EdTech Situation Room Episode 165

Welcome to episode 165 of the EdTech Situation Room from February 13, 2020, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed changes to "backup files" in Google Drive and the demise of Andy Rubin's "Essential" Android phone hardware company. After another consecutive week of shout outs to the "EdTech Takeout Episode 71," we discussed the requirement for YouTube creators to mark all videos "made for kids" which fit Google's guidelines, and provided some analysis on the demise of "branded accounts" on YouTube for GSuite for Education (GSFE) domains. On the topic of media literacy, the recent podcast episode "Breaking the Truth: A Conversation with Samuel Woolley" on the show "Power 3.0 Podcast: Authoritarian Resurgence, Democratic Resilience" was discussed, along with hesitation (on the part of some elementary teachers) to "turn students loose on Google" to research topics in school. On the Apple front, Siri's new ability to answer Election 2020 questions, the rise of more adware / malware on MacOS computers, Apple's release of "Swift Playgrounds" for MacOS, and the rise of Apple Pay were highlighted. On the ChromeOS front, forthcoming updates to ChromeOS storage, "hot corners" customization options for ChromeOS like MacOS, and geeky steps to install the "Brave" browser on a ChromeOS device were shared. Geeks of the Week included the PixilArt website and mobile apps, episode 58 of the podcast Darknet Diaries, and the Chrome extension "FakeSpot" to identify fake reviews on Amazon and other sites. 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.