Theme+4,+Sociopolitical+Issues


 * Themes IV: Sociopolitical Issues**

Trends of the Decade Discussion Looking at the document 'ExaTrends of the Decade: 2010" by Ross Dawson - such as augmented human, bio destiny, climate clashes, collective intelligence etc - and discussing how technology can be seen to foster these trends and how education can play a role in these trend areas. Other Eg: organisations to networks, global talent, culture jamming, demographic crunch, economic power shift, energy switch, everything media, global talent, haves and have nots, organisations to network, reputation economy, technology awakens. See: rossdawson.com and futureexplorations.net.

Need to look at new technologies through all of these lenses to have the full picture of the impacts of online environments.
 * 5 lenses of digital technologies**
 * Technological Lens - what they do, how they are used (was the only lens people looked through).
 * Pedagogical Lens - this course about looking at how the technologies match to a pedagogical practice
 * Social Lens - Issues of positive and negative online affects
 * Socio-Political Lens - deeper structure and organisational issues, how it is impacting society.
 * Ecological Lens - the sort of impacts technology has on us as biological creatures and on the planet as a whole.

These ideas developed by Mark Pegrum in his book, from "Blogs to Bombs". __Technological Lens__ Major trend focus on Augmented reality. Technologies once widespread become invisible - this will happen for augmented realities. Part of broader shift of "Web meets world" (O'Reilly & Battelle (2009). (Battellle does alot of research about search engines).

A. Internet of things: real world objects coming onto the internet Things like Smart luggage tags, live stock tracking, fridge inventory auditing, based on RFID tags embedded into the product. Japanese farmers first to embed their own iPv6 internet addresses. A consumer point of sale information about the end product connected to the source. //See the Internet of Things Video by IBM. Link to Youtube. Global data field, planet growing a central nervous system, collecting and providing the data in a focused way.// //DIKW Triangle - Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom. Must apply intelligence to data to turn it into information to knowledge. Analytics to use data to coordinate key system from personal to social issues.// Negative aspects - embedding tags into people so you can know where they are at any one time, google your dog, your kids etc. - challenges in protecting privacy of data.

B. Augmented Reality: the world of the web coming into the real world. Download augmented reality apps, visual recognition and GPS positioning will bring you together information about the site you are looking at. Quote "imagine having whole world annotated with history" (authors 2008). Bringing together content especially created by retail outlet (eg. blog or website link, menu link etc). Can also identify people in the crowd and link to any of their sites through face recognition technology (see TAT video). May also in future have contact lenses that project that information.

In context of education. - best example Harvard Educational project, sent students out to locate aliens. IPAD at locations on a trial, hold device up and get it layered over with certain history (eg. Library Congress guided tour). Also issue of who and how many layers of information get layered on particular tagged sites.

See, Horizon Report 2011 - aligns well with situated learning.

__Pedagogical Lens__ Issue of teacher training "teachers are a bigger threat to computers" - need to have training in technology to really be able to exploit the pedagogy available through online learning and use of technology. More pre-service teacher training being made available for GSE training.

Comments on what teachers worry about in relationship to use of new technology (not addressed in teacher training programs):
 * Fear that technology will replace pedagogy (teachers are the pedagogy specialists is message that needs to get out);
 * Fear it will replace face to face learning - research supports that a blended approach is best.
 * Fear technology will replace teachers - only if you see teaching as a transmission mode only, or repetitive behavioural type exercises. If you are using any type of contemporary pedagogical approach the teacher has to be there facilitating with and interacting with the students.
 * Delays and glitches - some truth set up issues, implementation dip when learning new techologies, break down of technology, Internet down (good teachers have always had back up plans for technology failure)
 * Students know more than teachers about digital technologies - can be a good learning partnership (you own content) they can bring in technological expertise.
 * Teachers don't get enough training on digital technologies - true but there are alot of good examples out there....how to build competency with technology from basic MS Word to everyday. People need to be using these technologies in there everyday lives.

TPACK model is underpinning pre-service teacher information, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge are the base, Technological knowledge adds to this;

__Social Lens__ "First time, children are authorities on something really important" but they are "tech-comfy" but NOT "tech-savvy" can use them for pesonal reasons but don't know how to use them for a educational or learning purpose.

An online identity has issues to do with safety, identity and privacy

Digital Safety: US State Attorney General (2008) points raised, cyberporn (violent and unsuitable materials), cyber predation and cyberbullying. Kids are creating the child pornography not just being the subject of it (more complex social issues). Cyberpredation stereotypes do not fit. What is very common is Cyberbullying (up to 46% of young people) Nearly always peer to peer bullying. Alot like school yard bullying but has greater social reach and wider communication network.

Privacy: Matt Mckeon image showing how much information is publically available if you accept the accept the default settings. Facebook has been expanding the amount of information available about you by default. Need to teach how to set up your privacy settings and why you should.

Identity Theft: ACMA believe this will be the biggest problem for kids (ie. three times Justin Beaver celebrities - think it is too collect information about these people to market them later. "You are not facebooks customer, you are the product they sell to their real customers" (Greenberg, S). Same for Google - about targeting adverstising.

Reputation: Online reputation matters (44% of online adults search for information about products, people services (Pew Internet (2010) the biggest internet research company in the world). Becomes important to monitor and control your online identity. (See Bruce Schneier (2010) Revised taxonomy of social networking //Data Schneier on Security.)// Beward of "Derived Data" assumptions about your identify based on the collective data about you on the web.

Liz Kolb (2010) research into Internet:
 * 53% screening canditates on the web, 34% not deciding to employ based on negative stereo types. However many employers did hire because of the online identity - stresses the importance of e.portfolios.

Importance of educating children about the negative aspects of being online - not protect by blocking, but have an educational strategy.

Some great materials out there. Cybersmart.com, smokescreen (scenario based), See list of resources.

More and more automated reputation systems online. See MIT Personas, use to run an assessment of your current online identity on the web. Another one is called Klout - predict or state what you are known for. These system could be used by employees. Based largely on peak services like Facebook, Tweet etc. Linked In - also able to provide a map of your links to other people - once a member email suggesting who to link to and suggesting this will be important for your future. Use as life long learning too, questions to professionals. Market to employees for online referencing. Need to get this message of this trend out to our students.

__Socio-Political Lens:__ Issues of survellience and nation wide filter (China has cheery fingers to remind you, you are being wateched or used to block sites). Governments are re-asserting there control on the INternet and what you have access to. See Rebecca Mackinnon on this area.

Not all internet filtering about politics (graph of coutries who are filtering), sometimes filtering social/cultural issues and during times of conflict. Shift away from censorship towards surveillance - better for totalatarian government to see what is being said.

What is being done to combat it: Ghostery - give you a list of all the sites/organisations that are tracking your activity on a particular web page. CenSearchIP - gets you to compare results from different countries. (eg. given search for "war on terror". Threatened Voices - tracking suprressionof online free speech (journalists who have been arrested etc) Beta Herdict Web - tracks which websites are not available throughout the world at a particular time to identify websites that have been blocked. China channel firefox addon - gives you the view of what the web looks like from China WikiLeaks - another site that provides analysis of what is going on on the web and of surveillence trends. (See quote by Julian Assange - can be used to promote freedom but also greatest spying regime). Why his trend to expose government.

Copyright Surveillence: Companies that are keeping track of their property. When first developed was about protecting rights of author (14 years) for a limited time to ensure they keep creating. Big content producers have extended the copyright to 50 years place. Arguing against copyright as is seen as stifling creativity - out of control and stifling communication.

Nina Paley (2010) arguing that all culture is derivative - all creativity builds on what came before. Classroom is not the place to argue this - best strategy is to use creative commons licenses. Also can look for public domain materials - out of copyright. (Push for Creative Commons)

Look for other educational tools, created content open to copyright such as ABC the Tool. Again see E.Tools listing on Mark's website.

__Ecological Lens:__ Envrionmental Issue of e.waste and consumption and/or energy required. All planes generated 2% of carbon emissions and the Internet is also estimated to produce this quantity. Big companies are starting to look at ways to reduce impact. See Google site on impact of energy consumption. E.Waste - third world waste dumps, children involved in sorting this waste. How do we deal with this. Beginning to look at laws to force manufacturers to take back their e.products.

Also issues for our human biology (recommend a book by Susan Greenfiled (2008) a neuro-scientist - looks at biotechnology and technology.