EdTech Situation Room Episode 160

Welcome to episode 160 of the EdTech Situation Room from January 1, 2020, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) kicked off the first show of the new year by discussing Audrey Waters' (@audreywatters) marathon post "The 100 Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade," and Dean Shareski's (@shareski) post "I Don’t Think I’m an EdTech Guy Anymore." On the security front, recent Amazon Ring "hack incidents" revealed to be caused by reuse of compromised passwords and a good article from USAToday highlighting the dangerous cleverness of bank account phishers were highlighted. The fruits of the latest "Public Domain Day," the use of the machine learning powered (and creepy) website ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com to create profile photos for fake right wing Facebook profiles attempting to manipulate U.S. voters, and an educational technology startup capitalizing on the invasive surveillance potential of the iPhone for college students skipping classes (SpotterEDU) were also discussed. On the topic of "weird drone stuff" which points the importance of coding and computational thinking for students in schools today, articles about ongoing sightings of mysterious drone formations in eastern Colorado / western Nebraska, and a bizarre drone jamming incident by rural Chinese farmers attempting to foil an organized crime effort to spread swine fever / a pathogen via drone aircraft were also highlighted. Our show was live streamed and archived simultaneously on YouTube Live as well as our Facebook Live page via StreamYard.com. Please follow us on Twitter @edtechSR for updates, and join us LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can at 10 pm Eastern / 9 pm Central / 8 pm Mountain / 7 pm Pacific or 3 am UTC. All shownotes are available on http://edtechSR.com/links.