Whatever value Twitter might have, it is not my opinion that it is not particularly useful as a service for meaningful conversation. I have commented on this opinion in previous posts. As twitter chats have been a popular format among educators for professional development, I have recommended that an analysis of the tweets during such chats would make a great grad student research project.
This type of analysis is beginning to emerge. Social media discussions have been proposed as a way for researchers to interact concerning published research. The study cited in “Inside Higher education” was not particularly positive.
Much of the activity about academic journal articles posted on Twitter is “mechanical and devoid of original thought,” according to a new study that calls into question the value of some alternative metrics used to evaluate research.
Twitter may be a way to increase awareness, but not to promote productive discussion.
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I read somewhere (The Content Trap) that content providers focused on something new should offer information in stages. The first stage involves alerting followers to what is now available. A later stage would involve a full description and analysis. This idea made some sense to me. Early on in the area I address most frequently (tech in education) there are those who want to be aware of new developments and may be willing to try them out. Think of them as the innovators and early adopters in that classic model of how changes move through a population. I have also learned that there are dangers in pushing new ideas too strongly. An interesting product I promoted heavily in a textbook once went away when the company behind the product was purchased by another company and the product that interested me turned out not to be of interest to the purchaser. The service I describe here as yet to reach release 1.0 and issues such as whether there will be a cost to the service (it is now free) and what this will be have yet to be provided.
I have written extensively about online services allowing what I describe as layering. What I mean by this is that an educator or designer can add learning prompts, questions, comments, etc. on top of web pages or video provided by another party. I see this as turning content into an educational resource. TurboNote is my newest find of this type. TurboNote offers an advantage over several services I have previously reviewed because it can be used to layer educational prompts on both web pages and video instead of one or the other.
TurboNote is a chrome extension that provides a couple of features I believe to be essential in an educational layering service. First, it allows the addition of prompts. The image shown here involves adding comments to a video. Click the note icon – the video stops and the post-it type window appears. Enter a comment that is saved. Click the stored note and you also return to the video timeline marking the spot associated with the note. The second priority is the opportunity to share the layered product with a specific group. This is difficult to see in the image, but there is a share icon generate a URL that is sent to those who you want to view the comments you have added.
I like the idea of keeping competition going even when there is a large lead for one online service. DuckDuckGo continues as an alternative to Google. DuckDuckGo advertises its advantage as privacy and I read that the number of searches using this alternative has doubled since concerns with the collection of search data have surfaced. I found that switching to DuckDuckGo within Safari was easy as it was one of the options provided. Chrome lists alternatives to Google, but not DDG. I added DDG as the default search tool within Safari so I search using different tools when I use different browsers. Why not?
The “research based” label still carries some weight in education. To me, the term means that a given suggestion has been offered knowing that researchers have collected data warranting a positive opinion on whatever is being recommended.
One thing that tends to frustrate practitioners is that impression that advocates can always find research to support their recommendation. This is kind of true – a hedge. One attempt to deal with the complexity of research is to make use of techniques that aggregate multiple students. Aggregation can be done in multiple ways. A popular statistical technique is called “meta-analysis” and makes use of the statistical effect sizes (could be negative or positive) generated from multiple students. An easy way (not exact) would be to think of this as finding the average effectiveness of a technique.
Different folks have made doing aggregation studies their thing. In my own classes, I have long assigned meta-analyses conducted by Bangert-Drowns. If you have read much educational research, you may recognize this name. A new and influential player in this space is John Hattie. Dr. Hattie has generated lists of effective and ineffective educational tactics that some have found quite helpful. He has also written a book – Visible Learning for Teachers – that explains his findings.
As a prof, I work very hard to take a research-based approach. I have my students read original research associated with the different topics I want students who work with me to think about. Is all of this necessary when referencing a popular list as provided by Dr. Hattie necessary?
I recently encountered a blog post on this topic that encouraged me to offer my own opinion. Consider a position I sometimes find myself in. I talk about project based and problem based learning in my Instructional Design and Technology grad classes. These tactics appear on Hattie’s low effectiveness list and this ranking does not surprise me. I am aware of other aggregation efforts that have reached a similar conclusion. On the other hand, I am aware of specific, very well implemented studies (see the work of Deanna Kuhn) that show such methods can be quite successful. How do you recognize such findings? One approach might be to suggest that such tactics are complicated – some versions are not well implemented and some situations may not be suited to such approaches. It might be fair to suggest that as a general “best practice” any version of such techniques cannot be counted on. This is not the same as “this approach does not work”. Why this is the case becomes another topic for researchers. I know this sounds like the mantra – more research is needed. It may also suggest those who implement must give some careful thought to what makes a good use of some specific tactics.
I find myself in a strange situation when it comes to ads and privacy. I am not a supporter of ad blocking because I believe content producers are entitled to revenue for their efforts and including ads with their content are about the only way to seek compensation. There are different kinds of ads. Some bloggers secure compensation for ad views by making deals with those willing to pay to include ads. Typically, these ads are the larger image ads you see on popular sites. Image ads may be displayed for other reasons, but those paying for just the display of ads want their message to unavoidable. Link ads typically result in payment only when clicked. These ads are much less obtrusive.
Aside from the screen space taken and ads that obscure viewing, ads themselves are not a major concern to me. Cookies are another matter. To offer you ads you may be more likely to be influential, it is very useful to know something about you and your interests. A way companies acquire this information is by access to information about your browsing history. There are likely situations in which you are willing to share information and situations in which you are not. At least for me, the issue is really that I know very little about whom is collecting information.
Ghostry provides one way to learn more about who is collecting information as you browse. Ghostry reveals the cookies that are active when you browse a particular web site (see image below) and categorizes the purpose of these cookies.
Adding Ghostery as an extension to your browser allows you to access the type of information I show here. If nothing else, it is informative to see what cookies are active when you view different sites. This display was generated by from one of my blogs. I use and trust Google ads. This display allows you to select individual cookies and block if you want. I would pay closest attention to the Advertising category.
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The search capabilities of Google photos are pretty amazing. We, like so many, are watching the coverage of Hurricane Harvey. One of the most devasted areas is Rockport, Texas. Cindy suggested we had spent time exploring that area and we were trying to remember if this were the case. On a whim, I decided to search my Google Photos account. I have not labelled or tagged most of the images I keep there, but I did find photos taken in Rockport. These were phone photos and I assume the search makes use of the GPS metadata I want my phone to record.
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