224/365

Random thoughts & notes

The future of data for education, or any future in fact, is not simply happening but instead something that is made. And, it's made through expectations, imaginaries, visions, and hopes that arise through discussion.    

Future research          

  • Possibilities for opening up uncertainty and agency within data practices - engaging with the contradictions and multiplicities inherent in data practices    
  • Following the data assemblage further - families/homes, neighborhoods/regions, dispersed media landscapes, international policy-making, media discourses      
  • Role of emerging layers of data intermediaries and entrepreneurs - "data tamers"     

Surveillance capitalism unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data (Zuboff). 

Data as currency: It is still very early days in this data-as-currency world, but it is an absolutely one-sided trade. The buyers at this point are amassing, assessing, consolidating data, and then using it.   

On “data exhaust”: You know that you’re throwing off data everywhere you go. But do you know what’s happening to it? Do you know how it’s being monetized? Whom it’s being sold to? Did you know that there is a social map of you and your family and your friends and the places you go? I heard of an amazing story of a certain social platform that could tell just from phone locations whether people were having an affair — because their phones were technically too close to each other! So a lot of data is being thrown off and if people truly knew (a) the value of it, and (b) the implications, they’d maybe be a little more careful (Barratt).    

Personal data is generated through people’s use of digital platforms and devices, yet this very interpersonal and relational dimension to data does not appear in popular metaphors. What are the consequences of this?

  • Barratt, J. (2019). Data as currency: What value are you getting? Knowledge@Wharton. Retrieved from https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/barrett-data-as-currency/     
  • Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Public Affairs.   



222/365

By any measure, educational technologies and the infrastructures to support them are more widely available in K-12 schools than at any point in time, even as digital divides persist. 

💰 Spending is way up. 

💻 1:1 schools are no longer outliers. 

📶 Broadband internet is more accessible than ever. 

Yet, student learning outcomes have not kept pace. 

What explains this discrepancy?


156/365

Interesting day. Made a few phone calls and began to reacquaint myself with the dissertation. Reviewed some notes and annotations. Reviewed some articles that I had saved recently but did not have time to read. Then, I reached out to a dissertation coach, an independent advisor not on my current dissertation committee. 

Dad called well before lunch, and asked if I could come over to talk. It was a good talk. And, I'll spare the details but our talk helped me clarify a few things. The subject of finances came about, as it always does. I think this quote summarizes the conversation nicely. 

Wanting to be rich ... one day you’ll find yourself wanting to be rich. To be rich really means to be without need, so you have two choices: either accumulate significant wealth or learn to need very little. Or, like most of us, find a balance somewhere in-between.

154/365

Writing

one day you’ll find yourself writing. Writing is rewriting. It’s excising words and reworking thoughts until an idea is expressed as concisely and precisely as possible. Persistent writing and rewriting begets both clarity and style.

In summary: repetition + consistency = results
I need to be writing. I need to work on my dissertation, or at least get close to completion. And, I need to get back on my exercise program.
So, I've made a commitment to myself that it starts today. Writing for no less than 4 hours each day, followed by or preceded by no less than one hour of vigorous exercise.