A valid ownership claim functions as a “bundle of rights” for a specific property and can include such rights as:the right to exclusive possessionthe right to exclusive use and enclosurethe right to transfer ownership (conveyance)the right to use as collateral to secure a debt (hypothecation)the right to subdivide (partition)

The rise of educational technology is part of a larger shift in political thought, from favoring government oversight to asserting free-market principles, as well as a response to the increasing costs of higher education. The technocentric view that technology can solve these challenges combines with a vision of education as a product that can be packaged, automated, and delivered to students. Unless greater collaborative efforts take place between edtech developers and the greater academic community, as well as more informed deep understandings of how learning and teaching actually occur, any efforts to make edtech education's silver bullet are doomed to fail.

1) No one can even agree on a definition of “fake news,” even though a ridiculous number of words are being spent trying to define it.2) Folks don’t seem to understand the evolving nature of the problem, the way that manipulation evolves, or how the approaches they propose can be misused by those with whom they fundamentally disagree.3) No amount of “fixing” Facebook or Google will address the underlying factors shaping the culture and information wars in which America is currently enmeshed.

Either we own political technologies, or they will own us. The great potential of big data, big analysis and online forums will be used by us or against us. We must move fast to beat the billionaires.

research and discussion

Networked publics are not just publics networked together, but they are publics that have been transformed by networked media, its properties, and its potential. The properties of bits regulate the structure of networked publics, which, in turn, introduces new possible practices and shapes the interactions that take place.

As an ethical and political practice, a public pedagogy of wakefulness rejects modes of education removed from political or social concerns, divorced from history and matters of injury and injustice. Said’s notion of a pedagogy of wakefulness includes “lifting complex ideas into the public space,” recognizing human injury inside and outside of the academy, and using theory as a form of criticism to change things.[xxv] This is a pedagogy in which academics are neither afraid of controversy or the willingness to make connections that are otherwise hidden, nor are they afraid of making clear the connection between private issues and broader elements of society’s problems.

In order for critical pedagogy, dialogue, and thought to have real effects,  they must advocate the message that all citizens, old and young, are equally entitled, if not equally empowered, to shape the society in which they live.

Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything. They can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos. Still, experts worry they can also put too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity and serendipity, and could result in greater unemployment

As I read Rosenblatt this week for another course, I realized that it’s the reader that is the wildcard in writing. You never know how the reader will respond to your writing. Writing in a way that the masses could understand and drop the academic jargon isn’t my main concern. But rather the response that my writing could get.

Surely, a scholar can call on those early years of writing before they were indoctrinated into academia?  Honestly, if a researcher/writer is unable to drop the academic jargon to meet the needs of their desired audience, I’d say maybe blogging isn’t for you.

open-publishing allows us to share our work on our own terms

Another challenge is scholars being able to successfully “translate” their writing for the general public. Might some have problems dropping the academic jargon so that the average reader knows what the heck they are talking about? This seems like it would be an entire new skill set that would have to be developed…maybe even courses built around this.

gate-keeper

happy median

isn’t the role of educators to teach, learn, and share knowledge

growth, feedback and learning

But putting your work out for the world to judge can be scary.

All along the way, or perhaps somewhere along the way, we have confused surveillance for care. And that’s my takeaway for folks here today: when you work for a company or an institution that collects or trades data, you’re making it easy to surveil people and the stakes are high. They’re always high for the most vulnerable. By collecting so much data, you’re making it easy to discipline people. You’re making it easy to control people. You’re putting people at risk. You’re putting students at risk.

A person with oppositional conversational style is a person who, in conversation, disagrees with and corrects whatever you say. He or she may do this in a friendly way, or a belligerent way, but this person frames remarks in opposition to whatever you venture.

global implosion

PBL is the ongoing act of learning about different subjects simultaneously. This is achieved by guiding students to identify, through research, a real-world problem (local to global) developing its solution using evidence to support the claim, and presenting the solution through a multimedia approach based in a set of 21st-century tools

We don’t need to change everything now, but we do need to start forgetting the assumptions that we have made. The future is more uncertain than ever, but we need to make our kids as balanced, agile, and as self-reliant as ever in order to thrive in it.

Fake news is just squatting in one part of one building in an entire landscape of neglect and corruption; evicting them will make no difference to the blight.

The Role of Literacy Research in Racism and Racial Violence Statement Endorsed by the Literacy Research Association [PDF] 12/19/16

they may not be ready for that this year, or on the first day, and so there must to be online spaces where they can practice this kind of engagement safely and receive constructive feedback so that they can become responsible and thoughtful participants in the digital public sphere.

Now you can create a hypothes.is group and invite others to join you in annotating a text or set of texts amongst yourselves

No newspaper, no politician, no parent or school administrator should ever assume that a test score is a valid and meaningful indicator without looking carefully at the questions on that test to ascertain that they’re designed to measure something of importance and that they do so effectively.

“really disrupt and complexify ... what they believe they know about race [and] students or families who live in poverty.”

If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the Internet, try talking with one of them in real life.

A new form of information manipulation is unfolding in front of our eyes. It is political. It is global. And it is populist in nature. The news media is being played like a fiddle, while decentralized networks of people are leveraging the ever-evolving networked tools around them to hack the attention economy.

The techniques that are unfolding are hard to manage and combat. Some of them look like harassment, prompting people to self-censor out of fear. Others look like “fake news”, highlighting the messiness surrounding bias, misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. There is hate speech that is explicit, but there’s also suggestive content that prompts people to frame the world in particular ways. Dog whistle politics have emerged in a new form of encoded content, where you have to be in the know to understand what’s happening. Companies who built tools to help people communicate are finding it hard to combat the ways their tools are being used by networks looking to skirt the edges of the law and content policies. Institutions and legal instruments designed to stop abuse are finding themselves ill-equipped to function in light of networked dynamics.

personal responsibility

Children are indoctrinated into this cultural logic early, even as their parents restrict their mobility and limit their access to social situations. But when it comes to information, they are taught that they are the sole proprietors of knowledge. All they have to do is “do the research” for themselves and they will know better than anyone what is real. Combine this with a deep distrust of media sources. If the media is reporting on something, and you don’t trust the media, then it is your responsibility to question their authority, to doubt the information you are being given. If they expend tremendous effort bringing on “experts” to argue that something is false, there must be something there to investigate.

Many marginalized groups are justifiably angry about the ways in which their stories have been dismissed by mainstream media for decades. This is most acutely felt in communities of color. And this isn’t just about the past. It took five days for major news outlets to cover Ferguson. It took months and a lot of celebrities for journalists to start discussing the Dakota Pipeline. But feeling marginalized from news media isn’t just about people of color. For many Americans who have watched their local newspaper disappear, major urban news reporting appears disconnected from reality. The issues and topics that they feel affect their lives are often ignored.

How can we, instead, meta-communicate liberation and possibility?

The point is that all universities are deeply embedded in specific cultures and societies, which are also interconnected with other societies and cultures: this is the condition of globality today. The digital slips and slides across national and international borders, and changes or re-infuses national cultures with pan-global aspirations. The national mission of education has not become redundant but is in constant interplay and tension with the reach and impact of the digitally global. Studying such contradictions and developing the intellectual and cultural wherewithal to engage them in the pursuit of equality, justice, and peace can be a promising undertaking for the digital humanities within and beyond the university.

While networked peer-to-peer mentoring may appear mundane and time consuming, in harkening back to Noddings’ concept of an ethic of care, we argue these connections and conversations should not be overlooked but cultivated, celebrated, and studied.

More significantly, I believe, schools are losing an ability to matter, to influence things in the real world. If we are to change this, we academics must begin to rethink the arcane conventions that govern our way of being in this world. The traditional protocols of attribution, vetting, and credentialing have helped to preserve, protect, and maintain a closed and gated academic community. It may be safe, but it is also detached and, in many ways, infantilized and absurd.

it is clear that we must engage them, especially those of us who educate.

So, open is not good for everyone, and tends to bias those in already privileged positions — race, class, gender. The hype around open, while well-intentioned, is also unintentionally putting many people in harm’s way and they in turn end up having to endure so much. The people calling for open are often in positions of privilege, or have reaped the benefits of being open early on — when the platform wasn’t as easily used for abuse, and when we were privileged to create the kinds of networks that included others like us.

Hard work makes you feel bad in the moment. The Marine Corps has a motto that embodies this principle: “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” That is, the discomfort of exertion means you’re building muscle and discipline. Superagers are like Marines: They excel at pushing past the temporary unpleasantness of intense effort. Studies suggest that the result is a more youthful brain that helps maintain a sharper memory and a greater ability to pay attention.

Of course, the big question is: How do you become a superager? Which activities, if any, will increase your chances of remaining mentally sharp into old age? We’re still studying this question, but our best answer at the moment is: work hard at something. Many labs have observed that these critical brain regions increase in activity when people perform difficult tasks, whether the effort is physical or mental. You can therefore help keep these regions thick and healthy through vigorous exercise and bouts of strenuous mental effort. My father-in-law, for example, swims every day and plays tournament bridge.

Researchers concluded that having a human guide — often referred to as having social scaffolding — helped these young children learn.

Almost half of eight- to 11-year-olds have agreed impenetrable terms and conditions to give social media giants such as Facebook and Instagram control over their data, without any accountability, according to the commissioner’s Growing Up Digital taskforce. The year-long study found children regularly signed up to terms including waiving privacy rights and allowing the content they posted to be sold around the world, without reading or understanding their implications.

The problem isn’t the fake news itself, as much as the historical consciousness that allows so many to willingly believe it with no skepticism.

Students need two skills to succeed as lawyers and as professionals: listening and communicating. We must listen with care, which requires patience, focus, eye contact and managing moments of ennui productively — perhaps by double-checking one’s notes instead of a friend’s latest Instagram. Multitasking and the mediation of screens kill empathy.

upcoming journal article

They recommend pre-K, and kindergarten students begin building learning portfolios within their own web domain.

garden

learning management system

challengenegativepatternsofthinkingwehavetospotthemfirstandinterrogateourownthoughts

serve as a catalyst for changing teacher training programs at other institutions of higher education which prepare and support teachers

nology, state standards; teacher performance; literacy; ELL; project-based learning; assessments; data driven instruction; college readiness; improving instruction and achievement in school through the arts; and the STEM disciplines

be consistent with ongoing related curriculum, assessment, teacher preparation, or professional development activities at the South Carolina Department of Education, The Educational Accountability Act of 1998, Teacher Quality Act of 2000, theEducation Oversight Committee, the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate, and other state education initiatives

professional associations, business and industry, parents, and the privatesecto

collaboration with other Centers of Excellence and/or Teacher Recruitment Centers in all appropriate related activities

in collaboration with a low-performing school(s) and/or district(s) that will be the target of its activities

enhance the institution's professional development programs

Typical activities include

Unfortunately, such a cavalier approach to ‘throwing it on the blockchain’ flies in the face of the realities of distributed computing

Too bad its unlikely to come true.

While the technical know-how to develop a blockchain application is significant, the success of a blockchain is at least as dependent on the continuous social negotiations required to meet the needs of its user base. And, there is little self-executing about that…

Many of the issues that blockchain developers grapple with have profound implications for users and not every user would prioritize future blockchain developments in the same way

blockchains require a system of governance and community engagement to foster continual technical and social development, including a process for communicating with and providing support to users

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.” ― W.B. Yeats

“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.” ― W.B. Yeats

Why the Bitcoin Blockchain? Why not Ethereum?

electronic coin

mechanism exists to make paymentsover a communications channel without a trusted party

With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads.

financial institutions serving astrusted third parties to process electronic payments

proof-of-work chain

We

few

Would you believe in what you believe in if you were the only one who believed it? Kanye West

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” ― Oscar Wilde

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. Mark Twain

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it.

“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”

“Don’t worry about things. Don’t push. Just do your work and you’ll survive. The important thing is to have a ball, to be joyful, to be loving and to be explosive. Out of that comes everything and you grow.”

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

“The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them — especially not from yourself.”

"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week."