Welcome to episode 216 (“Luvin’ Google Ain’t Wrong”) of the EdTech Situation Room from April 21, 2021, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed the impending return of Parler to the Apple App Store, the amazing dynamics of WikiPedia following the January 6th U.S. Capitol Riot, and the tendency of negative political tweets to garner more user attention than others. The important role of Darnella Frazier in documenting the homicide of George Floyd with her smartphone, Apple’s redesigned iMacs with Apple silicon chips, upgraded iPad Pros, and newly announced “Air Tags” by Apple at their marketing event this week. The start of “the podcast war” between Apple, Spotify and others reflected in Apple’s announced changes to the Apple Podcasts feature of Apple Music, “performance mode” in the Microsoft Edge browser (similar to Chrome ‘tab suspender’ extensions minimizing browser user of computer memory), and new Chromebooks from Lenovo were also discussed. The potential for adblockers to mess up Google Documents in your browser (hopefully a bug that has now been fixed) and the new “documents” tab in Google Photos were additional Google headlines discussed by Jason and Wes. Geeks of the Week included computer/device reselling websites Swappa and Gazelle, and a Saturday, April 24th free webinar by Wes about innovative teaching strategies for language teachers. Please see our shownotes for links to all these articles and resources! Our show was live streamed and archived simultaneously on YouTube Live as well as our Facebook Live page via StreamYard.com, and compressed to a smaller video version (about 100MB) on AmazonS3 using Handbrake software. Please follow us on Twitter @edtechSR for updates, and join us LIVE on Wednesday nights (normally) 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) – wesfryer.com/after
- Apple will allow Parler to return to the App Store (The Verge; 19 April 2021)
- When the Capitol Was Attacked, Wikipedia Went to Work (Washington Monthly, 4 Feb 2021)
- [VIDEO] “Wikipedia at 20 – Reflections on Past, Present & Future.” (6 April 2021)
- Just say no: negativity is secret of political tweet success, study finds (The Guardian; 13 April 2021)
- The Social Dilemma on NetFlix
- By bearing witness — and hitting ‘record’ — 17-year-old Darnella Frazier may have changed the world (Washington Post, 20 April 2021)
- Apple officially unveils redesigned iMac with Apple Silicon inside (9 to 5 Mac; 20 April 2021)
- M1 iMac Tidbits: Storage up to 2TB, RAM up to 16GB, base model trade-offs, Touch ID keyboard (9 to 5 Mac 2021)
- Apple announces new iPad Pro with M1 chip, Thunderbolt, 5G, XDR display (9 to 5 Mac; 20 April 2021).
- Apple officially unveils AirTag item tracker (9 to 5 Mac; 20 April 2021)
- Apple will let podcasters sell subscriptions and keep a cut for itself (Recode; 20 April 2021)
- The Podcast War Has Begun (Gizmodo, 20 April 2021)
- Microsoft Edge ‘performance mode’ takes the load off of your CPU and RAM, saves battery (9 to 5 Google; 19 April 2021)
- 2 New Mediatek Chromebooks On The Way From Lenovo (Chrome Unboxed; 20 April 2021)
- Your Adblocker May Be Responsible For Screwing Up Your Google Docs (Chrome Unboxed; 15 April 2021)
- New ‘documents’ Tab In Google Photos Could Mean More For The Future Of Your Drive Storage (Chrome Unboxed; 19 April 2021)
- FBI Accesses Computers Around Country to Delete Microsoft Exchange Hacks (Motherboard; 13 April 2021)
- Wes’ Geek of the Week: A TiLT Webinar with Dr Wes Fryer: “Lesson Ideas and Tips for Language Teachers using Scratch, Minecraft and more!” (April 24 @ 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm London Time – 9:30 – 10:30 am US Central Time)
- Jason’s Geeks of the Week: Jason: Sell your old tech before buying new stuff! swappa.com and gazelle.com
