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.
My CV is available here.
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- kudos:
I’m very glad that figuring out my office phone is not a prerequisite for tenure, or else my application would be in real trouble right now.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trans Researchers Want Google Scholar to Stop Deadnaming Them | WIRED'
- kudos:Ashamed to say I hadn’t ever thought about this possibility. link to ‘Trans Researchers Want Google Scholar to Stop Deadnaming Them | WIRED’
ClassDojo and the creation of artificial demand
- kudos:Yesterday, I complained about Apple putting artificial limitations on what its hardware and software can do in terms of music syncing in order to make more money out of its consumers (and, probably, keep music companies happy). As I was writing that, I was thinking about similarities with the business model of a lot of mobile apps—let people download the app for free, but keep bonus features (or even the best features) behind a paywall.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'List of 5 unique classes offered at University of Kentucky | Lexington Herald Leader'
- kudos:This ‘Black Mirror’ class comes out of my department—happy to see a colleague get credit for such an interesting class! link to ‘List of 5 unique classes offered at University of Kentucky | Lexington Herald Leader’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on '‘Girls Who Code’ Team Up With Tomahawk Missile Maker Raytheon'
- kudos:This is my issue with CS education efforts, especially ’teaching people to code.’ It’s narrowly focused on technical skills and not broader social and ethical reflection. I’d never argue that programmers shouldn’t work for defense contractors, but I’m uncomfortable with associating them so closely with CS education. link to ‘‘Girls Who Code’ Team Up With Tomahawk Missile Maker Raytheon’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Rentrée : Le désespoir de « MonsieurLeProf », l’enseignant le plus célèbre des réseaux sociaux'
- kudos:C’est dommage de perdre un tel prof. Je ne suis pas de près la situation des profs en France, mais vu combien de problèmes il y a aux États-Unis, ceci ne m’étonne pas trop. Il est peut-être temps de relire « Le hussard noir ». link to ‘Rentrée : Le désespoir de « MonsieurLeProf », l’enseignant le plus célèbre des réseaux sociaux’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on '‘The Least Safe Day’: Rollout of Gun Detecting AI Scanners in Schools Has Been a ‘Cluster,’ Emails Show'
- kudos:What a mess of a story. School safety tech is edtech, and like edtech, a lot of it appears to be more posturing and theater than effective practice. link to ‘‘The Least Safe Day’: Rollout of Gun Detecting AI Scanners in Schools Has Been a ‘Cluster,’ Emails Show’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'US government to make all research it funds open access on publication | Ars Technica'
- kudos:Exciting news! This still leaves a lot of research behind paywalls, though. link to ‘US government to make all research it funds open access on publication | Ars Technica’
- kudos:
It’s a work from home day, but I put on real work clothes to meet with a student, only for them not to show. I think it was genuine miscommunication rather than irresponsibility, but still grumpy that I’m in a button-down shirt right now.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Scanning student rooms during remote tests is unconstitutional, judge rules : NPR'
- kudos:Well, here’s some happy news! I hope this ruling sticks. link to ‘Scanning student rooms during remote tests is unconstitutional, judge rules : NPR’
some thoughts on platforms and 'community'
- kudos:I’ve thought a lot about “community” in online spaces over the course of my (still-short) academic career. Early drafts of my dissertation had a lengthy discussion about the benefits and disadvantages of Étienne Wenger’s community of practice framework (which emerged from Wenger’s work with Jean Lave) as compared to James Paul Gee’s affinity space framework. From a research perspective, I tend to prefer Gee’s space-focused perspective and agree with many of his arguments for why it makes more sense to use that language in an online setting.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A Tool That Monitors How Long Kids Are in the Bathroom Is Now in 1,000 American Schools'
- kudos:I’ve been grumpy about ClassDojo all week, and this is the only thing that’s made me feel better about it—BECAUSE THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE. link to ‘A Tool That Monitors How Long Kids Are in the Bathroom Is Now in 1,000 American Schools’
ClassDojo and 'data as oil'
- kudos:The new semester at the University of Kentucky starts on Monday, and I am flailing to try to get my data science course ready to go—including putting together an open, alternative textbook for my students. I’ve been borrowing heavily from Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein’s Data Feminism for my textbook: It’s a fantastic resource, and I’m hoping my students take a lot from it. Of course, my kid’s semester has already started, and I’ve already blogged a bunch about my frustrations with her new school’s use of ClassDojo this year.
- kudos:
I’ve been getting “Welcome to Canvas during this difficult time, here’s some documentation” pop-ups for nearly 2.5 years now. Only way to dismiss it is to accept a cookie, and I use relatively locked-down Firefox, so I may just see it for eternity at this point.
- kudos:
We had a short unit retreat this morning, and then I spent more time catching up with colleagues after the retreat than the retreat itself lasted. Both remind me that I work with great people.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'University of Kentucky COVID guidelines for fall 2022 semester | Lexington Herald Leader'
- kudos:It’s helpful to hear that the university is theoretically willing to bring back a mask mandate… but I don’t know that I see it happening. link to ‘University of Kentucky COVID guidelines for fall 2022 semester | Lexington Herald Leader’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'What Happened After the Digital Crackdown on Extremists — ProPublica'
- kudos:Interesting perspective on what’s happening on “alternative” platforms. link to ‘What Happened After the Digital Crackdown on Extremists — ProPublica’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Bad Data “For Good”: How Data Brokers Try to Hide in Academic Research | Electronic Frontier Foundation'
- kudos:I hadn’t realized so many academics were working with data brokers. It’s kind of scary! The EFF has some good points here about so-called “data for good”—and rightly brings up that ethics review boards should be thinking about this sort of thing. link to ‘Bad Data “For Good”: How Data Brokers Try to Hide in Academic Research | Electronic Frontier Foundation’
- kudos:
Got happy news this morning that a paper that may be one of the most important research projects I’ve worked on has been accepted into an open access journal! Making it hard to focus on my semester prep.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Some Thoughts on the Open Scholarship in Education (OSE) Working Meeting | Joshua M. Rosenberg, Ph.D.'
- kudos:Appreciate Joshs’s reflections here—espeically as it relates to disciplinary and language differences within education. link to ‘Some Thoughts on the Open Scholarship in Education (OSE) Working Meeting | Joshua M. Rosenberg, Ph.D.’
- kudos:
I hate myself for creating a ClassDojo account, but kiddo’s school is going all-in, so not sure I have the choice. First observation is how confident the app is that it can make me pay extra for free software I don’t want to use in the first place.
- kudos:
I spent most of the summer working from home, so I’m working in my campus office for the first time in over two months today. Nice to be back, but I also didn’t realize how many software updates were waiting for me!
- kudos:
Spent part of this morning reviewing proofs for a chapter-length autoethnography that is not going to add much to my CV but may be the most personally important thing I’ve ever written. Really excited to see this so close to print.
teacher agency and edtech
- kudos:Last night, my spouse and I took kiddo to her new school to find her classroom, officially meet her teacher, and all that fun stuff. While we were there, we got confirmation of what we’d heard earlier: ClassDojo is going to be used in all classrooms this year as part of a school-wide initiative. It was helpful to talk to kiddo’s teacher about this. She understood my concerns, she had her own trepidations about being required to use ClassDojo, and she honestly wasn’t sure how she was going to bring it into the classroom.
- kudos:
Really leaning into ethics and justice elements of data science in my fall class, and I’m wondering how much pushback I’m going to get. I’ve taught about racism, sexism, and colonization in games in another class with very few complaints, but this feels different somehow.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Absolutely Terrible Textbook Publishing Giant Pearson Wants To Make Everything Even Worse With NFTs | Techdirt'
- kudos:Masnick’s critiques of Pearson here are better than anything I could have written. link to ‘Absolutely Terrible Textbook Publishing Giant Pearson Wants To Make Everything Even Worse With NFTs | Techdirt’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Kids Are Back in Classrooms and Laptops Are Still Spying on Them'
- kudos:Some really worrying privacy implications in this kind of edtech—and edtech as a discipline doesn’t care nearly enough about this kind of thing. Makes me worried as a scholar and a parent. link to ‘Kids Are Back in Classrooms and Laptops Are Still Spying on Them’
disappeared papers and the importance of personally hosting my research
- kudos:Two of my major projects for the summer have been updating my website and submitting my tenure dossier for consideration. One specific thing I’ve been meaning to do at the intersection of these two projects has been to include a modified research statement on my website as well as a list of my publications along with links to PDFs for all of my research, ensuring that it remains accessible to everyone.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pearson says NFT textbooks will let it profit off secondhand sales - The Verge'
- kudos:Ugh, Pearson. Why do we keep thinking about ways to make digital textbooks worse than physical ones? link to ‘Pearson says NFT textbooks will let it profit off secondhand sales - The Verge’
- kudos:
My issue with computer science education isn’t the idea of computer science education—it’s that it’s overwhelmingly driven by workforce and economic concerns instead of concerns related to citizenship and democracy.
knowing when enough is enough
- kudos:The past couple of days, I’ve been thinking about a memory from my junior year of college. It was the end of a semester, and on top of all of my own finals, I was teaching FREN 102 for the first time, so my end-of-semester was busier than it had been in previous years. I don’t remember all of this busy time, but I do remember specific parts of taking my online FREN 362 (French Civilization II) final while sitting in the office shared by instructors from the Department of French and Italian and the Department of Scandinavian Studies.
being a student's parent as an edtech researcher
- kudos:Kiddo starts at a new school this year, so we got the chance to all go as a family today and get introduced to everything. Kiddo got to meet teachers and other kids while we filed into a meeting to fill out a ton of paperwork and learn about how this school does things. For years, I’ve been wondering when my research in educational technology (and, increasingly, critical research on social technologies more broadly) were going to become relevant as a parent with a kid in school, and it looks like it’s going to be this year.
- kudos:
I’m not a big fan of journal metrics, so I hate myself a little for including them in the research statement for my tenure dossier.
thoughts on an in-press article—and on names and legitimacy in Mormonism
- kudos:One of the highlights of the summer has been getting an article accepted in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. This article takes as a starting point Cragun and Nielsen’s argument (also published in Dialogue) that: what is really at play in the debate over the use of “Mormon” is legitimacy. Cragun and Nielsen are writing in 2009, at a time when Big Love is on the air and the April 2008 FLDS Temple raid is (or was recently) on the news.
research analytics for... industry collaboration?
- kudos:Over the past several months, the University of Kentucky has been pushing us to set up profiles on a new research analytics platform. The platform looks… fine, but I’ve been irritated with some of how the platform works and curious why UK is so keen on having us fill out our profiles. It’s felt from the beginning like this is something more for UK’s benefit than for our individual benefits as faculty.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Uber paid academics six-figure sums for research to feed to the media'
- kudos:Disappointing to see academics implicated in the Uber Files. It’s a compelling example of how research funding is contingent on public and private interests. Of course, public interests are generally less worrying than Uber funding research perceived to be positive and profitable, but there are still times I have questions about the NSF’s priorities. link to ‘Uber paid academics six-figure sums for research to feed to the media’