Category: General

The prominence of “fake news” has gained a lot of attention in the wake of the recent election. It may have been even worse than this. I could argue that you bring fake news on yourself. You receive fake news from a site such as Facebook or Twitter because you follow someone who posted the fake story. You contribute to the problem if you retweet or reshare. You may end up as a victim of such falsehoods, but at least, in this case, you can blame the individual you followed for leading you astray. It may eventually be possible to flag suspect stories much in the way Wikipedia now includes notices with stories that fail to satisfy certain standards.

What you may not realize is that you may be targeted in an effort to manipulate you in some way by a completely independent source. Facebook allows what are called “dark posts“. As I understand the dark post, it is essentially an ad the source sends to a subset of users. What is allowed as an “ad” appears to be much more open to interpretation than you might expect.  This NYTimes opinion piece by McKenzie Funk claims dark posts were used by the Republican presidential election committee to “micro-target” users either to encourage a vote for their candidate or to discourage those opposing their candidate from voting. The detail in the Funk article is helpful in explaining how this was done. This wmicro-targeting was based on a massive database accumulated on millions of us by Cambridge Analytica. Forbes takes a similar position. The Forbes article provides greater detail on the different approaches taken by the Democrats and Republicans, but while noting the greater use of micro-targeting by Republicans provides less information regarding how this was done.

I assume must of us recognize that the social media ads we see are based on our own behavior. In theory, we supposedly see ads we want to see. The dark-ad feels different to me. I wonder what disclosure is required and if you or I received these ads whether we realized the source. That message that is required at the end of television ads is certainly absent or less prominent when we are targeted online. Without an awareness of the source we have less information to interpret intent.

So, as educators, we attempt to develop critical thinking skills in preparing students for what they will encounter in the “less friendly” real world. How distrustful should we assume we must prepare future citizens to be?

Some years ago we were visiting friends who live in an Atlanta suburb. They were describing the conditions in their local public school and to us they sounded horrible. I remember thinking that the strategy seemed to be to put as little into public schools as possible and allow the wealthier parents to spend money to send their kids to private schools allowing these parents to invest directly in their own kids.

My personal experience has always been with the way state-supported higher education is funded. I also think issues related to the cost and support of higher education get more attention. The results of this attention are now always positive (from my perspective), but various positions are argued in public. The funding models are also obviously different. State funds from tax revenue provide some support for institutions at both levels, but k12 support relies mostly on local property taxes and higher education on tuition and contributions for the rest.

Recovery from the economic collapse has been painful. I was less aware of how K-12 budgets have suffered. Both government and local support have been slow to respond to the needs of students. Schools have been asked to meet higher standards with fewer resources.

Both articles linked from this post focus on the politics of this lack of support. The U.S. News and World report article contains this statement highlighting the heavy burden placed on funding for education.

“When families face tough budget choices, parents’ first priority is to protect the kids,” First Focus President Bruce Lesley said in a statement. “But Congress is actually cutting funding for children more than twice as fast as spending overall.”

Explain Everything has long been a personal favorite when it comes to recommending a general-purpose authoring tool for K-12 students. I have not paid attention to more recent developments for this product line. This is my effort to catch up.

Explain Everything was originally a product specific to the iPad. There was a tool for using Macs to render projects into video, but authoring activities were unique to the iPad. The number of platforms able to author with this product has now been expanded. Users can now create using Windows, Chrome or Android.

Offerings have also been differentiated as the basic version (iOS only) that allows externalization via a video for sharing and a product with additional features including real-time collaboration (promised) and hosting (the Discover Portal).

I must try to separate my personal use of the tool from the potential for the classroom (multiple users). Here are a couple features/issues to consider. First, how do you think about purchase vs. lease of a product. If you teach with iPads, you can still own Explain Everything. A teacher with iPads could also use the leasing option ($2.67 per user per year – minimum of 5 users). The leasing option is required of Windows, Chromebook and Android users. Does this matter? I am not certain how to analyze the situation in order to respond. Try this – say you assume you would use a purchase for three years. Multiple the lease price by three and the total is very close to the cost for purchasing the more capable version of the iPad app. For those not using iPads, I would say leasing makes sense. However, these folks really have no options. The real decision must be made by educators who use the iPad. Is the difference between the classic and more featured version meaningful to these teachers and how strong is their commitment to the product? For occasional use, the classic version probably makes the most sense.

Finally, what about a functional version for Macs?

Google describes Tour Builder as a web-based storytelling service. My expanded description would be – place-identified, web-enabled storytelling service.

The  service is easy to use. You enter a location and if the location is identified by Google you tag that location. If the location is not identified, you can place the tag manually. Once a location is identified, the tour builder can add a narrative and add images. The tour can be shared (our example).

Educators or their students could use this service in many ways. Yes, it is a way to show what you did last summer, but the trip complete with commenting could trace a historical route (Lewis and Clark).