Comments for academhack

Comment on Making the University a Police State by Meagan

Meagan — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:17:17 +0000

What’s scary is that Morris’ ideas didn’t come up out of nowhere – this year’s Horizon report lists “Learning analytics” as an up and coming educational tool for educators and administrators. The report cites not only monitoring student conduct in classes – turning in assignments, how much time they spend on an LMS, etc. – but also “online social interactions, extracurricular activities, posts on discussion forums, and other activities that are not directly assessed as part of the student’s educational progress.” As teachers, we never before had the ability to spy on how students completed their work, whether they read, etc., so why now that we have the technology to do so (through an LMS, for example) should we throw student privacy out the window?

We are talking about the Horizon Report in my Technology and Pedagogy class tonight, and I look forward to bringing up your rebuttal of this ridiculous violation of student privacy. Thanks for the though-provoking post!

Comment on Why I Might Be (although I would rather not be) Leaving Dropbox by an education person

an education person — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:49:49 +0000

Dave:
What did you find out? It’s been a few months since you posted this and I’m searching for something FERPA compliant. Just need to share files with others within the department BUT we cannot access our intranet from home. Hence the need for a FERPA friendly cloud.

Thanks!

Comment on Why I Might Be (although I would rather not be) Leaving Dropbox by Steve Lee

Steve Lee — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:56:49 +0000

This is a great article that reveals the danger of putting our files in the hands of a third party. As the trend towards cloud computing evolves and accelerates, we must be aware of the risks to our data. I am a user of pogoplug, but it’s certainly not a business class solution, the speeds are too slow and have little faith in those devices reliability or longevity. I also do not have the backup redundancy of a cloud company. At the moment, I am using both drop box, box.net and google docs. I don’t trust any of them completely, so my data is mostly just mundane non-sensitive files like images and powerpoint presentations.
Good article, thanks for bringing these issues to the front.

Comment on Twitter for Academia by Chad

Chad — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 23:58:02 +0000

Love the idea of a writing assignment and telling a story…especially for Spanish students. Great idea!

Comment on Academic Branding and Portfolio Control by Anna Blanch

Anna Blanch — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 08:18:19 +0000

Thanks for this post – i’m thinking about these matters quite a bit at the moment – not in the least because i’m in my third country in four years and i’m not sure where i’ll be next.

I wondered what you think of Academia.edu ? I use it even though i have a website, my own blog and another collaborative blog. Their SEO is extremely good meaning by using that platform i can pretty much guarantee that I know what people will see if they search for my name – sometimes when others have written about me or responded to my research that’s been ranked higher than my own websites for a while. My Academia.edu profile reduces that risk – and it has much more of an opportunity for interaction – i’ve been directly contacted by no less than half a dozen researchers at other institutions just this year as a consequence of that profile.
Thanks so much for this post – i’ve got a lot more to think about.

Comment on Why I Might Be (although I would rather not be) Leaving Dropbox by Designz

Designz — Tue, 10 May 2011 02:20:09 +0000

I love dropbox, but even though I do not have much to hide, I would prefer my files in the cloud to be a little more secure. I really hope dropbox reads this and takes it into consideration. I hope I don’t have to stop using it and I hope I don’t have to tell all the others to stop, too.

Please take care of us dropbox!!

Comment on Why I Might Be (although I would rather not be) Leaving Dropbox by Patrik

Patrik — Thu, 05 May 2011 05:38:56 +0000

I use a small TrueCrypt partition inside my dropbox for my private stuff. Slightly less practical (and truecrypt needs to be configured to not retain original file date, but since I only need protection, not deniability, that’s ok) but works quite well.

Comment on Why I Might Be (although I would rather not be) Leaving Dropbox by Carlo

Carlo — Wed, 04 May 2011 22:35:57 +0000

@terry — I wonder what you think about Dropbox is better in terms of the engineering? I mean, in the context of what Dave’s talking about here, privacy and security, their engineering is much worse. (That’s his point.) I’m wondering what other factors you’re considering? I use Dropbox now, and am just starting to test SpiderOak; in terms of functionality, they seem pretty close.

In fact, the “host_id” issue (see Dave’s link above under “The Problem”) is some really, really bad design. I’m surprised a company who claims to be secure ever built something like that, and should really make us question what other poor design choices and shortcuts that may also have taken. I do hope someone from Dropbox read’s Dave’s post, and answers those questions at the bottom.

Also, just wanted to add a link to a post from Bruce Schneier, which I thought about while reading this. (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/07/laptop_security.html) In it, he illustrates pretty well the importance of the private key. Obviously, keeping the private key from anyone, including yourself, is an extreme example, but I think it drives home the point.

Comment on Why I Might Be (although I would rather not be) Leaving Dropbox by dave

dave — Wed, 04 May 2011 15:11:28 +0000

@briancroxall Yes this is why I am tending towards a solution that uses Dropbox for journal articles and things I want to read but some other measure for everything else

@ryan Yes I have an encrypted hard drive, I just want a solution where I encrypt the files before sending them to the cloud that allows them to be unencrypted on a range of my own devices, so far you can’t do that on Dropbox (or at least I can’t figure out a way-even with jailbreaking an iPad and a rooted Android phone)

Comment on Why I Might Be (although I would rather not be) Leaving Dropbox by jeremy

jeremy — Wed, 04 May 2011 13:31:46 +0000

what are you uploading there that could even be a concern for privacy? i mean really? are you putting student or personal records there? are you not encrypting them locally first? this seems to me to be not a problem with dropbox services as much as bad practices on your part if there is a concern for privacy and security. the first rule of privacy and security is if there is another party, there is no privacy or security. this means that you have to see to that before transferring files, etc.