Welcome to episode 39 of the EdTech Situation Room from February 1, 2017, where technology news meets educational analysis. Visit https://edtechsr.com/links to access all referenced links from our show. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach), Jennifer Carey (@teacherjencarey) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed screen time and a recent response by Derrick Willard (@dwillard) to a provocative Time editorial. They also discussed the recent sunsetting announcement of Club Penguin by Disney, the importance of parents getting into the virtual worlds their kids are playing in and exploring, and Microsoft’s forthcoming “Windows 10 Cloud” product release. The recent successful ransomeware attack on an Austrian hotel, hacking the Internet of Things, uses for digital assistants like Google Home and Alexa, the importance of 2 step verification, and the dangers of Google Authenticator were also addressed. In a “Geek of the Week” bonus moment, Jason shared the $30 bluetooth lightbulb and speaker (from Amazon) which he’s using now at home. Official geeks of the week included the new NPR series “The Privacy Paradox” (Jen), updates to Google Voice (Jason), and “Advanced / Cyborg / Centaur Chess” (Wes) via Kevin Kelly’s (@kevin2kelly) outstanding book, “The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future.” Please refer to our podcast shownotes for links to all referenced articles, videos, and resources from the show, and take a few minutes to complete our listener survey on http://wfryer.me/edtechsr.
Welcome to episode 32 of the EdTech Situation Room from December 7, 2016, where technology news meets educational analysis. Visit https://edtechsr.com/links to access all referenced links from our show (as well as some we didn’t have time to discuss.) This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed the launch of the new Google WiFi home router, screen time surveys for adults and kids, Gmail account hacks to well known politician accounts (Colin Powell and John Podesta) via clever phishing attacks, and recent Apple headlines about MacBook Pro issues. A considerable part of the show focused on Carole Cadwalladr’s recent article for The Guardian, “Google, democracy and the truth about internet search,” and the resulting response by Google to alter auto-complete search results. Thanks to Peggy George (@pgeorge) for sharing the excellent TEDtalk video, “Machine intelligence makes human morals more important” by Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep). Jason shared a collection of “travel nerd” websites for his geek of the week, and Wes shared https://safeshare.tv. Next week we’ll have a special “Technology Shopping Cart” episode, and then be off the week of December 21st for the holiday break. We’ll be back with an end-of-year “2016 Technology Year in Review Show” either the last week of December or the first week of January. Follow us on Twitter @edtechSR to stay up to date about upcoming show times. Please refer to our podcast shownotes for links to all referenced articles, videos, and resources from the show, and take a few minutes to complete our listener survey!