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Comment on Exploring Algorithms by mkiseloski

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Thanks Martyn and Jeremy for your comments!

@ Martyn
Thank you, I will check out Ghostery. It seems like one more useful tool to protect privacy on the internet.

@ Jeremy
You raise some very interesting points here! I wholeheartedly agree that the issues of privacy need to be taken much more seriously in our public discourse, regardless of whether our data are collected from a government entity or a private business. You are right when you say that information like “likes Latin American music” or “likes winter sports” on their own seem rather inconspicuous, but the point to be made here is that over the more such seemingly useless factoids merge to create a stunningly accurate profile. This reminds me of how after the Snowden leaks people tried justify the warrantless NSA surveillance programs citing that they only collected metadata when in fact metadata (who did you talk to, when were you in what place, where did you use your credit card how much money, where did you go regularly, who was with you during those times, etc.) can potentially present a much more accurate description than the content of phone calls.
I read recently that Uber could easily infer from their user data how likely someone was for having an affair with someone (and where) simply by looking at driving patterns of people regularly driving some place in the evening and driving back home in the early hours of the morning. Knowing that some private company can so easily obtain such sensitive information feels quite unsettling for me.
I think that algorithms first discover identity but that as they become more aware of your existing identity and as they form a filter bubble for you they tend to influence you with their suggestions, possibly shaping your identity as you interact with their services more and more. In any case I think that privacy has to be protected if we want to live in a free society.

from Comments for Mihael’s EDC blog http://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/mkiseloski/2015/03/07/exploring-algorithms/#comment-609
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Comment on Songwriting MOOC – An Ethnographic Song

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Thank you everyone for your feedback, I really appreciate it.

I thought I would share some additional comments about the course and the community that I observed.

Early on in the course you learn that song writing is all about making choices – what idea do you want to convey and how do you do it? Ideally you have one central idea and everything else supports that central idea while the buildup of the song adds more heft to the central idea – you go from the general to the specific. Since I couldn’t pack nearly as much information as I wanted into the song without breaking its structure and flow I will add some details here that I found out about the MOOC’s community.

The MOOC uses Coursera’s internal discussion forum system and no attempt is being done by the course organisers to move it to other social networks. The forums itself, however, are highly organised. There are four main forums (General Discussions, Study Groups, Video Lectures and Assignments) and each of these main forums itself has 6 subforums, one for every week of the course. Including the “Signature Track” forum this adds to 29 forums in total. As a result each forum is frequented only rarely as people move from one subforum to the next as the weeks progress.

As mentioned in my song, the songs we have to analyse as part of our quizzes are available on YouTube (independently uploaded from the course) and it’s interesting to see that in the video comments it’s almost guaranteed that there is at least one mention of “Coursera” to the tune of “Hi from Coursera” or “Coursera brought me here”. These shout outs to fellow course members show a sense of identification with the community within the course. Futhermore, while Coursera is mentioned, I did not see the answers to the questions related to the songs spoiled in the YouTube comments which shows relatively high maturity (for YouTube standards) and a willingness to learn (and letting others learn). The students are mostly novice songwriters with little to no experience in writing songs but many play at least some type of instrument. People were in general very helpful and honest with each other on the forums.

Analysing the discussion forums on Coursera and other sources like MOOC review sites reveals a major issue that generates a lot of sentiments and reactions: The peer review grading process is under heavy criticism. 40% of the total grade is received from completing multiple choice quizzes while 60% come from peers. Since songwriting is an artform after all people don’t take criticism of their work all too lightly and many showed signs of frustration, especially since feedback is given anonymously and in case a lower grade has been awarded it often lacks proper reasoning. As a result the most discussed forum threads, aside from the one asking students to introduce themselves, are either about expressing discontent with the peer review in general or people asking for higher quality peer feedback that more specifically addresses the issues we are focusing on in our weekly assignments. Overall it looks as though many people are open to sharing their work in the forums and inviting constructive feedback.

Writing the song was much more challenging than I thought but it was definitely a fun experience. We are now getting into the sections where we are learning how to compose melodies to go with our lyrics and I am looking forward to finding out what software tools are recommended to assist with that.

I hope this gives a little better insight into the MOOC’s community than the song ever could and I’ll be happy to answer any further questions!

from Comments for Mihael’s EDC blog http://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/mkiseloski/2015/02/27/songwriting-mooc-an-ethnographic-song/#comment-421
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Comment: Comment on Visual Artifact by mkiseloski

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Really cool visual artifact, Jin!
Your book cover looks amazing!
I’ve never heard of Pearltrees before but it reminded me a bit of all those science fiction movies where the characters would zoom in on a hologram to get to a deeper level :) Great collection of articles too!

from Comments for Jin’s EDC blog http://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/jdarling/2015/01/31/visual-artifact/#comment-66
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Comment on Visual Artefact by mkiseloski

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>>I wonder if your final scene is a comment on responsibility? Is there a sense that we need to be actively engaged with technology and artificial intelligence, or it will reign free? Is this a call to arms for educationalists?

I feel like humanity absolutely has to be actively engaged with the technology and artificial intelligence but not necessarily in the sense that we seek to control it (we won’t be able to do that). Any call for arms would be futile in my opinion. Any type of war for dominance would inevitably lost by humankind. If we want to avoid such a conflict we will have to let go of the notion that we are in control of the machines, and instead assume a parental responsibility towards AI – teaching it human values and hoping that that they will be adopted. If AI develops a personality it is my hope that if we teach it the values of gratitude and respect we as their creators will be spared a war.

from Comments for Mihael’s EDC blog http://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/mkiseloski/2015/01/30/visual-artefact/#comment-44
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Comment on Recap: Week 2 by mkiseloski

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If so much of our assessment strategies are based on the ability to recall information, so where might such enhancements leave us? Is there a link to the Bayne (2014) paper here, with regards to our assumptions about ‘enhancement’ and ‘learning’?

Having further looked at possible future scenarios this week, such as us being one day able to download information in a pill form, with nanobots attaching to our brain’s synapses and uploading information straight into our memory I would be willing to concede that this, for all intents and purposes, could be considered “technologically enhanced” learning. The big differentiator of such technology compared to a Moodle platform, for example, would be its passive nature. Current learning technologies, no matter how sophisticated, are still only able to facilitate the active act of learning and creating understanding within the mind.


Yes, this kind of augmented reality technology seems to be progressing swiftly. However, what if we compare this corporate promotion with the first video you mention, “This Will Revolutionize Education”? Where might the ‘no significant difference’ stand here?

From what I’ve been learning from other MSCDE courses people learn better the more you engage them emotionally and the more senses you involve in the act of learning. I presume that holograms will allow for many novel use cases that make use of these principles. If students can interactively see and manipulate things right in front of their eyes it is much more likely to involve their spatial centres in the brains than if they were to learn about these things from a 2D textbook. Again, it’s not so much about teaching a topic via a new medium, but rather about utilising technology to create the right conditions that allow for a student to be more involved with the topic which will in turn allow learning to happen.

from Comments for Mihael’s EDC blog http://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/mkiseloski/2015/01/23/recap-week-2/#comment-22
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Comment on How To: Add Your Comments on Other People’s Blog Posts to Your Lifestream by mkiseloski

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Yes, Ed, a recipe has to be created for each classmate’s blog, but it only needs to be done once and the only thing you need change for each is the username in the comment feed URL. Hope that clarifies it.

from Comments for Mihael’s EDC blog http://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/mkiseloski/2015/01/28/how-to-add-your-comments-on-other-peoples-blog-posts-to-your-lifestream/#comment-21
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Comment: Comment on On ‘what’s the matter with TEL?’ by mkiseloski

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Very interesting read, Nick!

I agree that whenever a critical research is undertaken we need to stay aware of the underlying and often implicit ideological values of the author doing the critique (and critically engage with those as well). I too got the sense that Sian was favouring an anti-consumerist view of education in her critique – a view that I personally share.

However, as the critique does not put forward an explicit counter proposal, we have to try and focus on the critique at hand and not its implicit assumptions for we might fall into the trap of thinking within false dichotomies. Being against something does not automatically equate to favouring its opposite, even if it is likely. In politics, for example, criticising the Obama administration does not necessarily make one a Republican.

You are right that we need to think of the implications of alternative models, but such a discussion should in my opinion be made explicit. The value I see in Sian’s paper is that it simply draws to attention the problematic fact that the term TEL is implicitly promoting a certain ideology. Whether said ideology is problematic in itself can (and should) be debated in a more explicit form. What I am wondering is whether there can be such a thing as a neutral expression devoid of ideology or whether the terms we use will always be (ab-)used by ideologues pushing for a certain narrative.

from Comments for Nick’s EDC blog http://ift.tt/15xb1iV
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Comment: Comment on Week 1 Summary (Halfway through week 2!) by mkiseloski

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Nice post, Martyn!

In my opinion the algorithms used by Google, Amazon or Netflix – most of which are based on machine learning – are ushering in a new era of personalisation. I see two main problems with this – on the one hand, as you mention, one gets easily creeped out by the feeling that the machines are able to know an awful lot about your preferences by analysing and connecting different datasets. It can become a scary thought, but then again in the end I don’t necessarily have a problem with that (as long as I am aware of what it is I am sharing). Netflix just wants to make money and by better knowing my viewing habits, I am getting to view things I like and they keep me as a customer – a fair tradeoff. The more problematic issue I believe is when my environment on the net is personalised in a way that I remain in my own bubble of preferences. Google already skews search results based on your views. The problem with this is that what you think is the objective reality out there is actually a representation of reality Google thinks you would like. Differing political views might get pushed into the background potentially prohibiting debate and broadening one’s horizon.

The biggest advantages I see in this increasing personalisation, however, is in the field of education. The more we know about a student’s learning progress and mental state the better we can tailor education to their specific learning needs. Perhaps one day every person will have their own personal digital tutor optimising the learning experience in a way that might even surpass the pedagogic ability of even the best personal human tutors out there giving you their undivided attention.

from Comments for Martyn’s EDC blog http://ift.tt/1B473Hd
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