Welcome to episode 244 (“Join our SubStack”) of the EdTech Situation Room from January 5, 2022, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed the case of two California teachers secretly recorded talking about LGBTQ student outreach, who used student laptop monitoring software to identify prospective club members. The DuckDuckGo privacy desktop web browser and Americans’ distrust of social media companies were also discussed. On the Google front, the new capability to host up to 500 meeting participants in a Google Meet videoconference for paying Google Workspace customers, changes to the “Your News Update” for the Google Assistant, and the potential dangers (according to the EFF) of the Google Chrome “Manifest V3” user tracking standard were highlighted. UBlock Origin as a free ad-blocking extension for Chrome and FireFox was extolled / recommend, and Google’s announced “major improvements” to Android were explored. Lastly, some tales of algorithmic poor choices by automated podcast advertisement selection programs were discussed. Geeks of the week included MapCrunch, James Webb space telescope links, and a good (but troubling) podcast about fascism in America by Vox Conversations. 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. Please sign up for our NEW SubStack newsletter to receive all our show links each week in your inbox, including links we are not able to discuss on edtechsr.substack.com. Stay savvy and safe!
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- Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) – blog: blog.ncce.org
- Wes Fryer (@wfryer) – wesfryer.com/after
- Two California teachers were secretly recorded speaking about LGBTQ student outreach. Now they’re fighting for their jobs (San Francisco Chronicle, 28 Dec 2021) – PDF version
- DuckDuckGo is working on a privacy-focused desktop browser (The Verge; 21 December 2021)
- Americans widely distrust Facebook, TikTok and Instagram with their data, poll finds (Washington Post, 22 Dec 2021 – gift link!)
- Host Google Meet meetings with up to 500 participants (Google Workspace Blog, 16 Nov 2021)
- Google Assistant gets rid of ‘Your News Update’ audio digest (9to5Google, 5 Nov 2021)
- Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening (EFF, 9 Dec 2021)
- UBlock Origin for Chrome – for FireFox
- Google Announces Major Improvements To Android Better Together At CES 2022 (Chrome Unboxed; 5 January 2022)
- Seriously, Affordable Chromebooks Are Getting Really Good [Video] (Chrome Unboxed; 19 June 2021)
- Podcasters Are Letting Software Pick Their Ads — It’s Already Going Awry (The Verge; 4 January 2022)
- Jason’s Geek of the Week: MapCrunch
- Wes’ Geeks of the Week: James Webb Telescope Wonder Links and Why fascism in America isn’t going away (Vox Conversations Podcast)
