I am switching to Linux.
We have a variety of Apple-, Microsoft-, and Google-powered computers in my house. My daily workhorse machine is a (relatively) mighty, but aging MacBook Air. I could recount the ways that each of them fall short for me or bend your proverbial ear to tell you about the type of computing device I really want. In short, I am sick of feeling like I am not in control of my own computer. My operating systems routinely ping online services without my consent or knowledge, ads are being delivered to my desktop that I can’t opt out of, device manufacturers have apparently decided I need and want an AI assistant to help me (I don’t), and Apple is on a crusade to sacrifice the ports I want and need on the altar of design (or was that bravery?). Oh, and let’s not forget that these devices are now being designed to be literally impossible to repair or upgrade.
I’m out. This is not the future of personal computing I want. And, I’m convinced I can make it work in the Linux ecosystem. If there is interest, perhaps I’ll share more about my experience in adopting Linux in the coming weeks and months as I settle into my new workflows.
A day late and £2 short, here’s what caught my eye this 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 27 Edition)
Smart Device Breaks Up Domestic Dispute By Calling the Police | Gizmodo →
The potential [presumably] unintended consequences of this are, well, life-threatening.
Tagged on: July 10, 2017
Sweetwater School District Now Says It Sold Off 8,800 Aging iPads | KPBS →
The Sweetwater Union High School District has announced it sold almost 8,800 outdated iPads from the district’s student technology initiative. The announcement came on Wednesday, nearly two weeks after inewsource published a story that found 90 percent of the nearly 8,000 iPads purchased by the district in 2012 were classified as lost, stolen or “out of inventory — damaged.” Ok...
Tagged on: July 10, 2017
Pedagogy and the Logic of Platforms | Educause Review →
Students are often surprised (and even angered) to learn the degree to which they are digitally redlined, surveilled, and profiled on the web and to find out that educational systems are looking to replicate many of those worst practices in the name of "efficiency," "engagement," or "improved outcomes."
Tagged on: July 10, 2017
Amid Unprecedented Controversy, W3C Greenlights DRM for the Web | EFF →
Early today, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards body publicly announced its intention to publish Encrypted Media Extensions (EME)—a DRM standard for web video—with no safeguards whatsoever for accessibility, security research or competition, despite an unprecedented internal controversy among its staff and members over this issue.
Tagged on: July 9, 2017
Court Rules the FBI Does Not Need a Warrant to Hack a Computer | Motherboard →
"The implications for the decision, if upheld, are staggering: law enforcement would be free to remotely search and seize information from your computer, without a warrant, without probable cause, or without any suspicion at all."
Tagged on: July 9, 2017
Editorial: Arkansas leads way with schools' Internet access | Times Record →
State officials last week announced the near completion of a project to put high-speed Internet access into every Arkansas school.
Tagged on: July 9, 2017
Student interns take on 68,000 school district computers | jacksonville.com →
“By the end of the summer, the students will have cleaned, re-imaged and tested about 68,000 computers, which is all the student laptops in the district. The advantage of that for the teachers is that when we come back, everything has been refreshed.”
Tagged on: July 9, 2017
Students unaware of data use | EdQuarter →
Less than half of students questioned in a new survey know how their college or university uses their personal data
Tagged on: July 9, 2017
Google is funding the creation of software that writes local news stories | TechCrunch →
Google’s Digital News Initiative has committed £622,000 ($805,000) to fund an automated news writing initiative for U.K.-based news agency, The Press Association. The money will help pay for the creation of Radar (Reporters And Data And Robots), snappily named software designed to generate upwards of 30,000 local news stories a month.
Tagged on: July 8, 2017
A Field Guide to 'jobs that don't exist yet' | Long View on Education →
For CEOs and futurists who say that disruption is the answer to practically everything, arguing that the answer lies in education and skills is actually the least disruptive response to the problems we face.
Tagged on: July 8, 2017
Hero K12 - Education For an Authoritarian Age | Inside Higher Education →
I don’t know if I would’ve survived life in a Hero K12 school. Hero K12 is “behavior management software” used in schools that count over 2.8 million students with what at this point must be over half a billion “behavior scans.”
Tagged on: July 8, 2017
Inside Facebook's speech recognition factory | CNBC →
Facebook initially focused on ads. The rationale was that at the time people were typically scrolling through their feeds with the sound off, so for advertisers to get their message across they needed text to run inside their video ads.
Tagged on: July 8, 2017
Facebook Meets With Pakistani Officials Over Blasphemy Death Sentence | Fortune →
A senior Facebook official met with Pakistan's interior minister on Friday to discuss a demand that the company prevent blasphemous content or be blocked. The meeting comes after a Pakistani counter-terrorism court sentenced a 30-year-old man to death for making blasphemous comments on Facebook, part of a wider crack-down.
Tagged on: July 8, 2017
Watch this story. I am aware of 22 Texas school districts affected by this breach so far. Details also available on the K-12 Cyber Incident Map.
Tagged on: July 7, 2017
In this litigation, Great Minds sued FedEx Office for making copies, at the request of a school district, of educational materials it produced with public funding and licensed under the BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
Tagged on: July 7, 2017
Final removal of trust in WoSign and StartCom Certificates →
Chrome is moving forward with "removing trust" in SSL certificates issued by the Certificate Authority (CA) WoSign and its subsidiary StartCom, as a result of several incidents not in keeping with the high standards expected of CAs.
Tagged on: July 7, 2017
Why the Internet Knows Us Better Than We Know Ourselves | Knowledge @ Wharton →
One example is if you apply for a loan, companies can predict whether you’ll pay back the loan just based on the words you use in your loan application. For example, if you use the word “God” in a loan request, you’re 2.2 times more likely to default, 2.2 times more likely not to pay it back. So a company could save money by not giving loans to people who end their requests with “God bless you,” which is pretty scary.
Tagged on: July 7, 2017
This $18 key can protect you from hackers | WENY News →
Get one and use it. I do. In fact, get one for your each of your family members, too.
Tagged on: July 7, 2017
The 5 Stages of Data Breach Grief | Troy Hunt →
Troy Hunt argues that the 5 stages of grief is an apt metaphor for organizations who have experienced a data breach.
Tagged on: July 7, 2017
Frontier notes on metaphors: the digital as landscape and playground | Long View on Education →
When I talk to students about the implications of their searches being tracked, I have no easy answers for them. How can youth use the net for empowerment when there’s always the possibility that their queries will count against them? Yes, we can use google to ask frank questions about our sexuality, diet, and body – or any of the other ways we worry about being ‘normal’ – but when we do so, we do not wander a non-invasive landscape. And there few cues that we need to be alert or smart.
Tagged on: July 7, 2017
The futuristic school where you’re always on camera | BBC News →
AltSchool.
Tagged on: July 7, 2017
Why Apple’s New Tracker Blocker Won’t Threaten Advertisers | HuffPost →
One step forward, two steps back: Apple recently announced a new Safari web browser that will curb the number of times a brand can follow people around the internet with retargeting ads. This is an admirable effort to protect consumer privacy online — and really isn’t as bad as many advertisers might think.
Tagged on: July 6, 2017
What Zuckerberg and Chan have done is more an act of investing in themselves than a decision to give away their assets. It privatizes the way these funds will be directed and minimizes the public’s control of how charitable dollars are spent.
Tagged on: July 6, 2017
The tech titans are currently in a race to see which of them can build a better digital replica of their consumers, which means finding a way to not just collect user data but also make it harder for competitors to do so. Tomorrow’s monopolies won’t be able to be measured just by how much they sell us. They’ll be based on how much they know about us and how much better they can predict our behavior than competitors.
Tagged on: July 6, 2017
Leading independent school monitors pupils' social media activity, head admits | The Telegraph →
One of England’s leading independent schools has admitted it monitors pupils’ social media accounts to ensure children are not criticising the school online.
Tagged on: July 6, 2017
New policy means FCPS no longer collecting Social Security numbers | The Frederick News-Post →
Frederick County Public Schools is no longer collecting Social Security numbers under the district’s new data security policy. Of course, this comes months after a high profile breach of student data.
Tagged on: July 6, 2017
How to be smart about open source | GCN →
Open source is everywhere in government, but many agencies still struggle with the specifics of choosing, contracting for and contributing to open-source software projects. GCN spoke with open-source advocates in government and industry, and came away with five fundamental lessons.
Tagged on: July 3, 2017
The Business of Ed-Tech: 2017 So Far | Audrey Watters →
The amount of money invested in education technology companies is up from this time last year and up from this time in 2015 as well.
Tagged on: July 3, 2017
Schools must meet new GDPR data laws | Schools Week →
A designated data protection officer could have to spend up to three days a week on data commitments and out-of-date IT equipment could have to be replaced.
Tagged on: July 3, 2017
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