Welcome to episode 53 of the EdTech Situation Room from May 24, 2017, where technology news meets educational analysis. Visit http://edtechsr.com/links to access all referenced links from our show. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed more takeaways from the recent Google I/O event, genomics and biotechnology news involving CRISPR and DARPA, artificial intelligence advances by Google, and updates to the Surface Pro line by Microsoft amidst forthcoming rumors of MacBook updates at WWDC in June by Apple. They also talked about recent “bot blunders” (related to AI and machine learning), ongoing fake news challenges to information validation (thanks Newt Gingrich), a company demonstrating the potential for journalism platforms to make money with a subscription model, and the interesting ways Apple is reinventing its retail experience in malls for post-modern (and online) shoppers. Geeks of the week included the Burstio app for iOS (Wes) and the “Amazon Basics” product line (Jason). The next few weeks we’ll be having some guests on the show and may alter our start times, so please follow @edtechSR on Twitter to stay updated about changes. As always thanks for tuning in and please share your feedback!
Welcome to episode 52 of the EdTech Situation Room from May 17, 2017, where technology news meets educational analysis. Visit http://edtechsr.com/links to access all referenced links from our show. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach), Ben Wilkoff (@bhwilkoff) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed an array of exciting announcements from today’s Google i/o conference, as well as an interesting but disturbing video from the May 10th Microsoft Build Conference perhaps foreshadowing our “privacy free future” powered by ubiquitous surveillance cameras, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Panelists also discussed the recent WCry worm whose ransomeware payload has made headlines and wreaked havoc on unpatched (as well as pirated) Windows-powered computers worldwide. The response of Microsoft’s President, Brad Smith, was a call for national governments to stop stockpiling computer exploits like this one originally developed by the NSA and leaked to the public. Topics also included the possibility of a forthcoming Siri-powered home assistant from Apple (perhaps to be announced in June at WWDC), a new aggregation of compromised 560 million email credentials (yes it might be time to change your password) making it even easier for hackers to ruin your life. Wes also mentioned the ATLIS 2017 session “Copyright & Intellectual Property: Who Owns What Teachers and Students Create in Your School?” in the context of photo sharing of student photos taken at school. Please follow us on Twitter (@edtechSR) to stay up to date on upcoming shows and infrequent show start time changes. Generally you can join us live at 10 pm Eastern / 9 pm Central / 8 pm Mountain / 7 pm Pacific on Wednesday nights on YouTube Live! Please share feedback with us if you listen to the show, have ideas for future show topics, or have a suggestion for a guest on a future episode.
