Technology

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You by Eli Pariser is a book I recommend reading since most of us are online, searching for information probably not aware of what is happening with our data while we click away.

“The primary purpose of an editor [is] to extend the horizon of what people are interested in and what people know. Giving people what they think they want is easy, but it’s also not very satisfying: the same stuff, over and over again. Great editors are like great matchmakers: they introduce people to whole new ways of thinking, and they fall in love.” ~ Eli Pariser

Pariser shares “Your filter bubble is the personal universe of information that you live in online — unique and constructed just for you by the array of personalized filters that now power the web. Facebook contributes things to read and friends’ status updates, Google personally tailors your search queries, and Yahoo News and Google News tailor your news.”

The filter bubble is populated by the things that most compel you to click. Think about what you are looking for when you search and click around the Internet. You may be looking for medical information, want to know about a celebrity, or just want to shop. These may be highly personal to you but they may not be the same things you need to know or want to learn.

Google declares that search is personalized for everyone, and tailors its search results on an individual basis. When you search a topic, your results will be different than someone else’s search results. The reason companies like Google and Facebook use algorithms is that, once you’ve got them going, they cost much less than hiring humans to edit the news feed or find relevant information for you. Unfortunately, you may get results based on past searches, text in email messages, chats, and just clicking on different pages while trying to find what you are looking for. Each click is captured. Each time you “like” a friend or post, that is captured as “personalized” for you.

I have several gmail accounts so Google keeps all of my email received or sent so it knows who I’m connected to and all of their information. Google knows what I’ve searched for over so many years, and how much time it took me to search for something and how long I took to click a link or stay on a page. Are you aware that there are 57 signals that Google tracks about each user even if you’re not logged in?

This is not personal. It’s business. It is another way to push products, services, people, and other items to you based on their algorithms. I receive ads for coach products because of my company, My eCoach. This has nothing to do with wanting or needing any coach products. It’s just seems relevant to the algorithms.  I also get trends and news sent to me even though I’m not interested in what is sent to me. I learn about different stars breaking up and other not so interesting news. I really don’t need that either.

Why is this happening? Google, Facebook, and many online companies use and sell your data to third parties. They give your information to the government if they are asked for it. This is your information — information about you — that they are manipulating and giving to others without your knowledge. We use products like Google and Facebook, putting up private information about ourselves, because it’s free and seems like the privacy policies will protect you. I recommend reading the terms of use and privacy statements. The double talk and legalese is difficult to understand. Just know that if a program is FREE, they are using your data. Nothing is free. Every time you click on a link or type in an email, your information is being collected.

“Companies like Yahoo have turned over massive amounts of data to the US government without so much as a subpoena.” ~ Eli Pariser

There’s a basic problem with a system where Google makes billions off of the data we give it without giving us much control over how it’s used or even what it is.

Pariser states a profound concern “Personalization is sort of privacy turned inside out: it’s not the problem of controlling what the world knows about you, it’s the problem of what you get to see of the world. We ought to have more control over that — one of the most pernicious things about the filter bubble is that mostly it’s happening invisibly — and we should demand it of the companies we use.”

Go ahead and click the image below to get the book:

The privacy terms at Google changed today. The goal is to streamline your experience and cut through a lot of legalese that Internet companies put together. However, as part of this process, Google is also sharing data between all of their services. When you are signed into Google, Google combines  information about users provided from one service with information from other services. The goal is to treat each user as one individual across all Google products, such as Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube and other Web services. These changes have Europe, Congress, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and others really upset. {source}

Is this personalizing what you want or actually customizing what a company can market to you?

All of us have used the term “Information Overload”, but is it really that? This book, The Information Diet by Clay Johnson, has a different take on how we use information.

The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption

The author shares that humans spend upwards of 11 hours out of every 24 hours in a state of constant consumption. Not eating, but gorging on information ceaselessly spewed from the screens and speakers we hold dear. Just as we have grown morbidly obese on sugar, fat, and flour—so, too, have we become gluttons for texts, instant messages, emails, RSS feeds, downloads, videos, status updates, and tweets. As part of the technological revolution, many of us are addicted. We wake up and have to check our social media to see who did what when and comment on this here and there.

We’re all battling a storm of distractions, hit with notifications and tempted by tasty tidbits of information. This is just like  too much junk food can lead to obesity, too much junk information can lead to cluelessness according to the author. We are taking multitasking to extreme limits. So here is a book that opened my eyes. The Information Diet shows you how to thrive in this information glut—what to look for, what to avoid, and how to be selective. In the process, author Clay Johnson explains the role information has played throughout history, and why following his prescribed diet is essential for everyone who strives to be smart, productive, and sane.

In The Information Diet, you will:

• Discover why eminent scholars are worried about our state of attention and general intelligence
• Examine how today’s media—Big Info—give us exactly what we want: content that confirms our beliefs
• Learn to take steps to develop data literacy, attention fitness, and a healthy sense of humor
• Become engaged in the economics of information by learning how to reward good information providers
• Just like a normal, healthy food diet, The Information Diet is not about consuming less—it’s about finding a healthy balance that works for you

Notability powerfully integrates handwriting, PDF annotation, typing, recording, and organizing so you can take notes your way!

This week you can get Notability for 80% off – for 99¢

I am starting to use Notability instead of Pages or Word. I highly recommend it and at this price, it’s an app that everyone should try. If you miss the special deal, it is still a special deal.

Notability is the perfect note-taking companion for iTunes U! Liberate yourself from piles of paper and books by keeping this data in Notability. Our full-featured and easy to use tool set enables all types of annotating and data capture. So what does it do?

Full-featured Handwriting

• Capturing ideas easy and awesome with smooth ink.
• Use the zoom window to quickly draw every detail.
• Check out the palm rest to protect your notes from unwanted marks.
• Copy, move and even re-style the color and width of any ink.
• Drag-and-drop thumbnails to reorder notes while adding or removing pages as needed.
• Choose a paper to fit your style and use a variety of pen colors and widths to create beautiful notes.

PDF Annotation

• Annotate PDFs.
• Record, type or handwrite on anything.
• Share your annotations with anyone using email or Dropbox and more.

Advanced Word-Processing

• Try the features like styling, outlining, and spell check as the perfect tools to get the job done quickly and accurately.
• Use bullets, bold, italic, underline, font presets, cursor controls, and more, seamlessly to help you create rich notes.

Linked Audio Recording

• Link audio recordings automatically to your notes.
• Review your notes, then tap a word to hear what was said at that moment.
• Use advanced audio processing features to create brilliant recordings in any setting.
• Use the recording feature to capture your own voice for memos, presentations, or speech practice.

Auto-Sync

• Auto-sync your notes to back up in the cloud.
• Easily collaborate at work or school sharing ideas and notes on the fly.

Media Insertion

• Enhance your notes by adding pictures from your photo library or from the iPad camera.
• Insert web clips, figures, and drawings to compliment your notes.
• Crop, resize, and draw on images to make them perfect. Your text will automatically flow around them.

Library Organization

• Organize, protect and share your ideas and notes.
• Drag and drop notes into a subject and use a password to keep notes secure.
• Auto-sync your notes to automatically upload to Dropbox, iDisk or WebDAV.
• Import notes, PDFs, and RTFs from the cloud or web.
• Share notes via Email, Dropbox, iTunes File Sharing, and AirPrint.

When I review apps, I want to find apps that meet multiple needs. Notability does everything students will need to keep notes and share with their teacher and peers.

So if you get a chance, download Notability to try while it’s at a great price. Go here to download: Ginger Labs

Since I am being asked to recommend apps for schools and districts, I thought it would be a good idea to put together some reviews of interesting apps. I also am finding that some apps are free for a short time. Here’s a fun app: Dr. Seuss Band that is free just for one day: Today at Oceanhouse Media

Anyone any age will love this. You can build your own wacky Dr. Seuss-like instrument and then play it by pressing the appropriate buttons. This is the Dr. Seuss equivalent of the Rock Band/Guitar Hero games combining hand-eye coordination with musical fun and it works very well, although it might be tough for younger kids.

There are in-app purchases with Dr. Seuss songs. Get this app today and then see if you want to purchase anymore apps. I’m thinking that they can all be unlocked just by completing certain accomplishments in the app.

From iTunes:

Experience the excitement as Dr. Seuss Band transforms your device into a vibrant, energetic musical instrument that all ages will enjoy! Jam along with playful Seussian melodies or create your own whimsical masterpiece. As you play, you’ll unlock new instruments, silly effects and catchy songs. Contains over 120 combinations of sounds, so you’ll always have something new to discover!

Features:

• 2 Ways to Play – Go for high scores in the Music Game or use Free Play to compose your own tunes.
• 10 Original Songs – Play along with the soundtrack from The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss’s ABCs, Hop on Pop and more!
• 5 Unique Horn Instruments – Play Seussian versions of the Trumpet, French Horn, Clarinet, Trombone and Flute.
• 10 Crazy Horn Effects – Customize the sound of your horn by adding fun effects like a Fish Bowl, Train Whistle, Reverb and more!
• Mix and Match Horns – Swap parts of the horn while playing to create over 120 Horn Combinations!
• 3 Difficulty Levels – Choose Easy for beginners, Medium for experienced players and Hard for experts.
• 26 Unlockables – Achieve high scores to unlock Songs, Horns and Effects.
• Gamecenter Leaderboards – Compare your high scores with the competition.

Additional features:

• Beautiful 3D artwork inspired by Dr. Seuss
• Whimsical music and sound effects
• Suitable for all ages

Some of the criteria I use for reviewing apps:

• age levels
• age appropriateness
• skill and reading levels
• skills attained
• independent learning
• content or standards met

My Dr. Seuss Band review:

• children of all ages who love Dr. Seuss
• visually intuitive
• increases music abilities
• encourages independent learning and collaborative play
• meets NETS for students on creativity, collaboration, and independent exploration

I encourage you to try this and download it today. If you get it for free, you own it forever. How cool is that? Get it here: Oceanhouse Media

Seth Godin latest article, entitled “the trap of social media noise“, touches on one of the hot issues about the Internet. I curated this article from Seth which was reviewed eloquently from Robin Good who asked:

Are we creating and leveraging these tools to regurgitate and spit out more noise, or are we working to build tools and to help others understand the value of distilling and making sense of the information wave surrounding us?

Curation can also be an easy way to repost someone else’s information without doing much work yourself. You can share to multiple social networks and RSS feeds. This creates even more noise and confusion. Who was the original author and what is the intention of the curator?

Seth writes that “…either be better at pump and dump than anyone else, get your numbers into the millions, outmass those that choose to use mass and always dance at the edge of spam (in which the number of those you offend or turn off forever keep increasing)… or Relentlessly focus.

Prune your message and your list and build a reputation that’s worth owning and an audience that cares. Only one of these strategies builds an asset of value.”

Howard Reingold interviewed Robin Good about Curation in the video below. I have been following Robin on Scoopit and am learning how to be a curator from him. People can be gateways to the information we need instead of relying on digital robots using algorhythms that produce millions of resources in a search — millions that are not relevant.

I am enjoying building my Scoopits and gathering resources that will help me write and learn. But I do have some concerns similar to what Seth was writing about and Robin was talking about. Just getting your numbers up with followers, hits, comments, and others rescooping your scoops isn’t enough. The Internet is like drinking from a firehose. We need humans to filter now — not just put up lists to links and more links. Building a curated ecosystem means that each curator is customizing the flow of information for their audience. I am learning as I go. I’m following people with similar interests and finding and collecting sources that I would have missed in a basic search.

I am just dipping my toes in this new world and anxious to see where it ends up. Robin mentioned one thing that stuck out to me: “Are you a Mixed Tape or a Live DJ?” A live DJ finds information and distributes it the way his/her audience would enjoy it. A live DJ will talk about the music and personalize it. That’s what a curator can do with the resources they find.

21st Century Skills include three areas of creativity:

• Think creatively.
• Work creatively with others.
• Implement innovations.

The elements for these skills include:

View failure as an opportunity to learn; understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term, cyclical process of small successes and frequent mistakes.

Traditional school doesn’t allow for people to take risks and fail. Glenn Wiebe wrote in Are You an Under-taker or a Risk-Taker?

“One of the reasons that we as teachers don’t take risks is our fear of failure. We’re afraid that our state tests scores won’t be good enough or that we’ll look silly in front of kids or that the technology won’t work or that we’ll get calls from parents or…

But we also know that failure is often a prerequisite to success. Teachers take risks because they understand that screwing up is not necessarily a bad thing. Risk-taking involves possible failure. If it didn’t, it would be called Sure Thing-taking.”

Nothing in life is a sure thing-taking. That is except the answers on a standardized test. Life is not a standardized test or we would have everything labelled A, B, C, or D. Today is so different than yesterday. Look at the economy. Who knows what’s going to happen with the stockmarket? Look at jobs and unemployment. What type of jobs will be available for us in the future? Many jobs we used to offer are no longer an option. Because of that higher ed is changing or needs to change. So why am I talking about failure?

For hundreds of years, people were preparing for factory jobs. That’s why schools were set up in that model. They needed to know how to follow orders and not question. Failure was NOT an option. Candidates for most jobs now need critical thinking skills and to stand out of the crowd. They need to be remarkable. The only way you can be different is to take risks, fail, and come up with new ideas. You also need to build up a network of people you can ask because the world is changing so fast. You won’t find the answer in a book. You may not even find the answer online. You will need to know how to collaborate and work together as a team. Each of the team members will bounce ideas off of the other members of the team; some ideas work, some don’t. You learn from things that don’t work.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
― Thomas A. Edison

We want our kids to be inventors, thinkers, team players, and innovators. The only way to do that is to create a learning environment that encourages failure or new ways that won’t work. I believe the secret to success is failure. We need to create an environment that challenges students so they struggle with unfamiliar or difficult information. Why make it easy for someone to learn? Why is it that teachers are working harder now than ever? The students need to be the hardest working people in the room and challenged so they are excited about the topic.

When you look at children playing a game that challenges them in a good way, they are motivated. They don’t win right away. They get feedback right away. What is the fun in winning right away or all the time. The fun is in challenging themselves beyond what they know. I know myself and how I am writing and taking risks to write down new thoughts. I learn from you. I learn from others. I don’t have to have the right answers all the time. That’s what learning is all about. Challenging yourself to change; trying new things and failing and trying again.

Here’s a new challenge: The 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge that opened today is a multi-year competition whose goal is to motivate interest in STEM learning among America’s youth by tapping into students’ natural passion for playing and making video games. Go ahead and show your students this challenge. It is open to multiple ages. They have until March 2012. Have them experiment, fail, and come up with something amazing. They will learn so much.

A new iPad app just came out, Condition ONE, that lets you change the perspective of what you are seeing in the video. You can physically control the camera’s perspective in the video by moving the events on the iPad as if you are holding the camera. This is just the beginning of what we will be seeing in the future how you will be able to make your virtual experience with technology more personal.

Condition ONE Demo from Danfung Dennis on Vimeo.

Condition ONE was created by photojournalist Danfung Dennis and his partners as a way to make more immersive documentaries, but the format has the potential to work for any topic or subject that is enhanced by a feeling of immersion (sports, live music, education). The app turns specially encoded video into a virtual reality experience, where the iPad becomes your window into the video that you are watching. Using the iPad’s gyroscope, as you twist your body the viewing window follows with you as if you were in control of the video’s camera. Want to see where that action is coming from? Just turn your body (with the iPad) and look.

How do you see this as an app in education?

Download Condition ONE here.

I started several Scoop-its to curate the resources in one place to use later.
Apps for The Student-Centered Classroom
Creativity, Innovation, and Change
Making Learning Personal
Communities of Practice for New Learning Environments
Curate Your Learning

In doing that I’ve been noticing what people like and follow. It seems to be the Apps and Tools. I know we as educators say not to focus on the tools but it doesn’t seem that way. I notice this at technology conferences and, as a reader, the proposals submitted and accepted.

It seems that adults and teachers have technolust just like the kids. What does that mean for the classroom? The other Scoop-its are about change, pedagogy, communities of practice, and all the things that teachers tell me they want to understand for their own professional learning. However, when you go to a conference and the speaker is talking about change, the future, pedagogy, the room is not full.

For years I have done Tips and Tricks about this tool or that app and the room is overcrowded. It’s like a feeding frenzy. I do a session on change and the steps needed for change, and there’s only a few there. But I know those that are there are really interested.

What I’m wondering is how to take this technolust attitude and use it to make change. I am working with teachers to move to student-centered learning environments. In the process, they are learning new tools that engage and motivate students — and them. School is just not engaging — especially if you read out of the workbook. Kids are bored. They are digital whiz kids now.

How about adding a Smackdown at the end of the week and let three kids share a new tool or app they found for 2 minutes each? Then you as the teacher look at slowly changing the classroom and make student experts.

Think we need to shake things up here and look at the bigger picture. It’s not about the technology. Right? Technology is just a great way to make change.

A curator pulls together and oversees collections of materials. The Internet, Web 2.0 tools and social media has expanded the traditional role of publisher to almost anyone. The role of curator is changing too. Anyone can “curate” online material, pulling together their own collections.

I started a new Scoop-it “Curate your Learning” and now I see why curating is important. When you create a Scoop-it, you put in the tags.

Some of my tags are:

curation, curating, curate, curation skills, curating learning, 21st century skills

Because of Scoop-it and other curation tools, there are thousands of results as you curate. If you don’t take the time to read the contents and just Scoop-it, then is the resource really useful and valuable?

Curation skills can include:

• understanding keywords and tags

• scanning text
  
• reading and summarizing content

• building connections
• choosing appropriate resources
• sharing resources
• promoting and branding topic

When I searched for others with the same topic, there were many so I followed several of those people. However, the content differed because of their background. I couldn’t always tell from the title or understood why some content appeared for me to curate. I started another topic on Creativity, Innovation, and Change. What I’m finding is that this is a great idea to store articles, blog posts, and other resources by topic. I used to use Diigo and Del.icio.us, but I’m a visual learner. I also like the way I can build communities of people and view their topics. I can easily Scoop-it on one of their topics and add it to one of mine.

Something to think about. Is Scoop-it the right tool for kids?

I see a great opportunity for a company to design a curation tool for kids. A few concerns come to me though: filtering, monitoring, providing feedback, measuring what they curated.

The thing with curation is that what you curate keeps changing — just like the real world. Maybe we need to rethink what we measure.