Skip to main content

A Disrupted Year?

So we're coming to the end of 2019 and this is as good a time as any to take a brief look back on my year. I could spend the time talking about the draft framework for the Science & Technology AoLE. Spent much of the autumn term talking to schools about this and getting myself up to speed on what the framework could possibly look like in the primary classroom. But I won't waste time here talking about it, let's see what is dropped on our desks when the final version is released sometime in January 2020.

Much of my spare time over the second half of 2019 was spent reading up on issues around artificial intelligence and  'big tech' and privacy. This interest was sparked by my own questioning of how I personally use technology (in particular mobile technologies and social media). Like many of you I'm sure, I use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, along with using Google applications and platforms such as Netflix and Amazon. As much as these applications radically benefit the way I work and communicate with friends and colleagues, along with the ease in which I access film and music and purchase whatever I want and have it delivered to my door next day, I was becoming far more aware of the 'disruption' these technologies have caused. Disruption to the creative industries (film, music, photography, literature); disruption to commerce with the negative effect on our high streets; disruption to politics (need I say more!); basically disruption to virtually all areas of our lives today. I'll look at disruption to education in another post.

Here's a sample of books, podcasts and articles I've been reading or listening to over the last couple of months. Lots of fantastic background information here for teachers (and others) wanting to gain a better understanding of this incredibly important area that touches our day to day lives. It has certainly made me re-evaluate and question what I do and say.

Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark - The Guardian Book Review
Roger McNamee on Sam Harris 'Making Sense' Podcast
Zucked website
Zucked by Roger McNamee - The Guardian Book Review
Tristan Harris - TED Talks "How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day"
Move Fast And Break Things by Jonathan Taplin - The Guardian Book Review
Centre for Humane Technology
Your Undivided Attention Podcast - from the Centre for Humane Technology
Joe Rogan Sam Harris on Social Medias Negative Impact on Society
Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy - New York Times (The Privacy Project)
You Should Be Freaking Out About Your Privacy - New York Times (The Privacy Project)
The Privacy Project - New York Times
Privacy and Power: Your Digital Footprint - NBC Nightly News
Privacy and Power: What Your Apps Say About You - NBC Nightly News
Privacy and Power: The Illusion of Choice - NBC Nightly News
How technology made us bid farewell to privacy in the last decade - USA Today
Colleges are turning students' phones into surveillance machines - The Washington Post
The threat circling human teachers and their profession - Neil Selwyn
The Money Machine: What Google and Facebook Do With Your Data - DuckDuckGo
It's time for tighter regulation on how Facebook and Google use our data - The Guardian
The Great Hack - Netflix
A brutal year: how the 'techlash' caught up with Facebook, Google and Amazon - The Guardian
No, you're phone isn't listening to you - David Carroll
The complete list of alternatives to all Google products - Techspot
No more Google
Brave - Internet Browser. Brave fights malware and prevents tracking, keeping your information safe and secure.
DuckDuckGo -  an internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results.
Mozilla Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Common Sense Education - Privacy & Security


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Defining Digital Competence

In a couple of previous posts I looked at what was meant by the term digital literacy and what this could mean in the Welsh education context. These were written in response to a recommendation from the ICT Steering Group report , proposing a new statutory Digital Literacy Framework for schools. I attempted to define what digital literacy meant using definitions from groups such as The Royal Society, Becta, Futurelab , Jisc and Common Sense Media. It was very difficult to pin down exactly what it meant but there were certainly commonalities between all of them. This week however, Prof. Graham Donaldson published his report on the curriculum and assessment in Wales, "Successful Futures" , and in it referred not to digital literacy , but to digital competence (which is a term I'm far happier using).  I therefore feel it's important for me to try in this post to understand what is meant by this term, look at some definitions and find out if there are any differences ...
2 comments
Read more

Digital Literacy: The Context for Wales & Definitions

At a time when England have introduced digital literacy elements to their new Computing PoS, and with the recommendations from the ICT Steering Group report for a digital literacy framework alongside the new subject of Computing, I’ve been attempting to look closely into what exactly is meant by the term ‘digital literacy’, and ultimately what this could mean for primary and secondary schools in Wales. I intend to put together a series of blogs on the topic, mainly as a way to help me with my understanding around some of the current thinking in this field, but hopefully it will still be of interest to teachers and others. I'd welcome any of your thoughts or comments on this topic. The Context In June 2012, Leighton Andrews, the then Minister for Education and Skills, announced “an additional £3m of funding over the next three years to support a range of measures to improve computer science, digital literacy and ICT in schools and colleges across Wales.” This announcement came ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Digital Learning Den

Gareth Morgan Consultancy has now been going for nearly 7 years, providing advice, support and training to primary schools across Wales. Where did that time go? Throughout those years, I've always had an ICT skills ladder that I've offered to schools. It's been updated continually throughout those years with quite a change in focus when the Digital Competence Framework (DCF) was introduced and with the ubiquitous use of Hwb and its related cloud based applications and digital resources. Initially this skills ladder was paper based and at one stage I had four versions of it as the example activities were focused around specific applications e.g., Google for Education / Purple Mash or Microsoft 365 / Just2easy. The problem I found was keeping these documents up to date. Applications would change or I would have new ideas or web-links would die or change.  So a couple years ago I moved everything online and created The Digital Den. Schools could buy into the platform for a ye...
Post a Comment
Read more