380 Matching Annotations
  1. Jun 2024
    1. with particular focus on key themes, disagreement, and confusions. This synthesis was then used to mediate further in-person discussions or group projects, thereby enhancing the overall collaborative learning experience

      I appreciate - and have benefited from - this movement between online and in-person learning spaces.

    2. difficulties in understanding readings and identifying relevant spots to contribute, which was identified as a critical need in the participatory design proces

      I'm thinking about the use of generative AI for similar kinds of summaries of key ideas. Given GenAI's costs to people and planet, the tool's embedded questions and prompts feel to me like a better option than relying on a chatbot.

    3. principle of authenticity

      I'm thinking about what this looks like for me when I annotate. I appreciate the ability to use multimodal forms of communication when annotating, such as gifs and memes. Using the visuals is one way that I express my authenticity. What are other ways y'all try to be your authentic selves when using social annotation?

    4. These efforts have demonstrated the prospects of infusing theories of learning and collaboration in the design of social annotation activities

      I'm curious if/how these efforts for online, asynchronous learning also affected in-person, synchronous learning.

    5. Introduction

      Hi, everybody! My name is Charles Logan, and I'm a PhD candidate in the learning sciences at Northwestern University. I've used social annotation in my personal reading, as a staff member working in higher ed to facilitate professional learning with other staff/faculty, and as a student in grad school. I'm particularly interested in social annotation as an online collective Third Space for developing teacher's knowledge and building counter-narratives (and presented a poster at ISLS 2023 on the subject).

  2. Aug 2022
    1. Hi! Welcome to the Civics of Technology #AnnotateEdTech conversation about school surveillance platforms. We’ll be engaging in close, critical reading of the claims made by ed-tech companies about their technology, how it works, and to what ends. The annotations we leave behind can also act as living resources for others to visit and build upon; to that end, you can use the affordances of social annotation, such as hyperlinking, to connect your observations with texts beyond each company’s website. You can also draw upon and contribute to a growing library of journalism, reports, peer-reviewed articles, opinion pieces, and other texts about school surveillance technologies.

      If you decide to annotate, you might consider addressing some of the following questions: * What do you notice? What do you wonder? * What narratives does the company tell about education? About being a student? A teacher? An administrator? About teaching? About learning?

      You can also use the Baldwin Test for educational technology to guide your annotations: 1. Be as specific as possible about what the technology in question is and how it works. 2. Identify any obstacles to our own understanding of a technology that result from failures of corporate or government transparency. 3. Name the corporations responsible for creating and spreading the technological product. 4. Attribute agency to the human actors building and using the technology, never to the technology itself. 5. Name the technology’s theory (or theories) of learning. 6. Describe the technology’s effects on pedagogy. 7. Highlight the technology’s impacts on the environment.

      Thanks for joining us!

    1. Hi! Welcome to the Civics of Technology #AnnotateEdTech conversation about school surveillance platforms. We’ll be engaging in close, critical reading of the claims made by ed-tech companies about their technology, how it works, and to what ends. The annotations we leave behind can also act as living resources for others to visit and build upon; to that end, you can use the affordances of social annotation, such as hyperlinking, to connect your observations with texts beyond each company’s website. You can also draw upon and contribute to a growing library of journalism, reports, peer-reviewed articles, opinion pieces, and other texts about school surveillance technologies.

      If you decide to annotate, you might consider addressing some of the following questions: * What do you notice? What do you wonder? * What narratives does the company tell about education? About being a student? A teacher? An administrator? About teaching? About learning?

      You can also use the Baldwin Test for educational technology to guide your annotations: 1. Be as specific as possible about what the technology in question is and how it works. 2. Identify any obstacles to our own understanding of a technology that result from failures of corporate or government transparency. 3. Name the corporations responsible for creating and spreading the technological product. 4. Attribute agency to the human actors building and using the technology, never to the technology itself. 5. Name the technology’s theory (or theories) of learning. 6. Describe the technology’s effects on pedagogy. 7. Highlight the technology’s impacts on the environment.

      Thanks for joining us!

    1. Hi! Welcome to the Civics of Technology #AnnotateEdTech conversation about school surveillance platforms. The annotations we leave behind can also act as living resources for others to visit and build upon; to that end, you can use the affordances of social annotation, such as hyperlinking, to connect your observations with texts beyond each company’s website. You can also draw upon and contribute to a growing library of journalism, reports, peer-reviewed articles, opinion pieces, and other texts about school surveillance technologies.

      If you decide to annotate, you might consider addressing some of the following questions: * What do you notice? What do you wonder? * What narratives does the report tell about education? About being a student? A teacher? An administrator? About teaching? About learning?

      Thanks for joining us!

    1. Hi! Welcome to the Civics of Technology #AnnotateEdTech conversation about school surveillance platforms. We’ll be engaging in close, critical reading of the claims made by ed-tech companies about their technology, how it works, and to what ends. The annotations we leave behind can also act as living resources for others to visit and build upon; to that end, you can use the affordances of social annotation, such as hyperlinking, to connect your observations with texts beyond each company’s website. You can also draw upon and contribute to a growing library of journalism, reports, peer-reviewed articles, opinion pieces, and other texts about school surveillance technologies.

      If you decide to annotate, you might consider addressing some of the following questions: * What do you notice? What do you wonder? * What narratives does the company tell about education? About being a student? A teacher? An administrator? About teaching? About learning?

      You can also use the Baldwin Test for educational technology to guide your annotations: 1. Be as specific as possible about what the technology in question is and how it works. 2. Identify any obstacles to our own understanding of a technology that result from failures of corporate or government transparency. 3. Name the corporations responsible for creating and spreading the technological product. 4. Attribute agency to the human actors building and using the technology, never to the technology itself. 5. Name the technology’s theory (or theories) of learning. 6. Describe the technology’s effects on pedagogy. 7. Highlight the technology’s impacts on the environment.

      Thanks for joining us!

    1. Hi! Welcome to the Civics of Technology #AnnotateEdTech conversation about school surveillance platforms. We’ll be engaging in close, critical reading of the claims made by ed-tech companies about their technology, how it works, and to what ends. The annotations we leave behind can also act as living resources for others to visit and build upon; to that end, you can use the affordances of social annotation, such as hyperlinking, to connect your observations with texts beyond each company’s website. You can also draw upon and contribute to a growing library of journalism, reports, peer-reviewed articles, opinion pieces, and other texts about school surveillance technologies.

      If you decide to annotate, you might consider addressing some of the following questions: * What do you notice? What do you wonder? * What narratives does the company tell about education? About being a student? A teacher? An administrator? About teaching? About learning?

      You can also use the Baldwin Test for educational technology to guide your annotations: 1. Be as specific as possible about what the technology in question is and how it works. 2. Identify any obstacles to our own understanding of a technology that result from failures of corporate or government transparency. 3. Name the corporations responsible for creating and spreading the technological product. 4. Attribute agency to the human actors building and using the technology, never to the technology itself. 5. Name the technology’s theory (or theories) of learning. 6. Describe the technology’s effects on pedagogy. 7. Highlight the technology’s impacts on the environment.

      Thanks for joining us!

    1. Hi! Welcome to the Civics of Technology #AnnotateEdTech conversation about school surveillance platforms. We’ll be engaging in close, critical reading of the claims made by ed-tech companies about their technology, how it works, and to what ends. The annotations we leave behind can also act as living resources for others to visit and build upon; to that end, you can use the affordances of social annotation, such as hyperlinking, to connect your observations with texts beyond each company’s website. You can also draw upon and contribute to a growing library of journalism, reports, peer-reviewed articles, opinion pieces, and other texts about school surveillance technologies.

      If you decide to annotate, you might consider addressing some of the following questions: * What do you notice? What do you wonder? * What narratives does the company tell about education? About being a student? A teacher? An administrator? About teaching? About learning?

      You can also use the Baldwin Test for educational technology to guide your annotations: 1. Be as specific as possible about what the technology in question is and how it works. 2. Identify any obstacles to our own understanding of a technology that result from failures of corporate or government transparency. 3. Name the corporations responsible for creating and spreading the technological product. 4. Attribute agency to the human actors building and using the technology, never to the technology itself. 5. Name the technology’s theory (or theories) of learning. 6. Describe the technology’s effects on pedagogy. 7. Highlight the technology’s impacts on the environment.

      Thanks for joining us!

  3. Jul 2022
    1. constantly learning

      Using the Baldwin Test, I want to know what the company means by "learning". For example, does "learning" really mean people are just annotating more training data to "improve" the algorithm's intended results? And who are these people doing the annotating?

    2. Annotate Evolv's claims about its product using the Baldwin Test and its four commitments plus three (or more) educational technology-specific elements.

      The Baldwin Test:

      1) Be as specific as possible about what the technology in question is and how it works.

      2) Identify any obstacles to our own understanding of a technology that result from failures of corporate or government transparency.

      3) Name the corporations responsible for creating and spreading the technological product.

      4) Attribute agency to the human actors building and using the technology, never to the technology itself.

      Three possible educational technology-specific elements:

      5) Name the technology’s theory (or theories) of learning.

      6) Describe the technology’s effects on pedagogy.

      7) Highlight the technology’s impacts on the environment.

  4. Feb 2022
    1. Teachers there later vetted other Google products, effectively becoming a test lab for the company. “We have said to Google many times, ‘If it works in Chicago, it will work anywhere,’” Ms. Hahn said

      Google uses teachers/classrooms as free subjects/lab

    2. They said they envisioned the app as a kind of “mission control” dashboard where teachers could more efficiently manage tasks like assigning and correcting homework, freeing teachers to spend more time with students.

      Original vision of Google Classroom

    3. Google Classroom, its new app to help teachers take attendance, assign homework and do other tasks

      How much of this vision of teachers and teaching narrows what it means to be a teacher? To teach? And to learn?

    4. Some critics, though, contend that the equity argument for technology is itself a gimmick that promotes a self-serving Silicon Valley agenda: playing on educators’ altruism to get schools to buy into laptops and apps.

      YES

    5. They could lock Chromebooks remotely so that students could not search the web during tests, or disable missing ones

      Ah: surveillance and control were features from the start.

    6. Mr. Casap didn’t talk tech specs. Instead, he held the audience spellbound as he described the challenges he had faced as a Latino student growing up on welfare in a tough Manhattan neighborhood.His message: Education is the great equalizer, and technology breaks down barriers between rich and poor students.

      Ugh, these tactics feel so exploitative to me.

    7. she came up with the idea of having Chicago Public Schools hold a free conference — called Googlepalooza — to train teachers on Google’s tools.

      Curious to see how individuals leverage the brand, and how these practices occurred with the rise of edupreneurs/eduinfluencers.

    8. “We help to amplify the stories and voices of educators who have lessons learned,” he said, “because it can be challenging for educators to find ways to share with each other.”

      I'm seeing theme around collaboration and connectivity emerge, and I'm wondering: to what ends?

    9. Google was developing a growth strategy aimed at teachers — the gatekeepers to the classroom — who could influence the administrators who make technology decisions

      Teachers as a means to an end.

    10. “Back then, they had wooden tablets and they had to take all of their notes on it,” she said. “Nowadays, we can just do it in Google Docs.”

      I'm wondering about the implicit technodeterminism assumed by the student. No knock on her, obviously, but it's interesting to me how Google's digital technology is framed here as the preferred outcome (perhaps pinnacle?) of human invention.

  5. Apr 2021
    1. Hello! Welcome to an #AnnotateEdTech conversation. During our open and ongoing conversations, we’ll engage in close, critical reading of the claims made by educational technology companies about their technology, how it works, and to what ends. The annotations we leave behind can act as counternarratives and living resources for others to visit and build upon; to that end, you can use the affordances of social annotation, such as hyperlinking, to connect your observations with texts beyond each company’s website.

      If you decide to annotate, you might consider addressing some of the following questions:

      • What do you notice? What do you wonder?
      • What narratives do the companies tell about education? About being a student? A teacher?
      • What assumptions do the companies make about students and teachers? About learning and teaching?
      • What claims do the companies make about their technology? What evidence exists to support or oppose those claims?

      Thank you for joining the conversation!

  6. Jan 2021
    1. satisfied or very satisfied”

      "'Overall, [ProctorU] added more stress than it needed to, because it was intimidating to have something watching you the whole time; it’s very anxiety-inducing,' Abrevaya said. 'I would say because of that my focus was interrupted, so my test performance probably wasn’t as good as it could have been because half my attention also was questioning whether or not the Wi-Fi would go out, and I wouldn’t be able to leave the room to fix it.'"

    2. learning institutions

      This strikes me as an odd way to say "school" or "institution of higher education." I keep coming back to how damaging online proctoring is to students and their learning, and by emphasizing the "learning" in their answer, I feel as if ProctorU is attempting to further the bogus narrative that their technology and business model aids students' learning rather than harms it.

    3. such as using unpermitted resources

      I'm imagining a scenario where a student has to explain the notes on a piece of paper (or, increasingly, notes in an electronic document) are in fact permitted. How does having to prove yourself to be honest affect a student's ability to focus? What happens to their anxiety levels at the very outset of an exam?

    4. solely

      But a determination is made by the technology, and that determination defaults to suspicious. The student has to prove they weren't cheating, again reinforcing they're adversaries to be policed.

    5. human judgment

      Is the suggestion, then, that these "software tools" use non-human judgement? Because humans developed the tools and encoded their biases into them. Also, "software tools" is a tidy euphemism for surveillance tools.

    6. traits

      Yikes. I read the use of "trait" here as assigning a person a fixed identity - one of dishonesty - which reinforces the technology's built-in assumptions about students as adversaries to be caught and punished.

    7. ǡ iden–if› po••ible chea–ingǡ and o–her™i•e

      I've been reflecting on the senators' questions, and one very important missed opportunity is asking the companies to describe what they believe to be the impact their technology, and in this case live proctors, has on students' attention and other things, like their emotional/psychology state.

    8. set by the test provider, the school, or the instructor administering the test.

      Another common theme from online proctoring companies: we don't decide if a student chated...we just watch them for any indication that they might've.

    9. Ensuring the integrity and value of online testing and credentialing programs is essential to the success of online learning.

      And what of ensuring a student's psychological and emotional well-being?

    10. Access to higher education and learning credentials and ensuring the quality and integrity of tests and assessments is not just essential on its own

      Access to higher education does not and should not depend on online proctoring. Again and again these companies construct a narrative focused on their role in expanding education. The institutions - not the companies - create and sustain these programs.

    1. gracious enoug

      That's one way to think about it. Or you might say the student had no other choice but to be watched by a group of Proctorio staff just to a test using their harmful tech.

    2. the complaining party that they experienced a face detection or gazedetection issue due to race, and none in which there was any suggestion that it had to do with genderidentification.

      Yeah, but do students even know to ask about race and gender expression in these cases? You can't complain about what you don't know about, so a seemingly generic complaint about the tech not working could very well be because the tech is racist and its racism is obscured by the way the tech is framed as objective.

    3. override any face detection feature as needed

      I'm thinking again of the student who, after this harmful technology fails to recognize their face, must somehow prove to a total stranger they are who they say they are - and then take a test. The technology, the pedagogy: it's demeaning through and through.

    4. so we do not use this type of technology

      And yet: Proctorio has repeatedly stated it uses facial recognition technology, and when Ian Linkletter caught their deceptiveness, Proctorio deleted the tweet stating they use facial recognition technology. Elsewhere, a company they partner with - McGraw-Hill - states Proctorio uses facial recognition. Then there's Proctorio's contract with California State University, in which they refer to their facial recognition technology on five occasions, including, "Proctorio implements its facial recognition technology in a way that is more functional toward the proctoring process." But please, tell the senators you don't use facial recognition technology.

    5. Proctorio is committed to transparency and providing information to its users about the privacy andsecurity of its products

      Then why are you suing someone for helping people understand how your technology discriminates?

    6. Test takers should not be forced

      Ian Linkletter noted Proctorio changed its terms of service from explicitly stating institutions could not mandate students use Proctorio to stating institutions should use Proctorio in an ethical manner. The move aligns with their broader strategy of creating an unethical technology and then blaming institutions when they use that technology in ways students and others find harmful. Righteous indignation as PR strategy.

    7. hiring new employees, initiating new partnerships, and recruiting the help ofthird parties to make Proctorio a more equitable and user-friendly software.

      How does any of this improve equity?

    8. working groups and interviews with Proctorio employees,

      What about speaking with students? How does talking with only employees improve the ethical use of an unethical technology, which, to be clear, can't be made more ethical?

    9. it could be overridden during thepre-check process by Proctorio support personnel

      How would this work? So a student has to share their disability with a stranger to prove they're not cheating? As Chris Gilliard likes to say, throw this garbage into the sun.

    10. accuracy

      But accuracy really isn't the issue. By automatically producing a suspicion level score for every student based on normative definitions of acceptable behavior, Proctorio shows itself to be ableist. The exam's outcome should not be a cover for the student's experience of being labeled abnormal, a label they then have to disprove to a teacher because the so-called objective proctoring tech flagged their behavior.

    11. BABL

      Ah yes, the well-known story of a group of people working together in order to accomplish a goal definitely not out of hubris. I too read the Tower of Babel like this.

    12. he absence of evidence

      I know y'all have read the many articles published about the very real evidence that your tech presents several harmful issues because Mike Olsen declared that these damning articles only bolster sales.

    13. We do not believe we would have attained our level of success

      We, who are in a position of power, have not heard from institutions and their leaders, who are also in a position of power, that our technology harms anyone who doesn't occupy the same position of power we and institutional administators enjoy; therefore, we're doing great!

    14. within three

      Imagine being a student who's studied for hours (or not, it doesn't matter) and you sit down to take an exam and three times in a row the technology you've been forced to use tell you it cannot detect your face and then you have to prove to some stranger you are in fact you only to have to prove you are in fact you before you start a test. This is a pedagogy of distrust and it's awful.

    15. with face detection issues or any other concern, ensuring easyentry and completion of their exam.

      Student: Hello, yes, am I speaking to one of Proctorio's famous expert proctors?

      Expert proctor: You're in luck, bro, because, as you clearly already know, I am an expert proctor, having completed a five-week training in the art of proctoring.

      Student: Whew! Ok, expert proctor, can you tell me why your surveillance technology isn't detecting my face?

      Expert proctor: Are you a white person?

      Student: No.

      Expert proctor: Oh, ugh, ok...let me check my expert proctoring manual...hold on...

      Student: I only have twenty more minutes to finish my exam.

      Expert proctor: Be cool, bro. Seriously. Because Mike? He might post this chat to Reddit and neither of us want that.

      Student: Mike?

      Expert proctor: Nevermind. Have you tried shining a lamp directly into your face? Like a really bright lamp? Or several flashlights? Or do you own a torch? I can walk you through how to make one. How much kerosene do you have?

      Student: Your tech is just racist, isn't it?

      Expert proctor: Let me check my expert proctoring manual...one sec...ah! No, our technology is definitely 100% not racist. Can I help you with anything else? Hello? Hello?

    16. the internetbrowser

      Aside: I noticed Proctorio is no longer in the Chrome web store. I wonder if it's because they consistently received scathing reviews from students? (I have receipts, BTW.)

    17. Our software does not makeinaccurate determinations about violations of exam integrity because our software does not make ​anydeterminations about breaches of exam integrity.

      Yeeeeahhh...but your software does attempt to quantify suspicion levels and produce a suspicion score, so sure, you don't ultimately decide whether or not that precious exam integrity has been breached, but you sell your surveillance tech as an objective means for doing just that.

    18. then “pop in” to the test to intervene during a test taker’s examsession to uphold integrity and prevent academic dishonesty in real time

      And what of the effects of this neighborly act upon a student?

    19. an environment that could mask audio-based breaches of examintegrity

      Good thing children are notoriously quiet! Or if you're using public wifi, people in the coffee shop will respect your need for silence.

    20. our customer (usually via their exam administrator) selects

      I'm confused as to how Proctorio is using "customer." Are students the customer? Because I'm not sure too many students will agree to that description, nor would they choose this invasive tech if given the option to say, "No."

    21. interacting with otherindividuals during the course of an exam

      Like their children? Or a roommate? Because if that's the case, then students are, by default, designed to be suspicious by Proctorio.

    22. objective, human-reviewable evidence —not on the basis of opaque algorithms

      So much to unpack in this statement. Note, for example, the tell of their defensive tone. Proctorio would like the senators to believe data are objective; they are not. Proctorio would like the senators to believe humans are unbiased; they are not. The senators and their staff might like to read the Snooping Where We Sleep report from the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project for more.

    23. customers’​​instructors and administrators (not Proctorio)

      A few things. One, students are not customers. And two, Proctorio clearly wants the senators to understand they are not to blame for how their harmful technology is used. We just make this stuff, they're literally boldly saying, and responsibility for our terrible tech rests solely on teachers and administrators. Teachers, admin, and staff do bear responsibility, but responsibility for the harm done to students begins with Proctorio (yes, Proctorio).