “reprogram” her before she’d cooperate. This got me wondering if she was maybe old enough to try some basic programming activities—something like LEGO Mindstorms. I think that she’s probably still a bit young for that sort of thing, but it made me excited about doing this sort of thing in the future.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Essential Tech Question for Schools: What Are the Teacher's Objectives?'
- kudos:See, I get the impression that it’s increasingly district, school, and legislative priorities that are driving tech choices. I agree that teachers ought to have the agency, but I don’t know that’s the case. link to ‘The Essential Tech Question for Schools: What Are the Teacher’s Objectives?’
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Generally, I discourage my intro to data science students from tackling questions they can’t answer at their level of programming, but sometimes I get so interested in the question that I end up writing the code for them so I can see what they do with it.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Students Are Using AI to Write Their Papers, Because Of Course They Are'
- kudos:Really important story here, and glad to see George Veletsianos quoted. I’ve long been an advocate for developing assessments that are impossible to cheat at, but I don’t know if that’s the entire (or even a practical) response to GPT-3. We are continuing to develop technologies whose societal effects we are not prepares for. link to ‘Students Are Using AI to Write Their Papers, Because Of Course They Are’
help us find a new Director for our School of Information Science!
- kudos:Jeff Huber, the longtime Director of the School of Information Science at the University of Kentucky, is stepping down into a regular faculty role at the end of this academic year. I’m serving on the search committee to find a new Director, and I’m happy to share that the official posting for the job is now live. If this sounds up your alley, feel free to apply, and if this isn’t your kind of job, please help share the posting with folks who might be interested.
all I want for tenure is to be added to the Star Wars bulletin board
- kudos:This “Don’t Fly Solo” board has been up in the hallway of our building since before I was hired. I took a picture of it back in December 2017, when I was here on a job interview. It was one of the most prominent signs (no pun intended) that this would be a friendly and fun unit to work in, which was one of the biggest considerations on my mind when I decided to accept the job (though the adventure of changing disciplines and the convenience of living closer to family shouldn’t be discounted).
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'How to Protect Yourself If Your School Uses Surveillance Tech | WIRED'
- kudos:I hate that there’s a need for articles like this, but I’m glad WIRED is putting them together. link to ‘How to Protect Yourself If Your School Uses Surveillance Tech | WIRED’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pluralistic: 07 Oct 2022 “Don’t install spy on a privacy lab,” and other lessons for university provosts – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'
- kudos:There is so much of both horrible and hopeful in this story. The way we’re normalizing surveillance is really worrying, and I’m glad some people are fighting back. link to ‘Pluralistic: 07 Oct 2022 “Don’t install spy on a privacy lab,” and other lessons for university provosts – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Welcome to Smalltown, a Civic Space Online - Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure'
- kudos:This looks great! link to ‘Welcome to Smalltown, a Civic Space Online - Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure’
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I think one of the most important things in learning to do research is understanding that it’s a process of argumentation more than a process of discovery.
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I tell myself I won’t work nights and weekends, but every semester, there comes a point where this principled stance gets me so behind that I have to work nights and weekends to catch up.