Category: Insights

Critical Digital Education for All! | by Soledad Magnone | Data & Society: Points

This post highlights the JAAKLAC initiative, which broadens participation in the governance of the digital ecosystem and promotes Latin American projects in critical digital education. It address measures to tackle the deficit in digital education in Latin America. The post showcases how JAAKLAC’s projects have explored the possibilities of co-creating educational practices and resources, as …

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Language, Meaning-Making, and Wrangling Text As Data: A Social Worker’s Perspective – GC Digital Fellows

In this Tagging the Tower post, GC PhD student in Social Welfare Ian Williams discusses his experience learning python at this year’s GC Digital Research Institute. Williams discusses what drew him to the Institute as well as how he envisages learning programming languages will impact his research. This is a great post to better understand …

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Interview with Laura Wildemann Kane – GC Digital Fellows

Laura Wildemann Kane is an assistant professor in Philosophy at Worcester State University, as well as a faculty fellow for the Clemente Course in the humanities (Worcester branch). She received a PhD in philosophy and certificate in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy from CUNY Graduate Center in 2017. She was a GC Digital Fellow from 2012-2015, …

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The sound of a sunset | MIT News

The post discusses the Sonification Toolkit, “a web application that will transform almost anything digital — from numerical data to drawings — into sound.” The Sonification Toolkit emerges at the creative intersection of art and technology and it helps to provide a unique way to analyze data and culture. Read more: The sound of a …

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How Tech Despair Can Set You Free — The New Atlantis

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In this article, Samuel Matlack reflects on socio-cultural commentary from Jacques Ellul on contemporary technological society. Despite the title and subtitle, Matlack doesn’t actually address how one is set free (it is also not clear what exactly one is being set free from); rather, he tries to formulate that pervasive sense that something has gone …

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‘Really alarming’: the rise of smart cameras used to catch maskless students in US schools | Surveillance | The Guardian

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In this article from “The Guardian,” Mark Keierleber discusses the disturbing presence of surveillance in schools. This surveillance was introduced to monitor students either going maskless or wearing masks improperly during Covid. But even as regulations change and the surveillance no longer used for that purpose, the surveillance is remaining in schools. There are a …

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Best Practices for Dissertations in the 21st Century

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This post by PhD candidate Jonathan Reeve problematizes the concept of the “digital dissertation” to propose a set of best practices for 21st century dissertations. It highlights a number of salient aspects that shape digital dissertations, such as public-facing scholarship, version-control, licensing and intellectual property, and user experience. This article is an excellent point of …

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Digital Projects and Student Engagement in the Era of COVID-19 | HASTAC

This blog post recognizes the difficulties of teaching and learning remotely in the COVID-19 pandemic. The article notes the additional emotional and medical stress imposed by the pandemic on students and teachers. Under these conditions, it seeks to revive student engagement and teachers’ inspiration. The article turns to Slave Voyages Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database as …

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Raising Algorithmic Impact Assessment | by Jacob Metcalf | Mar, 2022 | Data & Society: Points

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This blog post calls for the urgent development of methods for assessing algorithmic systems that center the public interest. The post notes that the algorithmic systems which dominate much for our social lives are opaque and not subject to democratic governance. It calls for a completely new framework for assessing the performance of these algorithmic …

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