George Veletsianos, PhD

Automated website monitoring and notification

On May 6, 2021

Last week, I had to figure out a new-to-me process to be alerted in real-time when a website changed. I’m describing the problem, solution, and process here in case others find it useful.

Problem

I need to monitor a website for real-time changes
I need to be alerted about any changes in real-time.
I cannot manually and continuously refresh the site.
I cannot check the site periodically for changes , as I would risk being alerted about the change late.
To be notified in real-time I need to receive a text or a phone call – not an email. I am not on email all the time. Phone notifications (other than texts/calls) are too distracting, turning us all into pigeons. So, I don’t use them.

Solution

There’s a number of website monitoring services that one can use to scan a site for edits, such as visualping and sken. These services send you an email you when they notice a change to a website you are interested in

I used sken for this solution because I had a sense of when the site would be updated, and Sken allows for monitoring websites during specific windows of time at specific intervals (e.g., “check www.veletsianos.com every 1 minute between 3 and 4pm daily”).

First, I created a motoring bot on Sken. Whenever a change is detected, I would receive an email.

Next, I created a filter in my email. I want to the filter to review any incoming emails, and when it notices an email from sken, to send a text message to my phone.

Did you know that you can send a text to a cell phone via email? Yep, that’s still a thing. All the filter above does it to send a text to my phone telling me that I have an email from sken. To do this for Canadian phone carriers, you just need to replace the [10-digit phone number] below with your number (e.g., the blurred forward above would be something like 7780000000@vmobile.ca)

Rogers Wireless: [10-digit phone number]@pcs.rogers.com
Fido: [10-digit phone number]@fido.ca
Telus: [10-digit phone number]@msg.telus.com
Bell Mobility: [10-digit phone number]@txt.bell.ca
Kudo Mobile: [10-digit phone number]@msg.koodomobile.com
Sasktel: [10-digit phone number]@sms.sasktel.com
Solo: [10-digit phone number]@txt.bell.ca
Virgin: [10-digit phone number]@vmobile.ca

I’ve since solved the problem and deleted the tracker and forwarding. I’m certain that there’s more elegant solutions available (e.g., a website monitoring service that also sends a text in addition to email), but this worked for me. In the process, I learned some things that I can conceivably see being used as part of a data collection strategy (e.g., identifying change over time, such as for example school/university guidance on remote teaching or plans for reopening, etc).

CFP: Re-imagining education in the post-pandemic

By George Veletsianos

On April 30, 2021

In future education, futures

The CFP below may be of interest to this blog’s readers. The speculative futures focus is important at this point in time, though the pitfall to watch out for is the overly optimistic outlook that our field often embraces. I’m not familiar with the journal, and note, that it requires a 300 GBP ACP.

CFP: Re-imagining education in the post-pandemic

We live in exceptional times. The ongoing Covid 19 pandemic exposes the fragility of dominant socio-cultural, political, and economic systems worldwide by uncovering the vulnerabilities of the public sector, of which education is a cornerstone. In the specific context of lockdowns and restrictions, digital technologies play a dominant role in enabling continuous communication between teachers and students. As enablers in educational activities, allowing for designing, assessing, and carrying out learning away from the regular classroom, digital technologies also disrupt established practices. The extraordinary circumstances of the year 2020 and their implications for teaching & learning constitute an inquiry area that pushes re-imagining education in the post-pandemic. Which technologies used during the pandemic are here to stay? What are the digital practices that teachers and/or learners would like to preserve in the post-pandemic? Why? How do the sociotechnical practices emerging with the pandemic impact pedagogical perspectives, models, and even relationships? What do we gain in education with the pandemic experience? What do we lose? What educational practices would we like to contribute to in the future (i.e., ten years from now)?

Such questions are prompts aimed to spark a discussion on emerging social and technical imaginaries in education. Social imaginaries have been widely used as both a theory and a method to observe human capacity to bring new forms of being and doing into life through the power of thought and formulation (Chassay 2010; Jasanoff & Kim 2015; Jodelet 1989). They have been marked by creativity and unlimited possibilities that future-oriented imagination offers, as SF-literature bears witness to, and have been shaped by the constraints, limitations that history, culture, and social structures force upon humans (Castoriadis & Ricoeur 2016. Leblanc 1994). In the field of education, Neil Selwyn’s recent (2019) work on “What might the school of 2030 be like?” offers a helpful example of how social science fiction can be applied to explore how digital technologies might be used in a particular high school in 2030 and how they “might impact the people whose lives are enmeshed with these technologies” (p.90). Lina Rahm’s work on sociotechnical educational imaginaries (2019) is another enlightening example that unpacks sociotechnical imaginaries’ role in configuring educational practices and the digital citizen’s very concept.

Against this backdrop, this special collection focuses on re-imagining education in the post-pandemic as an invitation to reflect on: Which educational imaginaries of technology are in the making? How do they configure socio-material relations and practices in the aftermath of the transition to remote teaching and learning?

Within this frame of reference, we invite scholars, practitioners, Ed-tech designers, policy-makers, or other professionals working in the field of Learning Sciences, Learning Analytics, Technology-enhanced learning, Computer-supported collaborative learning, Educational Technology to critically reflect on the effects of the ongoing digitalization and datafication processes on learning and teaching practices for future – post-pandemic – education.

We accept original papers discussing conceptual works (i.e., presenting analytical frameworks or concepts), empirical cases or methods (i. e., social science fiction, design fiction, anticipatory methods, speculative methods) that contribute to reflect critically on the multiple effects of COVID 19 on the emerging educational imaginaries and educational practices of 10 years from now.

This call is an invitation to envision and reflect, using theoretical, empirical, or methodological works, on educational imaginaries of technology in the making.

Topics of interest are:

Data-driven educational practices
Adaptive/Personalized learning
AI in institutional decision-making
VR in education
Face recognition in education
Bio-sensors and Internet of things in the classroom
Digital deskilling
De-territorialization of schooling
Social Robots
Voice user interfaces
Social science fiction method
Design fiction method
Speculative methods (futuring methods)
The teacher as an innovator
Digital school culture
Other

We welcome submissions that follow the journal’s guidelines https://www.designsforlearning.nu/about/submissions/

The journal operates with an Article Processing Charge (APC), which covers all publication costs (editorial processes; professional copyediting, web hosting; indexing; marketing; archiving; DOI registration, etc.) and ensures that all of the content is fully open access. Please note the information regarding publication fees.

We will first screen each submission to ensure appropriate fit with the Journal’s mission and fit this call for papers. We will select manuscripts that will be assigned to an Associate Editor and two reviewers for further consideration. If a revision is granted, we expect authors to revise manuscripts within 25 business days.

Timeline

The deadline for submissions of full articles is October 30, 2021.
Notification of acceptance December 31. 2021
Revisions are due March 1, 2022.
Publication April 30, 2022.

Editors for this special collection:
Teresa Cerratto Pargman, tessy@dsv.su.se
Sirkku Männikkö Barbutiu, sirkku@dsv.su.se
Ylva Lindberg, ylva.lindberg@ju.se
Anna Åkerfeldt, anna.akerfeldt@mnd.su.se

References

Castoriadis, C. & Ricœur, P. (2016). Dialogue sur l’histoire et l’imaginaire social. Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, coll. « Audiographie ».

Chassay, J. F. (2010). Imaginaire de l’être artificiel (Approches de l’imaginaire). Québec: Presses de l’Université de Québec.

Jasanoff, S. & Kim. S.-H. (2015). Dreamscapes of Modernity. Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Jodelet, D. (1989). « Représentations sociales : un domaine en expansion », in D. Jodelet (ed.), Les représentations sociales. Paris, Presses universitaires de France, coll. « Sociologie d’aujourd’hui », 1989.

Kozubaev, S., Elsden, C., Howell, N., Søndergaard, M. L. J., Merrill, N., Schulte, B., & Wong, R. Y. (2020, April). Expanding Modes of Reflection in Design Futuring. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-15).

Leblanc, P. (1994). « L’imaginaire social. Note sur un concept flou », Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, vol. 97, Juillet-Décembre, 415-434.

Nationell handlingsplan för digitalisering av skolväsendet #Skoldigiplan (2019). https://webbutik.skr.se/shop?funk=visa_artikel&artnr=7585-773-2

Rahm, L. (2019). Educational imaginaries: a genealogy of the digital citizen (Vol. 214). Linköping University Electronic Press.

Selwyn, N., Pangrazio, L., Nemorin, S., & Perrotta, C. (2020). What might the school of 2030 be like? An exercise in social science fiction. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(1), 90-106.

Canadian faculty experiences during COVID-19: Never-ending repetitiveness, sadness, loss, and “juggling with a blindfold on

By George Veletsianos

On April 15, 2021

In my research, online learning, papers, scholarship, sharing

Many surveys examined faculty member experiences during the pandemic, highlighting the challenges and affordances of a mass transition to remote forms of teaching and learning, but also its unequal and disproportional impacts. In a new study, we wanted to develop a much more detailed and visceral description of what some faculty have been experiencing during the pandemic, informed by our specific interests in online learning and teaching with technology. This study is part of a broader SSHRC grant which funded the postdoc and research assistants who wrote this with me (thank you!). The abstract and citation is below:

VanLeeuwen, C.A., Veletsianos, G., Belikov, O. Johnson, N. (in press). Never-ending repetitiveness, sadness, loss, and “juggling with a blindfold on:” Lived experiences of Canadian college and university faculty members during the COVID-19 pandemic. British Journal of Educational Technology. http://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13065 or author’s pre-print copy.

We report on the lived experiences of faculty members during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring the broader experiences of faculty members as individuals living multi-faceted lives whose homes became their offices, their students scattered geographically, and their home lives upended. Using a phenomenological approach for data collection and analysis, we conducted twenty in-depth interviews with faculty holding varied academic appointments at universities across Canada. Experiences during the early months of the pandemic were described as being overwhelming and exhausting, and participants described as being stuck in a cycle of never-ending repetitiveness, sadness and loss, of managing life, teaching, and other professional responsibilities with little sense of direction. In keeping with phenomenological methods, this research paints a visceral picture of faculty experiences, seeking to contextualize teaching and learning during this time. Its unique contribution lies in portraying emergency remote teaching as an overlapping and tumultuous world of personal, professional, and day-to-day responsibilities.

Teaching During a Pandemic: Spring Transition, Fall Continuation, Winter Evaluation

By George Veletsianos

On April 8, 2021

In flexible learning, future education, my research, online learning, open, papers, scholarship

Informed by survey studies using nationally representative samples, in a recent project we examined the nature and magnitude of remote approaches to teaching and learning at three points in time:

April 2020: The pivot to emergency remote teaching was well underway.
August 2020: Prepping and planning for the fall offerings.
December 2020: Looking back at the fall term.

Some of the big picture findings include the following

agility and resilience in the face of numerous and ongoing challenges over the time period under investigation
the development of a new appreciation of and understanding about online education
growing reliance on technology
equity as a focal point of interest and concern
flexibility as a design feature that of interest and relevance

The report is CC-BY licensed and is available at: Johnson, N., Seaman, J. and Veletsianos, G. (2021) Teaching during a pandemic: Spring Transition, Fall Continuation, Winter Evaluation Bay View Analytics: Oakland CA, March 22, pp. 53.

Who supports scholars who receive online harassment and how effective are those supports?

By George Veletsianos

On April 7, 2021

In harassment, my research

“Imagine you publish a paper detailing the results of research you spent two years working on. You are excited and decide to share your work on social media, both so people can hear about it, and also because you know your university has a public scholarship strategy in place that encourages doing so. Within hours, however, the abuse pours onto your post. First you are told your research is wrong or useless, and you are surprised at the negative attention given the innocuous subject of your work. But soon it snowballs into something worse, with users descending into more aggressive harassment and even threatening violence against you and your family. Distressed, eventually you pull the post, unwilling to tolerate the vitriol, feeling defeated and diminished. You weren’t prepared for such an outcome, and you aren’t entirely sure what to do next.”

The quote is from the introduction of our latest paper on the harassment that scholars experience. The paper asks: What coping and support mechanisms – other than deleting post – do scholars use? Where does that support come from? Does it come from friends and family? University? The legal system? How effective are those supports perceived to be?

This is our fourth harassment-focused paper (see first, second, and third). Using data from 182 survey participants, we identified gaps in the support that scholars receive when they face harassment. We identified lack of support at the university level (administration and colleagues) and at the level of digital platforms. We also noted that attitudes and values about gender, race, academic work, and online life worsen the problem, as some scholars noted that they refrained from speaking about “controversial topics” online (i.e. a chilling silencing effect), and also that they often “felt responsible” for the harassment directed at them. The table below summarizes some of these findings

You can access the paper from the link below. If you don’t have library access, here is the author’s copy of the submitted paper.

Houlden, S., Hodson, J., Veletsianos, G., Gosse, C., Lowenthal, P., Dousay, T., & Hall, N., (in press). Support for Scholars Coping with Online Harassment: An Ecological Framework. Feminist Media Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2021.1883086

Faculty social media use in 2021

By George Veletsianos

On April 6, 2021

In my research, scholarship, sharing

Much of the research on faculty use of social media relies on Moran, Seaman, & Tinti-Kane (2011), Moran & Tinti-Kane (2013), and Bowman (2015) to demonstrate the degree to which faculty social media use is prevalent. These surveys show that (a) increasing adoption of social media tools for professional purposes over the years, (b) greater use of social media for personal rather than professional purposes, (c) around half of faculty members using social media for professional purposes, and (d) variation in the adoption rates and ways that different social media are used.

In a new study, we provide an updated picture of the prevalence of faculty social media use in 2021.

Significant findings include the following:

Faculty are most likely to have social media accounts on Facebook (75%) and LinkedIn (65%).
Faculty use social media professionally and personally; however, such use varies by platform (e.g., LinkedIn is used mainly for professional purposes, whereas Facebook is primarily used for personal purposes).
The frequency of social media use varies by platform (e.g., Facebook is used daily or every few days by 74% of faculty, whereas LinkedIn is used every few weeks, monthly, or rarely by 71% of faculty).
Faculty social media use is mostly passive. On all platforms, the majority of faculty reported posting content seldomly or never.
Around 25% of faculty have a personal website, such as a blog or portfolio site, which is a concerning statistic given calls for controlling one’s digital presence.
- This faculty sub-group has several unique characteristics related to how they use social media, including an increased likelihood of Twitter use and being more likely to use Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter for a mix of professional and personal uses.
Faculty have mixed feelings about social media, holding both positive and negative opinions about both tools and their impacts across personal and professional dimensions.
Compared to earlier studies, there has been very little change concerning faculty use of social media to communicate with students.

The report is CC-BY licensed and can be downloaded from here. Recommended citation: Johnson, N. & Veletsianos, G. (2021). Digital Faculty: Faculty social media use and communications. Bay View Analytics.