Still no week 9 video. Is @j_k_knox feeling the pressure to outdo @james858499 perhaps?#mscedc
— Eli's inane rambling (@Eli_App_D) March 13, 2017
Week 8 weekly roundup
A different purpose for this week, previously it’d been a mishmash of “treasures”, random thoughts, and comments. I started this week looking at what an algorithm actually is and this led me to write an algorithm of sorts for myself on how my blog would be used this week. Constructive, definite and planned (my blog was to be a study aid, not a social toy).
I’ve only shared readings which I felt connected to a certain aspect of knowledge I needed to enhance or wanted to take further, using pocket, (my favourite being the BBC bitesized “what is an algorithm”). I also used pinterest to add a graphic to act as a reminder of something I wanted to write about at a later point, a bit like scribbling a note to yourself. I liked this new use and may use it again. Always learning!
I restricted twitter to experiment. Although I occasionally popped in, I tried not to get sucked into it this week as I’ve found it detrimental in other weeks. So instead I focussed on some self-directed study sharing things I thought were representative of my week.
This week’s blog isn’t fun, full, or my usual lifestream but it is a much truer reflection of my study habits, I had been artificially filling it so that it fitted my interpretation of what a lifestream should be. This week’s is a truer reflection of my footprint for this course. I won’t continue this as it is less fun for my classmates (as can be seen by the lack of interaction this week), but it was an experiment that was valuable for me as the student.
Playing with algorithms
My play with algorithms this week was unemphatically dull. I am aware of ad changes connected with my surfing habits, particularly with Amazon, so I was expecting to see a lot more come from a controlled experiment but alas it was a bit lacklustre which I suspect is due to my online security habits. My previous job involved supporting people with their digital footprints and making them aware of their computers security and the potential risks so out of habit, I tend to have things like cookies controlled. I suspect this is why I didn’t experience as much influence of the algorithms as I was expecting. However, I chose to leave my settings as they are and look at this from my real life perspective.
I chose to look at how my actions on amazon affect the ads I see elsewhere in my internet world. I am vaguely aware that amazon shopping trips have resulted in corresponding ads on facebook in the past and also with google form search words so I aimed at deliberately spiking things to see what would happen. To do this, I had to ensure that my amazon searches were for things I would not normally search for so that I could be sure the results were to do with this experiment.
Lunch break, over a cup of tea and a sarnie, I browsed for ballet slippers on amazon (the idea came to me after chatting with Linzi who is a dancer, I am most definitely not). On first results this was unremarkable. I didn’t even see ballet slippers come up next time I logged into amazon. Epic fail.

Again I searched for ballet slippers and this time I added pink satin to the description. I also changed behaviour, and this time I clicked on specific items that came up. This seemed to trigger the amazon algorithm which then shows relational items against your previous history (previous history, is that a real thing?). So result number one.

My expectations were that I would now see this filter through and at the very least see related advertising on things like facebook. Did I? Well a little bit of facebooking that evening and nope. There were no changes to my standard side-bar advertising on facebook, and even the featured ad for amazon wasn’t related to my searches.
OK so disappointing so far, but what about search engines? Surely the cookies stored on the computer would result in search engines picking up on my search, I know this happens I’ve seen it on multiple occasions.
Nope

About now I was ready to quit, I’m certain I’ve seen the searches spread across platforms so why wasn’t this working? I gave up for the night and decided to try again before work in the morning.
The next morning, sitting at my desk eating my shreddies it all clicked into place. The google bar instantly gave me pink ballet shoes in my search.
This is when the penny dropped. I was using one computer at home and a different computer at work, the algorithm seemed to be taking effect at work on my MacBook, but not at home on my surface pro 4. Cookies! As I mentioned previously, I lock down the cookies on my personal computer, but I am not in charge of the set up of my work computer so there it may be slightly more open to cookies, hence why I was seeing ballet slippers appear in google as well as amazon. Still nothing on either machine for facebook though, so it would appear that only items purchased or added to my wish list cross into facebook, but it would take more investigation to see if this works cross computers or only on the computer the purchase was made on. More investigation will be needed, but I wasn’t buying ballet slippers to test this theory out. I’m now wondering about adding mobile devices to the test…
Algorithms produce worlds rather than objectively account for them
Yup, and in this instance, the world it was creating couldn’t quite see the full picture, the algorithm knew I’d searched for ballet slippers when I was on the macbook, because it could read the cookies that were stored there but once I was home and on a different computer, with no cookies to read the algorithm didn’t recognise me as part of the world it was building around my shopping habits.
References
Knox, J. (2015). Algorithmic Cultures. Excerpt from Critical Education and Digital Cultures. In Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. M. A. Peters (ed.). DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_124-1
What to share and what to withhold
If humans are programming algorithms, does that mean human biases won’t affect the algorithm? What about an unconscious bias that we are not aware of ourselves, can we ensure we won’t influence the algorithm if we are not aware of our own bias? From another perspective, if we are using big data and algorithms to identify things deemed important in education, for instance, the potential failure of a student, what steps do we need to take, if any, to ensure that the data doesn’t negatively influence the student or bias those receiving the data? The example in this week’s reading is the “Course Signals” system by Purdue University, one of the earliest and most-cited learning analytics systems.
References
Sclater, N., Peasgood, A., Mullan, J., 2016. Learning Analytics in Higher Education, JISC. Available at: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/learning-analytics-in-he-v3.pdf.
Gašević, D., Dawson, S. & Siemens, G., 2014. Let’s not forget: Learning analytics are about learning. TechTrends, 59(1), pp.64–71. Available at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11528-014-0822-x [Accessed December 7, 2016].
Gillespie, T., Gillespie, T. & Boczkowski, P., 2014. The relevance of algorithms. technologies: Essays on …. Available at: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zeK2AgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA167&dq=Relevance+Algorithms+Gillespie&ots=GmoJNXY0we&sig=BwtHhKix2ITFbvDg5jrbdZ8zLWA.
Linked from Pocket: How We Trained an Algorithm to Predict What Makes a Beautiful Photo
“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.” — Henri Cartier Bresson As a child I waited anxiously for the arrival of each new issue of National Geographic Magazine.
from Pocket http://ift.tt/1r0dQne
via IFTTT
I am quite interested in reading more on this topic, I also noticed this article
So these are my “fun” study readings for this week.
Pinned to #MSCDE on Pinterest
- uses determinsim – technology is a transparent tool for the realisation of educational aims (this aligns with instrumentalism)
- technological determinsim – concerning the effects of technology on the individual and society (aligns with essentialism) and
- social determinsim – concerned with the affects on societal concepts to drive changes and uses of technology
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@LinziMclagan my favourite is
💪 👌👌 it means totally perfect… apparently. #mscedc— Eli's inane rambling (@Eli_App_D) March 10, 2017
Influencing with algorithms: Amazon, YouTube, Google and Facebook oh my….
Although I confess to knowing of the existence of algorithms and even seeing their impact on my net use, I’ve never really paid attention to it. My bad. So I am going to specifically play with 4 tools I use often, amazon, facebook, google, youtube to see what the impact is on each other, or how joined up my web use it.
I will look at the impact of searching on google and see if this permeates through to the other tools and then systematically do the same for each.
Things to consider – I have an enormous digital footprint, therefore for the purpose of this experiment I will be specifically trying to influence my digital footprint using items I would not normally search for.
Other Blog: The Algorithmic Future of Education
This keynote was delivered today at NWeLearn. The slides can also be found on Speaker Deck.
Source: The Algorithmic Future of Education
All to often big data and algorithms fall into the same sentence as austerity, economy and time and money savings. I want to hear someone say wow we have this new technology to try, let’s look at how it can help more people learn, how it can improve learning. NOT oh how much can it save us.
I have a sad face on now.
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#mscedc peer review on pic of alligator. "Wouldve been better if you caught him head on"
🙂 yeah & would have no prob getting him to smile— Eli's inane rambling (@Eli_App_D) March 8, 2017