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TLDR 121

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 121

Published: 2017-10-28 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Issue 121. Show me the money.

Feel free to share with someone that you believe would benefit. If you haven't already, please subscribe to make sure this comes to your inbox each week. You can review archives of the newsletter or on Medium.

This week I posted the following:

Feel free to keep in touch by sending me a note at hello@wiobyrne.com or on the socials at wiobyrne. This week I had a really nice chat with Ally Hauptman via email. I also found out that Lauren Zucker successfully defended her dissertation! I was also excited to see that (for some reason) she listened to me and decided to document her research openly on her website to build her digital identity. It's discussions like this that make me value the connections I have with all of you.

...and now for something completely different...

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

Take the time to view the video. You'll carry this story around with you...and pull it out in the future in times of stress.

Also...thanks to this video (and my YouTube algorithms), I subscribed to the Word Porn YouTube Channel to get more content like this.

📚 Read

There are times that I come across a story that is what I call a "rorschach test for tech." It's not a good descriptor for this type of mental experiment. What I mean to say is that it very clearly crystalizes a debate point, and people see different things in the event/discussion.

This story is a perfect example of one of these "rorshach tests for tech."

Apparently a professor at the University of Michigan had his graduate assistants document what they saw students looking at online during his lectures. They then shared these results with students in the class and shared the results via social media. The specific details of the story are a bit dicey as this report is a retread of the original story that came out in April of 2017.

For my part, the specifics do not matter. What is interesting is that the comments generally come down into a couple of areas. First, there is the commentary that "yes, these students are getting what they deserved" and "I wish I could do that in my classes." I also hear some commentary about "students are being monitored and having their privacy and freedoms disregarded." Sadly...I didn't see enough of those voices. The final commentary focuses on the role of the instructor and the format of the lectures. These comments usually sound like "perhaps the instructor needs to spend more time being more interactive and mixing it up."

I have a very definite response to this story...but that doesn't matter here. What do you think about this story?

This is another "rorshach test for tech." Seriously...send me a better name for this.

This piece from EdSurge describes the work of BrainCo, a company that looks to bring electroencephalogram (EEG) bands to use in your classroom and in between. The bands you see in the photo are measuring electrical activity in the brain to see when you're most responsive and engaged. This data can be tracked by the instructor (or anyone) to best connect with the individual.

This sort of scenario is a running joke in my ed psych classes when I talk about teaching, learning, assessment and the need to focus on outward behaviors. As I indicate..."we cannot, yet, give students EEG or PET scans while we teach."

Part of the focus of TL;DR is that we want to critically examine these digital texts and tools, and their role in our lives. I'm increasingly learning that this means we need to take a look at the money behind the scenes, and see who is profiting from these experiences.

To help make sense of this, Audrey Watters has been hard at work on the EdTech Funding Project. In this, she's following the money to see who is investing in education technology? What are the relationships between the business of education and education politics and policies? What do we know about these relationships among companies, entrepreneurs, investors, institutions, and politicians?

This is important as there is power in money. This is also important because we know that nothing is free in life. In social networks and digital tools, we usually suggest that when something is free, you are the product. You're trading in your privacy, security, and data for others to profit. I believe this is especially important in ed tech as we're including the futures of learners.

In light of all of that, re-read the story before this where I discuss EdSurge's report on BrainCo and the classroom EEG monitors. Consider this in light of this page from the EdTech Funding Report on EdSurge and this ad for BrainCo on EdSurge. Keep in mind that EdSurge is being paid by BrainCo to place ads on their site.

Sorry, Powerpoint, The slide deck of the future will be in AR

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how to make my materials more accessible and approachable for most individuals. Usually I identify these people as the "normals," or the people that don't spend every waking moment thinking about teaching, learning, and tech.

Part of this includes thinking about the differences between an essay, a blog post, a video, a tweet, and a Snapchat style video for instructional purposes. In my classes over the coming weeks, we're digging into augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). In this, I'm researching not only how to use this content in my classes...but also how can I (and you) create content in AR/VR. More to come.

Last week I finally killed off my podcast. I'm switching all efforts to my YouTube channel, and a couple other projects. Ultimately, it was the workload involved in creating audio podcasts that I wasn't prepared for. Video is it...for me...for now.

Not soon after I closed up the podcast, I received a great note from Marc Lesser where he indicated that he was starting up a new podcast called No Such Thing. I first met Marc on some of the web literacy and badging community calls for Mozilla. Lesser is one of the smartest people I know in these areas and I'm definitely loving his podcast.

If you don't currently listen to podcasts, I recommend using Pocket Casts on your mobile device, downloading a couple of episodes, and listening while you walk, commute, or fold laundry.

🔨 Do

This week in class I spent some time talking with my students (pre-service teachers) about the need for them to speak up more in class, and make their voices heard. We also spent some time talking about how to encourage all students in their future classrooms to speak up and voice their opinions.

But, sometimes in life we need to be a bit more private. Over the past week I've realized that I'm entering into a couple of projects in which I'll need to keep quiet. This post is extremely helpful as we consider sharing a bit less online and off.

The post indicates that you can get people talking about themselves instead. If someone asks you a question, you can redirect the question back to them. You can also redirect the question by answering with the "non answer answer." In interviews for academic positions, this is often where you say "Yes, that is interesting. I hope to study that in my future work." Finally, you can redirect questions by talking pop culture and relating it back to the news of the day.

It's a bit of verbal judo, but sometimes it's a good idea to be more thoughtful and not share everything.

🤔 Consider

"I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I'm going to learn, I must do it by listening." — Larry King

In a week dominated by surveillance concerns—from professors monitoring student browsing to companies proposing brainwave tracking—this reminder about the power of listening feels especially relevant. Learning requires opening ourselves to perspectives beyond our own assumptions about what students should be doing or what data we should be collecting.

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