After I read all of the assigned readings, I have learned about what a good passphrase should looks like, how government and organizations cares about privacy, what are the ethical challenges, the critical digital pedagogy and the blended learning etc. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss about the concepts that I agree and my “Aha” moment while reading those papers.
Firstly, I was surprised to see that there are actually websites for us to use to make or manage a strong passphrase. The only time I considered about making a strong password is when the website said my password is not strong enough and I cannot create an account using weak password. However, I got my first Aha moment when I read about the possible website we can use to manage our password like KeePass or the Secure Passphrase Page which is from Uvic, and its suggesting us to make a guest account to avoid possible password leakage. I was totally impressed by the University systems phishing awareness training that Uvic provided, I think it’s a great tool for students to practice in order to avoid giving their password away to strangers.
Then I start to read the other article about privacy named Ethical challenges of edtech, bigdata and personalized learning: twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. In here I was surprised by how government and school’s cares about students’ privacy. In the article, the author showed a data about 503 bills addressing the privacy and security of education between 2013-2017, and 90% school distinct were investigating about personalized learning. By reading these data, it gives me a clearer view of how important privacy is especially facing the trend of personalized learning. During my last course in Uvic which ended about a week ago, we mainly discussed about personal learning network (PLN) and tried to build our own PLN by using all sorts of online platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Back then, before I read this article, I did not take my passphrase or some personal information that serious, but after reading this, I realized that as the article said personalized learning software is slipping through the policy framework. While the Universities and organizations trying to make investigations about personalized learning and deal with ethical challenges, the best thing we can do is to make a strong passphrase and using the Secure passphrase page and University systems phishing awareness training to protect us. Also, my another Aha moment is when I read about the blended learning, which talks about the integration of face to face and online learning activates, and I have a strong feeling of this blended learning will be the future because sometimes online platforms could be a convenient tool and face to face can help the teachers better determine the status of their students.