Welcome to episode 157 of the EdTech Situation Room from December 3, 2019, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed the ascendency of Sundar Pichai to the throne of Alphabet, research revealing sophisticated and ongoing Russian propaganda efforts to weaponize social media to foment division and polarization in the United States, CyberMonday deals over the weekend for U.S technology consumers, and the 10 year anniversary / birthday of ChromeOS. The impeding selloff of all .org domains to a private equity company, the politics of local laws on technology platforms revealed by Apple’s new map of Russia including (illegally) annexed Crimea, Apple’s removal of customer reviews from its online store, and the announcement of the GitHub Security Lab to provide bug bounties for open source platforms were also highlighted. Additional topics included the benefits of letting milk cows use VR headsets (in Russia), IBM’s use of machine learning algorithms to discover more ancient, giant etchings in the earth (similar to the Nazca Lines) using tons of satellite imagery, and the optimistic news from Hong Kong following recent elections fueled by student protests and the use of a variety of encryption apps to organize and remain anonymous in the burgeoning Chinese surveillance state. The imminent removal of inactive Twitter accounts and availability of those channel IDs and Google’s struggles with the Stadia gaming platform rounded out the show. Geeks of the Week included BlueGriffon (a free 64 bit WYSIWYG webpage editor), a recent podcast conversation by Richard Byrne (@rmbyrne) with Dr. Scott McLeod (@mcleod), and the amazing “Post It” app for iOS and Android. Our show was live streamed and archived simultaneously on YouTube Live as well as our Facebook Live page via StreamYard.com. Please follow us on Twitter @edtechSR for updates, and join us LIVE on Wednesday nights (unless we have a schedule change like tonight) if you can at 10 pm Eastern / 9 pm Central / 8 pm Mountain / 7 pm Pacific or 3 am UTC. All shownotes are available on http://edtechSR.com/links.
Shownotes
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- Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) – blog: blog.ncce.org
- Wes Fryer (@wfryer) – blog: speedofcreativity.org – Wes’ Media and Digital Literacy Curriculum / Classroom Website
- Google co-founder Larry Page cedes control of parent company Alphabet to Sundar Pichai (Washington Post, 3 December 2019)
- That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It (Rolling Stone, 25 Nov 2019)
- Cyber Monday hits new records, boosted by purchasing on phones (cNet; 3 December 2019)
- ChromeOS is 10 years old! (About Chromebooks, 22 November 2019)
- Internet Society CEO: Most people don’t care about the .org sell-off – and nothing short of a court order will stop it (The Register; 29 November 2019)
- Apple Reviews Policies After Maps App Gives Crimea to Russia (Bloomberg, 29 Nov 2019)
- Apple removes customer reviews from its online store (The Verge; 21 November 2019)
- Announcing GitHub Security Lab: securing the world’s code, together (GitHub Blog, 14 Nov 2019)
- GitHub Education
- Russian cows get VR headsets ‘to reduce anxiety’ (BBC News, 27 Nov 2019)
- Scientists have found 142 more ancient etchings in Peru. Now AI will speed up the hunt (MIT Technology Review, 19 Nov 2019)
- Hong Kong elections: pro-democracy camp wins 17 out of 18 districts while city leader says she will reflect on the result (South China Morning Post, 25 Nov 2019)
- Twitter will remove inactive accounts and free up usernames in December (Verge, 26 Nov 2019)
- Stadia’s performance has improved since launch. The case for the service hasn’t. (WaPo; 2 December 2019)
- Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Practical Ed Tech Podcast – Episode #6 Featuring Dr. Scott McLeod and BlueGriffon (free 64 bit WYSIWYG webpage editor)
- Jason’s Geek of the Week: Post It App for Android and iOS
