How I Let Disney Track My Every Move
Adam Clark Estes, Gizmodo, 2017/03/30

The MagicBand is a bracelet Disney hands out to hotel and resort guests. It gives you access to rides, automatically takes photos, and helps them run the park. It may seem creepy, but it’s very convenient. The bracelets, along with the rest of the technologies in this list, communicate with other services using short-range communication called RFID as well as long range wireless internet

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‘Who shared it?’: How Americans decide what news to trust on social media
Tom Rosenstiel, et.al., Amercial Press Institute, 2017/03/30

According to this report (13 page PDF) "when Americans encounter news on social media, how much they trust the content is determined less by who creates the news than by who shares it." How much they engage with it (for example, by passing it along) also depends more on who shares it. This runs counter to those saying it is the authority of the source that matters. This means that "Your readers and followers are not just consumers to monetize, instead they may be social ambassadors whose own credibility with their friends affects your brand’s reputation." True enough. When I read this, I ask, why do people place trust in individuals who share the news - is it that they can be relied on to have a point of view? or perhaps they are trusted to assess the news critically? or maybe they just have good sources themselves?

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Faculty Perceptions about Teaching Online: Exploring the Literature Using the Technology Acceptance Model as an Organizing Framework
Nancy Pope Wingo, Nataliya V. Ivankova, Jacqueline A. Moss, online learning, 2017/03/30

This is a  good article that does exactly what the title promises. It is a survey article looking at a number of research studies on faculty use of technology from the perspective of the technology acceptance model (TAM). After a brief overview of the model, the paper summarizes the major findings (including an exceptionally useful table starting on page 19. Having said that, the report underlines common findings about faculty use of technology: they are more likely to use it if they feel confident in technology and report poorer experiences if they are less familiar with it. They are less enthusiastic about technology than their administrators, express concerns about quality, and were concerned about effectiveness, interactivity, and workload.

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New Study Recommends Key Actions to Improve Early Childhood Education in Mongolia
Rabia Ali, Moukim Temourov, Takiko Igarashi, World Bank, 2017/03/30

There's a lot of interesting reading in this World Bank study on early childhood education (ECE) in Mongolia (113 page PDF). The summary article doesn't do it justice. Mongolia has made great strides in recent years, but gaps remain, especially among poorer and more rural populations. In rural communities, access is provided through a ger-kindergarten (using a traditional yurt (from the Turkic languages) or ger (Mongolian)). Because of issues with access, spending in education thus far tends to favour the welathy more than the poor.  Not mentioned in the summary is that the report calls for greater private sector involvement in several areas, which seems to me to be the World Bank repeating its past mistakes.

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Installing Mautic with PHP7-FPM on Docker, Nginx, and MariaDB on Ubuntu 16.04
Dave Lane, OERu Tech, 2017/03/30

This is pretty interesting. Ignore the tech, unless you enjoy that, and focus on what it does. "Mautic is an open source marketing automation web application. Here at the OER Foundation, we use it to manage enquiries from prospective learners and partner institutions, to deliver timely emails to cohorts of learners undertaking our partner's online courses, and to measure our effectiveness in achieving our goals and mission: to makes higher education accessible to everyone." I should get one of these.

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