Welcome to episode 153 of the EdTech Situation Room from October 30, 2019, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed Twitter’s announcement to stop accepting paid political advertisements for candidates or issues, Facebook’s employee complaints over its political ad policy, challenges to Mark Zuckerberg in testimony before the U.S. Congress, and a “deep fake” video targeting Senator Lindsey Graham over the “Green New Deal.” @SmarterEveryDay’s fantastic 3 part YouTube series on the weaponization of social media, The Mastodon Project, and the Factitious news game (great for media literacy discussions) were mentioned and recommended. The availability of Thunderbolt 3 on some Chromebooks, a new CTL Chromebox at reasonable prices, and Microsoft’s political win over Amazon for a HUGE new U.S. military contract were also discussed. The launch of Facebook’s new “News Tab” with payments to some mainstream media publishers, the new RCS standard for SMS / cell phone text messaging, Apple’s newly announced “AirPod Pro” headphones, and a mind stretching Google AI Blog announcement about predicting the smell of different molecules rounded out the show. Geeks of the Week included New Home Internet service from T-Mobile, amazing “Shot with iPhone” experiment videos from Apple, and a highly manipulative web service available called “The Spinner” perfect for a student media literacy lesson. 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 if you can (normally) 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.
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- Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) – blog: blog.ncce.org
- Wes Fryer (@wfryer) – blog: speedofcreativity.org
- Twitter will ban all political advertising starting in November (The Verge; 30 October 2019)
- Twitter blocking all political ads globally starting in November (ArsTechnica, 30 Oct 2019) – Twitter thread
- Zuckerberg faces heat in Congress: “It’s almost like you think this is a joke” (ArsTechnica; 24 October 2019)
- Fake Facebook Ad Claiming Lindsey Graham Backs The Green New Deal Is Actually A Test For Zuckerberg (Newsweek; 25 October 2019)
- @SmarterEveryDay‘s series on social Media Weaponization: Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube (highly recommended!)
- Wes’ April 2019 workshop: Filtering the ExoFlood: Strategies for Media and Information Literacy
- The Mastodon Project
- Facebook employees ‘strongly object’ to company’s political ad policy (The Verge; 28 October 2019)
- How to play the Factitious 2018 news game (Bob Hone on Medium, 2 Oct 2018) – Factitious Game
- Thunderbolt 3 Is On The Way To Chrome Os And Newer Chromebooks (Chrome Unboxed; 30 October 2019)
- CTL Opens Pre-orders For The Best Core I3 Chromebox Deal On The Market (Chrome Unboxed; 30 October 2019)
- Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10 Billion JEDI Contract, Thwarting Amazon (NYTimes, 24 Oct 2019)
- Facebook Launches News Section to Compensate Publishers (Bloomberg; 25 October 2019)
- A new Facebook News tab is starting to roll out in the United States (The Verge; 25 October 2019)
- AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile have finally agreed to replace SMS with a new RCS standard (The Verge; 24 October 2019)
- Apple unveils new in-ear AirPods Pro coming October 30 for $249 (9 to 5 Mac; 28 October 2019)
- Learning to Smell: Using Deep Learning to Predict the Olfactory Properties of Molecules (Google AI Blog, 24 Oct 2019)
- Jason’s Geek of the Week: New Home Internet from T-Mobile
- Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Privacy on iPhone — Simple as that — Apple and Experiments by Apple Shot on iPhone (playlist) – The Spinner – Animated Explainer Video
