Absent an ethical framework to guide our decisions, I am increasingly of the mind that the answers to the important questions about educational technology are ‘turtles all the way down.’ I’m hardly the first to observe it, but perhaps there is some significance to how I have come to the recognition. What do I mean? Zeynep Tufekci shares her experiences more broadly (beyond education) in this provocative talk from June 2016:

 

I’ll be spending some time later this week with friends and colleagues at the EdTech Efficacy Research Academic Symposium and look forward to the dialogue. I enter with many questions; after all, this isn’t my first rodeo. Perhaps I will be inspired to write a post on my reactions.

Several new additions to the K-12 Cyber Incident Map this week as well, including finding a new source to help identify and vet new incidents. Perhaps the most notable cyber incident of the week: Pekin Community High School (IL) has fallen victim to a ransomware attack.

Finally, I want to call out a piece by Audrey Watters on web annotation. I find myself both (a) completely and utterly sympathetic to her concerns for a few reasons (her own and – as a content producer myself – my own) and (b) wondering whether I should revisit how I should treat commenters and annotation on this site going forward. There have been many updates to the backend of this site over the last few months (HTTPS + DNSSEC + cleaned up domain name re-direction nonsense that worked well enough for a while, etc.) and suspect there will be more to come.

A day late perhaps, but here’s what caught my eye this past week – news, tools, and reports about education, public policy, technology, and innovation – including a little bit about why. No endorsements; no sponsored content; no apologies for my eclectic tastes.

Strong opinions may be weakly held.

A Thinking Person’s Guide to EdTech News (2017 Week 17 Edition)

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