BA in French Teaching; PhD in Educational Technology; Associate Professor of ICT at University of Kentucky School of Information Science
I am an transdisciplinary digital methods researcher studying meaning-making practices on online platforms. Most of my work has dealt with informal learning through social media, but I'm increasingly dabbling in online Mormonism, the online far right, and various combinations of the three.
My CV is available here.
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Every selling point on this cold call email for an ed tech product is a reason that I would never consider using it.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A Network of Fake Test Answer Sites Is Trying to Incriminate Students – The Markup'
- kudos: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'
- kudos: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/
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Just explained something I learned from studying far right spaces in Mormon social media to collaborators on a project studying queer spaces in far right social media, which is not an experience I expected when starting grad school in ed tech.
🔗 linkblog: just finished 'College Prep Software Naviance Is Selling Advertising Access to Millions of Students – The Markup'
- kudos:Ed tech should not be ad tech. link to ‘College Prep Software Naviance Is Selling Advertising Access to Millions of Students – The Markup’
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I wonder how many people right now believe both that university instructors indoctrinate students and that they shouldn’t be allowed to do so online because it wouldn’t be effective.
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I got to teach counting in binary today, and it might be one of my favorite things to teach. Not every day you get to deconstruct and reconstruct your students’ understanding of numbers.
🔗 linkblog: just finished 'Amazon Paid for a High School Course. Here’s What They Teach.'
- kudos: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.’
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I was born into the dominant language of research, I’m reasonably fluent in a second language, and there’s still so much literature beyond my reach. Bring back langauge requirements in U.S. doctoral training.
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One of my favorite students will always be the undergrad from a few years ago who expressed outrage when I explained that researchers frequently have to sign over the copyright to their own studies.
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There are worse times than three days before the start of the semester to realize that you were preparing the wrong modality for a course, but not many!
🔗 linkblog: just finished 'Students Are Learning To Resist Surveillance: Year in Review 2021 | Electronic Frontier Foundation'
- kudos: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'
- kudos: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’
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It breaks my heart to hear from a student explaining they’re going to a funeral and in the same breath asking what documentation they need for it to be officially excused. I know there are bad actors out there, but why do we do this to our students?
🔗 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'
- kudos: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'
- kudos: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'
- kudos: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'
- kudos:OER forever. This article makes me sad. link to ‘Inequitable Access: An Anti-Competitive Scheme by Textbook Publishers | Electronic Frontier Foundation’
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One of my data science students just did a t-test to demonstrate that evil-aligned monsters in D&D 5e tend to have lower Armor Class than good-aligned monsters. This course demands a lot of effort, but moments like this make it worth it.
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grad student, immediately after entering my office: “Wow, you really like Star Wars, huh?” me: “Yes, but have you also noticed all my cool train magnets?”
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Dreamt that despite having a PhD, I had somehow never finished my BA. Had to explain a lot to employer and was trying to transfer to Centre College to make completing the degree earlier.
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What if our collective disdain as education researchers for learning styles is the result of an overemphasis on efficacy and improvement and a corresponding undervaluing of accessibility and equity?
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Teaching R for the first time, and many students are first-time programmers. I’m reminded of teaching French in terms of how easy it is to take for granted things that aren’t obvious to beginners.
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I brought up the federal German elections in class today to make a point about WordPress; I’d say it made sense in context, but I can’t promise that was true for the students!
🔗 linkblog: just read 'Kids who grew up with search engines could change STEM education forever - The Verge'
- kudos: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’
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I have finished the article review I was a week behind on, so now I just need to tackle the two-weeks-late and six-weeks-late projects on my plate. After I get the course prep done that I was hoping to do yesterday.
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Unsatisfied with the Intro to Data Science textbook I’ve inherited. Fortunately, an earlier version is Creative Commons-licensed, as are some other fantastic resources. Guess who’s going to remix himself a new textbook for next Fall!
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Looks like the NSF is now using the term STEAM, which just makes me dislike the term even more.
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I know I’m going to make plenty of mistakes teaching Intro to Data Science for the first time, but one thing I’m already proud of is teaching my students to use tags to format code and output in their Canvas posts.
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I often think of Nel Noddings’s argument that while increasing women’s participation in STEM is a must, we haven’t achieved victory until we’ve also increased men’s participation in historically-feminine fields.
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I just had to annotate a class reading to explain first that “AIM” stands for AOL Instant Messenger and second what instant messaging was, all because I wasn’t sure my students would understand either. This makes me uncomfortable.
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Beginning of semester stress dreams, Fall 2021 edition: Dani Rojas is enrolled in my content management systems class but is refusing to comply with the mask mandate.
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Is there anything sweeter to a professor’s ears than “I use what I learned in your class all the time”?
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You would think I’d have stopped being surpised by anything posted to the Gab blog by now, but “actually, platforms should be held responsible for content they host, but none of our content is problematic” is still a take I wasn’t expecting.
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Small sample size (and very non-representative), but my summer students seem to be on board with treating internet access as a public good. Hope for the future!
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I have a burner reddit account (for research purposes) that I only access through Tor, so the “communities near you” that pops up whenever I log in is consistently both amusingly wrong and genuinely (if not completely) informative.