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Feature Article
The Socialist Case for Blockchain
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2022/10/26

There is a clear sense in which blockchain (in general) and crypto (in particular) attempt to supersede the discourses of politics and morality, and there is no doubt that crypto and blockchain have been a hotbed for scams and questionable practices. It doesn't follow, though, that there is no socialist case for blockchain (in general) and crypto (in particular).

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If You Were Designing Cal State Today: A Proposal Out of MIT
Michael Feldstein, eLiterate, 2022/10/26

One wonders why the MIT authors discussed here proposed to reform Cal State rather than MIT, though other links shared today may hint at why. Feldstein's reading seems fair. "This proposal might be called radically conservative in the sense that it is intended to conserve the best parts of an American-style liberal arts education by re-imagining it but not rejecting it." That said, as we read further, the 'reimagining' means mostly 'eliminating research and focusing on teaching'. Moreover, when the report reaches edtech, as Feldstein relates, "the EdTech section largely centered on converting MOOCs to SPOCs ("positioning them as if they were new MIT inventions") to digital textbooks for use in flipped classrooms." It all makes me want to say, "Doctors, heal thyselves."

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Does the Educause Exhibitor's Floor Plan Reflect Market Trends in HigherEd IT? The 2022 Update
Justin Menard, ListEdTech, 2022/10/26

My first thought would be to answer 'no' because these exhibitors are going to be companies that have the interest in and money to advertise at an EDUCAUSE conference, and that rules out pretty much any n on-commercial and non-college-based trend, which is a lot of them. Still, there may be useful insights. Looking at D'Arcy Norman's improved presentation of the data, we can see that content (publications and e-learning) has dwindled down to almost nothing, while conferencing, consulting and hardware have made gains. Norman also makes the point that "infovis design is important and can either help clarify the story that the data are telling, or obscure it."

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Implementing Passwordless Logins with WebAuthn Protocol
InfoQ, 2022/10/26

This presentation depends a fair bit on the videos to follow what Adib Saikali demonstrating, but it's definitely worth a quick look nonetheless, because "the main message here is, this is widely available. This is widely deployed. Your users already own phones and devices that are capable of doing this, all you got to do is add web authentication to your web apps."

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Digital Promise Launches Product Certification for Equity in AI Design -- Campus Technology
Kristal Kuykendall, Campus Technology, 2022/10/26

It's interesting how quickly alternative certifications can be developed for products as compared to how long it takes to certify people. There appears to be a price difference as well. Now I'm not sure I'm a fan of this approach - what prevents certifications like this from becoming a scam? An agreement with a reputable organization? Also worth noting: "The new certification is the first in a planned series of Product Certifications that will recognize ed tech solutions built to center racial equity throughout design and development."

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The people who make your apps go to Stack Overflow for answers. Here's how it works.
Nilay Patel, The Verge, 2022/10/26

Often overlooked by education technology pundits are services like Stack Overflow that exist outside the traditional education infrastructure of colleges and universities and yet play such a vital role in learning and development. As this article says, "Any app that is on your phone, as an example, I'm sure Stack Overflow was leveraged by developers to build those." It's free and publicly available to anyone in the world, and supported partially through advertising but mostly by offering the platform as a service to companies. "Microsoft, Google, Logitech — you name it, they're using Stack Overflow to coordinate conversations between their engineers." I use it. A lot. This article dives deep into Stack Overflow as a company, as a platform, and as a concept.

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Getting Over Privacy: Surveillance Studies and Edtech
Roderic Crooks, Connected Learning Alliance, 2022/10/26

To me this title seems very odd; where I live the phrase 'getting over something' means 'no longer worrying about that thing'. But that's not what this article offers; quite the opposite. It restates in the strongest terms possible the privacy concerns students have in an era of ubiquitous surveillance. Perhaps in terms that are too strong. For example, the article asserts that "surveillance of all kinds, including data capture, harms vulnerable populations." No doubt vulnerable populations can be harmed by surveillance, but they can also be protected by it. There are many cases where surveillance is desired and expected: in enforcing financial regulations to prevent corruption, in observing elections to ensure fairness, in police bodycams to prevent unwarranted force, in open courtrooms to ensure justice, and in the workplace to ensure equity. Where surveillance becomes harmful is when only vulnerable populations are targeted. This should be questioned. But a blanket prohibition on surveillance seems at the very least to be unwise.

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