The perfect end to the summer term!

I am in the Airport, waiting to board a plane to Seattle! My husband and I have been looking forward to this trip all summer. We are visiting the city for a few days, where we are planning on eating all of the delicious food and visit local breweries. We are also going on a kayak tour of the Ballard Locks, and I am hoping we get to see some wildlife like seals or otters.

After that we are going to Mount Rainier National Park, then Olympic National Park, for some nice long day hikes. We love to hike, and I can't wait to be back in the mountains! We try to get to at least one new park per year, so it is exciting that we're visiting two.

One of the coolest things about visiting these parks is that, thanks to this course, I now have online communities to share the experience with. I joined some Pacific Northwest hiking communities for my community observation project, and I have gotten so much great advice from the member of these groups! I am still posting and getting tips and suggestions, and members have asked for me and my husband to post photos of our park experience. For a chronic lurker like me, this has been a very cool experience!  I'll likely post some photos on Instagram this week, as well.

Off we go!

International Internet Facts

After reading the Noniashvili, Batiashvili and Griffin (2014) article on social media use in Georgia, I became curious about how Georgia ranks now in terms of internet and Facebook use.In the article, they claim that Georgia was ranked #82 in the world for the percentage of the population on the internet. They also claim that 83% of internet users in Georgia were Facebook members in 2014 (p. 4).

I searched around the internet for statistics on international internet use, and found on Wikipedia that Georgia had fallen to #100 in terms of internet use. Also, if the numbers in this site are correct, then the percentage of internet users on Facebook has fallen to 79%.

Some other interesting things I learned are:

India has the most Facebook users in the world, with 270 million users as of  July 2019. To put this in perspective, the US is second at 190 million users.

While Facebook is still the most popular social media platform in the US, very few teenagers are using it. Could this mean that Facebook will lose popularity over time?

A number of countries in Africa have shockingly low levels of internet penetration (percent of population using the internet), with Eritrea coming last at 1.31% of the population using the internet in 2017. This is troubling, and hopefully it is something that is being addressed. I plan to do a little more research in this area.

Also, I found this really cool map that will tell you about internet use around the world.

Did anyone else take a look around at internet statistics? Did you find anything interesting?


Reference:

Noniashvili, M., Batiashvili, M., & Griffin, G. (2014). The use of social media in the Republic of Georgia and a discussion about American academic freedom with electronic communications.Preview the document Journal of Eastern European and Central Asian Research, 1 (1), 1-8.

Coming Full circle

At this time last year, I had just accepted a job in the curriculum development department at Cuyahoga Community College. One of the first responsibilities I was given we to give in person training sessions on the curriculum development software we use, and to create video training, as well. Although I had experience teaching as an adjunct, I had little experience with learning how to teach well. The training I had was limited to an active learning faculty group that I belonged to the year prior to accepting this position.

Since then, I was lucky enough to be accepted to the ISLT program at Florida State. Although it has only been (almost) two semesters, I feel like I have a much better grasp on designing training than I did last year. I am currently revisiting my training materials that I created last summer, and I am feeling so inspired to improve them and give a much better training this fall!

Small Data in a Big Data World?

Data analytics are everywhere, informing business and education practices, helping target marketing campaigns, and even estimating what type of social media content we are likely to engage with. They are so ubiquitous that we don;t question their validity or correctness; they are the hard quantitative answers to seemingly qualitative problems. Data analytics has this reputation for good reason, since it is most often a helpful and fairly accurate way to inform decisions.

But is it always so?

The article by Watson, et al. (2016) entitled "Small data, online learning and assessment practices in higher education: a case study of failure?" begins to address this question. In this case study of a single student who struggled in an online master's-level class, they argue that sometimes looking at single cases ("small data") can teach us something that big data cannot (p. 1032). The subject of this case study is Jay, who failed the course despite that fact that according to the usual data analytics used to identify at-risk students, he engaged with the material in the same way as a successful students. For this reason, they argue, she would not have been identified as an at-risk student using the usual data processes.

This gets me thinking about my own institution, and how we go about trying to identify at-risk students. We are a community college, and we struggle with retention, especially between the first and second semester We have a large at-risk population, with many students who are first generation, single parents, working full time, homeless, etc. We have data analytics that we use to help identify those students and connect them with services that can benefit them. That is a good thing, and it does help.

However, how many Jays are we missing?  And how do we begin to set up some way of identifying them before it's too late?

References:

Watson, C., Wilson, A., Drew, V., & Thompson, T. L. (2016). Small data, online learning and assessment practices in higher education: a case study of failure? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 42(7), 1030-1045. doi:10.1080/02602938.2016.1223834

FaceApp

I'm not a big follower of social media trends, but I did notice recently when everyone in my Facebook feed was suddenly posting photos that predicted what they would look like when they are 30 years older. I found it a little creepy, but just kind of ignored it. Then I started seeing people posting articles about the app that makes these predictive photos, FaceApp, and its Russian origins. The headlines warned users not to download or use this app, because to do so would be giving their data to a Russian company that could ostensibly share it with the Russian government.

I was a bit curious about this, so I clicked on one of the articles. It was an article from CNN, and it warned that the company that created this app is possibly using it to collect data, including entire photo libraries. They claimed that because the company's terms of service was questionable it was possible that data could be collected and shared with the Russian government.  They warn that even though the company claims the data is not shared with any Russian entities, despite its Russian origins,  it is still better to avoid downloading it. I was curious about the terms of service, so I searched and read several more articles. The one I found on Fox News was very similar to the one found on CNN, with the exception that the terms of service are spelled out.

I also read an article from the New York Times which I thought was much more nuanced in its approach. They explained a lot of the technical background related to concerns about security, and concluded that this app isn't collecting entire photo galleries or personal information in the way the initial claims stated. The information in general was much more robust. For instance, whole the other two articles simply state that the company claims that data isn't shared with Russian entities, the NYT article informs the reader that the photos are processed by Amazon and Google, which is much more specific.

I know this is no major revelation, but I just found the difference in these articles interesting. If I were a person who got my new solely from FOX or CNN, then I would walk away from this with a slanted and incomplete picture of this story. This happens so frequently anymore that I almost always look at several news stories when I am interested in a story. It's also a snapshot of the ways that social media use can put people at risk, even if that wasn't the case this time.

Timelines and Research and Maps, Oh My!

I have been playing around with this week's tools, in particular with Sutori and MyHistro. As I went thorugh the tutorials and looked at samples, I began thinking of all the ways that I can use these tools in the classroom. They are really cool!

There are so many ways that I can see using Sutori in the classroom. It would be a great tool to use in a class with a research project. Students would be able to compile a variety of resources-articles, videos, images/visual aids, maps, etc.-and put them in one place. It would be a great platform to help teach students about how to cite all of those digital sources, including information on open resources. It would also be great to teach students about how to identify quality resources and how to structure an academic paper/argument. I can also see using Sutori in other ways, including using it for a flipped classroom model, collaborative assignments, or to provide supplementary materials.

MyHistro is a really interesting tool, as well. I can see using this to set up timelines showing the geographic spread different religious traditions, or for more specific things like major events of the crusades, major events in ancient religions across the world, or the development of a particular religious sect. I can also envision using this as a collaborative tool in the classroom, where students each own a part of building a timeline, and then get to review the end product. For instance, I could assign a timeline on the development of major Hindu scriptures, and then assign each one to an individual or group. They could then research and write the section of the timeline on their assigned text and add it to the map. Then, the students would have an assignment related to the timeline as a whole.

Time to add these to the whole host of great classroom tools I have discovered through this class. I feel so inspired to start using all of them!

Sharing Knowledge, Getting Clicks

The knowledge sharing assignment was really eye opening for me. I never realized how difficult it can be to get people to engage with content. I have created content on social media before; I have a number of training videos that I created at work for the software systems that I am in charge of. However, those have a very specific audience, and I don't ever look for or expect any engagement outside of that. Trying to get people to engage with my Pinterest boards was a much different experience, and one that gives me a whole new appreciation for people who are able to garner a lot of engagement with their social media content.

Through this experience, I can see how trying to get more attention on social media can become a preoccupation. As I'm writing this I feel compelled to start figuring out how to use different platforms, hashtags, etc. to get more engagement on my Pinterest Boards. It's a similar feeling to the one I would get when I was really engrossed in a video game and wanted to figure out a particularly tricky puzzle. I don't think I've ever felt the gamification that comes from social media quite like this.