I enjoy reading content from individuals who know an issue deeply enough they can share both sides of the issue. Too often, I encounter an anti this or that post which always makes me wonder about the agenda of the writer.
In this post, Morgan Polikoff addresses complexities and trade-offs involved in major tests and what the testing companies have to do to keep scoring costs down.
I have become focused on the role of ads and ad blockers online. While I do offer content that contains ads, my concern goes beyond the few dollars these ads generate. My concern is that ad blockers and counter measures available only to those willing to pay to defeat the blockers will lead to great inequity and a decline in the diversity of those offering content.
Here is a good description from the folks at This Week in Google. Ignore the name of the episode and watch or listen to the first 20 minutes or so.
This attitude drives me crazy:
As much as I like Apple’s position, I feel a twinge of guilt at the fact that the company’s brand of privacy comes—quite literally—at a price. Not everyone can afford a Mac or an iPhone, and it’s probably fair to say that billions of people in today’s world are only able to access the Internet thanks to “free” services that rely on data mining to sell ads.
It’s obviously not Apple’s job to figure out a way for other companies to balance their need for revenue with the rights of their users, but it’s also unconscionable to blindly accept the vision of a future in which only the well-off can afford to protect their lives from unwanted attention.
Why would a writer take the position that anyone has a right to modify content in defiance of the wishes of the content creator? You certainly have every right to avoid content with ads and you have a right not to click on ads that appear as part of an author’s presentation. The author offers you content at no cost with certain assumptions. If you intend to view this resource, I suggest you have an ethical obligation to honor the content creator’s expectations.
I am guessing I have attended far more ISTE conferences than your average ed tech guy. I have begun to accumulate a list of “issues” that bother me. Some are my issues, but others concern the nature of large conferences, who funds what, and who is really benefitting from how things are done.
For me, it is not the money. I just find ISTE to be a less and less productive experience. Mostly, I blame the inefficiency on the size of the event. There seems to be no way to scale the conference to the number of attendees. Perhaps no one can be blamed for this situation and this is the way things work. However, I do think it is a situation that should be evaluated by the organization. My go to conference has become FETC. The sessions and vendor access are similar with a smaller number of participants. I attend several conferences a year and I do not intend to give up conferences, but I think it is time to analyze the conference experience, who benefits, and what is accomplished.
Perhaps it is time to focus on the use of technology to learn about technology and technology integration. Perhaps it is time to experiment with professional development models that are not based on one time, concentrated experiences.
I see that Twitter has removed the 140 character limit for direct messages. I wish there was a way to extend the limit for the tweets generated as part of “chats”. As an observer, I have not found the “edchat” sessions to be particularly informative. If the assumption is that such chats must be limited to text, it would be helpful if such conversations were not bound by the 140 character limit. The posts are so cryptic when bound by the 140 limit, that too many really offer little information and too much time is wasted attempting to generate a thought within the limit. This has long been, for me, an example of committing to a tool before carefully considering the point of the application. A Twitter chat alternative with an expanded character limit would do a lot to improve the value of these chat sessions.
Machine “intelligence” is becoming quite sophisticated and the freely available demonstrations such as the capabilities of Google Photos make such capabilities available to us all.
I recently became familiar with the bird identification service from the Cornell Ornithology lab from a photography blog. I am familiar with this lab because of their efforts to utilize the contributions of citizen scientists and I blogged about the labs use of technology back in 2005.
The new ID service works like this. Upload an image. Mark a couple of key points on the image (beak, eye, tail) and indicate where you took the picture. The service will attempt to identify the bird.
I tried the service with a few images from my collection (I found them with a Google photo search for “bird” from my collection of images.). The Cornell ID service correctly identified the pileated woodpecker. I am not certain about the hummingbird. I have photographs that clearly show the ruby throat and am guessing my photo shows a female.
I have included another photo if you want to try. Download the pic and then go to the Cornell site.
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