Welcome to episode 107 of the EdTech Situation Room from September 12, 2018, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed the days announcements from Cupertino at the special Apple Event including Apple Watch 4 and 3 new iPhone models. The forthcoming iOS 12 and the benefits of the new Apple watch providing ECG / EKG data which is FDA approved was highlighted. Under the heading of “Social Media Correction,” Jason and Wes discussed an fascinating and in-depth article from the New Yorker focusing on the challenges faced by Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook in moderate content for 2.2 billion people worldwide, and specifically the impact that is having on democratic processes and institutions. The banning of Alex Jones by both Apple and Facebook, and the devastating impacts of false rumors spread via social media in Myanmar, India and Brazil were also discussed. The public availability of mind-blowingly high resolution maps of Antarctica, The FCC’s “pause” of the T-Mobile/Sprint merger, the ongoing exploration of our “Red Planet” by robots amidst the challenge of a summer planet-wide dust storm, and Twitter’s release of audio-only broadcasting options rounded out the articles in this week’s shortened show. Check out edtechSR.com/links for all shownotes, including those listed below. Please follow us on Twitter @edtechSR for updates, and join us LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can at 10 pm Eastern / 9 pm Central / 8 pm Mountain / 7 pm Pacific or 3 am UTC.
Welcome to episode 82 of the EdTech Situation Room from January 17, 2018, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wes Fryer (@wfryer) discussed upcoming changes to the Facebook news feed, the performance impact of software patches for Meltdown and Spectre, our human tendency to anthropomorphize technologies, and new highlights from CES 2018. Geeks of the week included Google’s Art App (Jason), the Microsoft Launcher for Android and the YouTube Safety Center (Wes). Check out all our links and shownotes, including many articles we didn’t have time to address in this week’s show, on http://edtechSR.com/links – Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/edtechSR to stay up to date on upcoming shows. Please consider leaving us a review on iTunes and anywhere else you find us! Remember you can listen to our latest episode on Google Home by simply saying, “Hey Google, play the latest episode of The EdTech Situation Room podcast!”
Welcome to episode 62 of the EdTech Situation Room from August 23, 2017, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wes Fryer (@wfryer) discussed the new Google operating system “Oreo,” the rising costs of new smartphones in the United States, whether or not Facebook poses a threat to democracy, and Wired magazine’s Internet Troll map. Additional topics included “How info overload robs us of creativity,” the militarization of computing via autonomous killer robots and the forthcoming independence of US CyberCommand. Geeks of the week touched on interactive annotation tools like Hypothes.is and tips for public wifi hotspot security. Check out the podcast shownotes for links to a post about that incident and all the referenced articles / resources from the show. Follow us on Twitter @edtechSR to stay up to date about upcoming shows. Please try to join us LIVE online if you can, normally on Wednesday nights at 10 pm Eastern / 9 pm Central / 8 pm Mountain / 7 pm Pacific.
Welcome to episode 56 of the EdTech Situation Room from June 19, 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 Wes Fryer (@wfryer) were back after several weeks apart, which included some international travel for Jason to Sweden. This week discussion topics included the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on “a right to social media access” as part of 1st Amendment rights, and recent announcements from Apple at WWDC including new iPads, the iMac Pro and HomePod speakers. The proposed purchase of Whole Foods by Amazon, the degree to which we can societally prepare for job displacement from automation, and efforts by Amazon and Google to address offensive content as well as terrorist-related media using human moderators were also discussed. An amazing (but apparently true) event in Ethiopia was also discussed, in which the nation shut down the entire Internet for several days to prevent cheating on high school student end-of-year exams. Several surveillance and security related news articles were also addressed. Geeks of the Week included the Podcast App, 60db (by Jason) and two from Wes: SiteSucker for macOS and the Eclipse Megamovie Project. Be sure to follow us on Twitter @edtechSR to stay up to date on upcoming shows! Next week we’ll attempt a live show from ISTE in San Antonio on Monday evening, June 26th.