It’s likely more classrooms will adopt gamification in the future and the lines between education and game will become even more blurred.
Personally, if gamification became more popular, I feel like my attention span would dwindle with normal lectures. I think that there should be some type pf seriousness and "boringness" associated with school. This forces people to push through things that may not be fun or easy, which is a valuable life lesson.
A way to describe interactive online design that plays on people’s competitive instincts and often incorporates the use of rewards to drive action–these include virtual rewards such as points, payments, badges, discounts, and “free” gifts; and status indicators such as friend counts retweets, leaderboards, achievement data, progress bars, and the ability to “level up”.
I feel like this relates alot to social media today and the gratification people feel by receiving likes and comments.
which applies game-world elements to real-world learning situations.
I feel like I have always done a little of this in school with games like jeopardy, but it seems like the gamification they're discussing is more electronic.
Oregon Trail, an educational game created in the ‘70s that gained popularity in the ‘90s, which many consider being the first successful fusion of education and video games.
I've actually never played Oregon Trail but I've heard about it and I did not know that it was an educational game. Funny that even though it's educational, it seems like people don't talk about that aspect.
acebook was allowing advertisers to target customers according to their race, even when they were advertising housing—something that’s been blatantly illegal since the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968
This seems like something to research. I'm interested in how a housing act related to the Internet and if it is considered discrimination to advertise to a specific racial group.
If most of us would rather ignore advertising anyway, who cares?
The only time I've ever purchased anything from an ad was for a Christmas present. It was a blanket with our dog on it. It did not arrive until March. Since then I have never considered a single advertisement and have always had the perception that none of them are what they seem.
The more often women are incorrectly labeled as men, the more it looks like men dominate tech websites—and the more strongly the system starts to correlate tech website usage with men
Wasn't it already like this from the beginning? That's the whole reason it identified these women as men. I guess I'm not understanding how it could make it worse.
But since Google didn’t have demographic data at the time, it tried to infer those facts from something it had lots of: my behavioral data.
It seems like this is what most sites are doing nowadays. Facebook, YouTube, and other search engines.
web development, finance, and sci-fi
These are typically male dominated subjects.
Tons of the women in my professional circle were buzzing about it on Twitter—all labeled as men.
This seems like an extremely sexist way of grouping people. I'm a woman and I'm into cars, so I'm sure it would think I'm a man too. There are many men and women with broad interests.
Is there a lack of awareness about public meetings that are happening, a lack of meaningful reporting about what takes place at these meetings, or even a general feeling that the meetings don’t matter? Why? These are the type of questions we’re starting off with.”
I feel like many of these people are not as passionate and full time as they would hope. They want to get paid for a part time job and not have to go the meetings
The Chicago Documenters program has 300 participants, aged 16 to 73, with a racial representation close to the city itself — though they’ve only recorded three dozen meetings in two years.
This is an interesting control variable. Also, I feel like 3 dozen meetings in 2 years is pretty good...?
We don’t need to qualify what people do as civic participants with the word ‘journalists.’ We want to support the people acting, engaging, leveraging power on their own terms without having to be journalists if they don’t want to.”
This is an interesting perspective and answers my question about the difference between journalists and the documenters. I wish all journalism was like this.
some payment per hour for Documenters assigned to particular meetings or departmen
If they’re getting paid, what’s the difference between this and regular journalism?
public and somewhat reported on — and is bringing its approach to a new city for the first time.
To me, it seems that public journalism would be more accurate and honest, as people are not getting paid for their reports.
Comparing statistics is even trickier. If a survey shows that 50% of Latinos and only 30% of Caucasians enjoy watching baseball, those results could easily have been purely due to chance because the survey only interviewed 20 people of each ethnicity.
This reminds me of the correlation vs causation concept. Data should be taken very carefully and with controls.
Give the blueprints a quick read and watch out for the following data alterations.
Where do you find this?
A drug company may be inclined to present fake data showing that their latest drug is more effective than it really is, or a political organization may manipulate data to discredit their political opponents.
Are there any laws to prevent this?
Data collected by an amateur is more error-prone than data collected by a professional scientist. Do a quick web search to see if the people who collected and organized the data have a good track record of collecting and distributing data.
I'm pretty good at checking the reliability of a source when it is a written fact, however for some reason I don't do this as much with images and graphs.
Not so big of a difference after all.
Very interesting. I never thought about the impact it makes on the bigger picture when colors are used for different tiers.
We have a natural tendency to trust images more than text.
To me, images simplify a message and if an image is created to model data, it seems that someone would not put as much work into something that is false.
So how safe is a Clinton national lead of 2 to 3 points, really?
Obviously it was not very safe. It's crazy that with all the polls and technology we have, the election is still unpredictable.
depending on how those voters break.
I thought that they really would break in favor of Hillary because most of the third party voters were fans of Bernie Sanders, however it does not seem that it happened that way.
Where will those undecided and third-party voters end on Election Day?
I remember how Bernie fans wanted to write in Bernie's name in the election but Bernie knew it would be a burned vote so he urged everyone to vote for Clinton so Trump could not win. Still in the elections many people wrote in Bernie. A disappointing revelation after the elections was that people actually voted in Harambe the gorilla. Insane.
late poll swing.
I always wonder if Trump's unexpected win was due to a late change in opinion, people keeping their vote a secret, or if the polls simply were not accurate.
respond to a political poll when things are going well for their respective teams.
Now that I think about it, I feel like I do it. Sometimes, if the side I'm rooting for isn't winning, I just think to myself "eh, that's annoying" and keep scrolling.
The “moderate smoothing” setting makes it appear that little has changed for months, and currently puts Clinton up 4.8 nationally. But the “less smoothing” setting makes the trendlines look jagged and volatile, and puts her lead at mere 0.2 points. Again, they are this different despite averaging the exact same underlying data.
I never realized that some polls do this. Definitely something I'll pay attention to now.
the other five give Trump between a 16 percent and a sub-1 percent chance of winning.
I remember reading all of the polls during the election and finding peace in the fact that most of the predicted Hillary to win by far. I was completely in shock when Trump won.
Harris points out how conspiracy theories tend to go viral more readily than facts
I think this is probably because conspiracies have more of a shock factor than facts do.
by showing you whatever it will take to keep you scrolling or watching videos
After you're done watching a Facebook or YouTube video, they play another video immediately after that is something similar that you might be interested in. I know I've found myself caught up in watching these video chains before.
Technology companies have argued that their products provide neutral platforms for social behaviours but do not change those behaviours.
I feel like my political views have been shaped by the media. Granted, most of what I see on social media are posts from people I grew up with, so much of my views were definitely shaped by my environment, but engaging with social media can change your views. I don't know if technology companies try to skew the views of their users but I do feel that it happens.
She adds that acts witnessed online tend to elicit greater moral outrage than those viewed through traditional media.
I wonder if this is due to videos being shared. The first thing that came into my mind is police brutality. I know personally when I watch these terrible videos, it sticks in my head for a very long time and definitely makes me angry. Just reading about these incidents doesn't create the same effect.
nstead, it is in the interest of the social media companies to encourage sharing of moral outrage in a way that fosters amplification rather than action.
This is true. Many articles just ask you to "share" rather than giving you a set of actions you can take to help.
At its best, social media can channel moral outrage into action, as seen in the success of petition drives, boycott campaigns, and protest planning.
This is something I enjoy about social media. Social media can sometimes make one person very powerful if they "go viral." It helps the rhetoric that one person really can change the world. I feel that with social media people are taking more action because they realize they are not the only ones feeling this way about something.
“I think it's crucial that we understand how new technologies might be changing the way that we experience and express moral emotions like outrage,”
Unfortunately, it seems that with social media today, people like that they can hide behind a computer screen and say whatever they want, so I feel like these people behave more aggressively and more irrational than they would if they had a sophisticated political conversation in person.
incentivizes anything that will keep you engaged with the platform, even if it means exploiting your psychological vulnerabilities, say researchers.
I never thought of things this way. I will say that on Facebook, they monitor your activity to determine of you are a conservative or liberal. I found myself to be listed as "moderately liberal" and I'm sure they use this to display things they want you to pay attention to.
attending to the outrageous feels less like writing a check and more like setting up an automatic withdrawal.
I am a member of the Human Right Campaign, which is rights for the LGBTQ community in the workplace, and when I signed up I didn't realize that it was a monthly payment system, but I did it anyways. In one of my classes we studied the HRC and how they're run by money and they may not seem as good as you'd think they are, so I canceled my membership.
goal-setting, personal affirmation, and group identification. In other words, aspiring to attain those objectives may induce reviewers to keep putting out their opinion in well-crafted language.
This is interesting because there is not very much interaction between people on review sites. It doesn't seem as rewarding to me as other social media. Most of the time you post a review and then you're done. I feel like opinionated people may enjoy reviewing the most.
algorithm that is designed to provide the best results based on a number of different factors
I've found that when I look at Yelp reviews I'm always confused by how they choose which reviews to display. most of the time I want to see recent reviews first, and even if a review is 5 years old they might display that one at the top.
estimates that roughly 30 percent of all reviews online may be fraudulent.
This is alot more than I would expect it to be.
the author of reviews that alleged his work was of poor quality.
I'm curious how they would prove this...
For one thing, the sheer volume of reviews can transform a simple purchase into a research project.
I agree that there is more research put into purchasing a product, but this is still easier than getting a product that you don't like or isn't what you expected and sending it back.
consumers have become more reliant on the feedback of customers to make purchasing decisions
I use the app "SHEIN" which is for really cheap clothes. I won't buy something if theres not a customer review and photos.
one-star increase in Yelp ratings led to a 5-to-9 percent increase in revenue
My work is very adamant about having 4 stars. If we ever get to a 3.5 they go on a big campaign to get back to 4 stars.
build a positive reputation and connect with millions of individuals in ways that would have been too expensive and time-consuming in the pre-Internet days.
Do you have to pay for Yelp? I thought I heard somewhere that you can pay Yelp to take down bad reviews...
a small fraction of customers write reviews.
I've always felt like people are more likely to write a bad review than a good one.
Ideally the sites allow consumers to make up their minds
Personally, I usually don't go to a place without looking at reviews first.
feeds the popular perception that online consumers wield huge power, and that a few strong words on sites such as Yelp or Amazon can make a business change its ways pronto or go kaput.
I work as a server and I know that my managers do everything they can to avoid bad reviews and corporate checks our Yelp page almost every day. It has always seemed to me that reviews are pretty powerful.
Encourage students to practice this strategy by pausing to ask as they read: What else do I know about this topic? What other knowledge do I possess that might apply?
This reminds me of the annotations that we do here on hypothesis.
Who created this document? When? For what purpose? How trustworthy might this source be? Why?
These are skills that we learn in English classes, not usually history.
For example, before approaching a document, historians come prepared with a list of questions—about author, context, time period—that form a mental framework for the details to follow. Most important of all, these questions transform the act of reading from passive reception to an engaged and passionate interrogation.
This makes me view historians as detectives as it said earlier, rather than just people who memorize and study information.
Beyond highly specialized areas of concentrations, even doctoral level historians don't possess factual knowledge about every topic.
This is intriguing to me because history always seemed like hard facts and information.
They see themselves as detectives searching for evidence among primary sources to a mystery that can never be completely solved.
My favorite part of history was analyzing primary sources and political cartoons because I always felt like that was the only area where I used critical thinking.
I've spent nearly 20 years studying how high school students learn history. Over the years I've met many Kevins, for whom the life has been sucked out of history, leaving only a grim list of names and dates
I always disliked history classes for this reason. I always felt like it was learning and memorizing dry facts and not really learning concepts.
“Nope. Just memorize facts and stuff, know 'em cold, and when you get the test, give it all back to the teacher.”
This is how I always felt about history classes. For me it just seemed that I would try to memorize the material and take the test.
“It looks like you guys are being slowly suffocated by these questions,” he recalled saying. “Am I on a killing spree or what?”
I've agreed with almost all of the article, but personally it would feel a little weird if my professor said that.
According to Schmidt, a Bergen security official present at a subsequent meeting between administrators and Schmidt thought the word fire could refer to AK-47s.
Where are the labor laws protecting people from being fired from a misinterpretation?
trigger warning, they wrote, “serves as a guarantee that students will not experience unexpected discomfort and implies that if they do, a contract has been broken.”
So after the professor gives the warning, then what? Can they just leave and not learn the material? I dob't really understand the point...
difficulties of teaching rape law in the age of trigger warnings.
In 2013, my first year in community college, I took a class called "personal safety issues" and we discussed rape, sexual harassment, stalking and even watched videos on the subject. The videos were hard to watch, but not one person complained. The professor had a professional come in and teach us self defense. All of this was extremely educational and useful in everyday life. Its a shame this might be taken away.
Once you find something hateful, it is easy to argue that exposure to the hateful thing could traumatize some other people.
There is power in numbers and people love to belong to groups. If this movement did not have numbers, it would be not be going anywhere. But this is exactly why it is actually making an impact. People are joining together with others who will push their rhetoric.
especially speech that might be hurtful to women or minority groups.
I do think that for the sake of human decency and a civilized society, obvious derogatory and absurd words should be banned on college campuses.
your feelings guide your interpretation of reality.
For anxiety disorders, it helped me to realize that your feelings are actually separate from what is happening.
Unlike drugs, cognitive behavioral therapy keeps working long after treatment is stopped, because it teaches thinking skills that people can continue to use.
Personally, this is why I did not want to go on medication for anxiety as a child I learned coping mechanisms that I can use for the rest of my life.
Acknowledging that the other side’s viewpoint has any merit is risky—your teammates may see you as a traitor.
This was demonstrated when Tomi Lahren, a Republican commentator, expressed that she was pro-choice regarding abortion. She was immediately fired because her opinion did not line up with traditional Republican values.
As each side increasingly demonizes the other, compromise becomes more difficult. A recent study shows that implicit or unconscious biases are now at least as strong across political parties as they are across races.
"Trump supporters" have definitely been labeled. Democrats look down on them as racist, homophobic, ignorant, etc. Liberals have been labeled as "snowflakes" thanks to Tomi Lahren, and they're viewed as sensitive babies. I feel social media plays a huge role in dividing people rather than bringing them together.
life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm, not just from strangers but from one another as well.
This is accurate. I remember as a kid, teachers and parents always told us that if you're getting bullied, find an adult, don't handle it yourself.
Don’t teach students what to think; teach them how to think.
I agree with this but it seems with the "how," students are skewing ideas in a way that will benefit them
What exactly are students learning when they spend four years or more in a community that polices unintentional slights, places warning labels on works of classic literature, and in many other ways conveys the sense that words can be forms of violence that require strict control by campus authorities, who are expected to act as both protectors and prosecutors?
I always thought that highschool prepares you for college and college prepares you for the real world. If colleges become sheltered and safe, it is an inaccurate representation of the real world. If you're at a job and you tell your boss you do not want to complete a task because it offends you, you will likely be fired for being incapable of doing the job.
turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable
How can we learn if there is no experience and diversity?
According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided.
I've suffered from anxiety my whole life. At age 7, I started having severe panic attacks. In middle school I would have to leave in the middle of tests because I would have anxiety about test taking and get sick. In highschool, I used to get off the bus at school and walk home because I was so scared of having an anxiety attack that I couldn't walk through the doors. Although it was tough for years, my parents would bring me back the next day and force me to take my exams. If they saw that I walked home they would drive me back to school and make me walk through the doors. The more I had panic attacks at restaurants and social settings, the more they forced me into them. They never put me on medication so I could learn coping skills without it. By my senior year in highschool, I hardly considered myself as a person with anxiety disorder. I was forced to face my fears and that is the only way I was able to overcome it. Shielding people with anxiety disorder will not help them get on top of it.
Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response.
In highschool we had to read "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "Night." "To Kill A Mockingbird" is a novel about growing up as a black girl in Alabama and "Night" was a true story about Elie Wiesel and his experience in the Holocaust. Both were difficult to read at times, but we needed to do it and never felt that we would have to withdraw from the reading. Tough things happened and are happening in the world and it is important that we do not become blissfully ignorant because of fear and sensitivity.
“I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,”
I have not read this article, but I don't like the idea that this is simply being labeled as an issue with liberals. I think it is an issue with traumatized and mentally ill students.
violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress
We cannot start changing the American dictionary based on the connotation of a few students. By definition, violate does not have anything to do with rape specifically.
A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense.
My first thought is, why? College is meant to expand our education, experiences and perspectives, no matter if it is uncomfortable. I personally am loving an ethics class that I am in because we talk about very controversial topics that aren't comfortable for alot of people, but it sparks ideas and openness. We are encouraged to be affected by it. In this class, I feel like when you are affected or even offended by something, your critical thinking skills may be a little skewed but they are heightened and you are thinking deeply and critically.
The company leaders behind the platforms these stories are shared on are trying to figure out how to fix the issue from their side, but they are also trying to make sure not to limit anyone's right to freedom of speech.
Facebook is currently struggling with this. After their security problem, they promised to make Facebook a better and more secure place. I believe they are trying to limit the amount of exposure fake news articles get, but they have not banned the articles from Facebook entirely.
If a lot of these comments call out the article for being fake or misleading, it probably is.
If the title sounds exaggerated, I read the comments before I even read the article. I also go to the comments for more information if an article does not provide enough information. Then I can find topics to look up in regard to the article.
the lack of quotes. Most publications have multiple sources in each story
I use wikipedia occasionally and I always check what sources they're using. Even though wikipedia is not very reliable, they do include their sources which you can fact check and possibly get correct information from.
Sites with such endings like .com.co
I was taught in highschool that if any website ends in .com, it means the website is probably for profit. We were always told to look for sources that end in .org.
You'll isolate a claim that has something that can be objectively verified, you will seek the best primary sources in that topic. Find whether they match or refute or prove the claim being made, and then present with all limitations the data and what the data says about the claim being made,"
This is very different than what social media users tend to do. Instead of using an analytical process, most people use snopes.com and expect that website to tell them if a claim is true or not. I think people get lazy and would rather easily verify the information, rather than analyze it and use a more complicated process. The problem with this is that snopes is not always correct, and we are not exercising critical thinking skills to find a reliable process of verification.
any people don't.
It is easy to see on social media that many people lack media literacy. It is shocking because for millennials, we grew up in the social media age. It seems we would become skilled with finding information on the internat, but maybe it has made us too trusting and reliant. Anytime we needed information, it was at our fingertips. We never had to go to a library and look for an encyclopedia, so maybe we aren't used to official and legit forms of information.
Clinton
People all over my Facebook share these articles about Hillary Clinton. It is mind blowing how they do not validate the source or use critical thinking skills. Personally, I would feel very impressionable and naive if I immediately believed everything on the internet and did not investigate these pages. It seems some people naturally use critical thinking skills and others do not.
said
I remember hearing about this and the pizza-gate conspiracy theory. That was definitely the point where I realized that false information on the internet can definitely hurt people. The media tends to release any information that will bring them attention and ratings, no matter the validity. Chances are they are not thinking about the consequences of false information in the wrong hands.