A bit of sad news, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/technology/google-plus-security-disclosure.html. According to this article, Google+ is underutilized with respect to its potential liability to the company and Google will have shut it down by Aug 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/technology/google-plus-security-disclosure.html
That is sad news. We always knew it could happen, which is why we always archive all course resources on iTDi.pro. But still, sad to lose the discussion from past courses. Thanks for sharing so we have lots of time to prepare!
ReplyDeleteAye - I saw that this morning - very disappointing but hopefully we'll continue to find better alternatives soon :-)
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ReplyDeleteWow, what an article. Again we, the 'common people' are suffering because of some bad guys out there.
ReplyDeleteHeike Philp it's not clear who the bad guys are exactly. Mark Z spent days before congress in order to protect his billion dollar empire. Google execs would rather cut off the G+ loss leader than be subjected to the same treatment. The Trump administration is famous for de-regulating anything having to do with the environment so his fossil fuel cronies won't have to be concerned with dealing with regulators, but the regulators are going after social media concerns in a big way, no de-regulation there (seen as a need for more regulation), unless regulation has to do with compromises to an election process which might produce inconvenient truths. All very confounding ;-)
ReplyDeleteLooks like Google is in trouble, not for the breach, but for hiding it. I have used Google+ to run classes for years, sorry to see it go. But there are replacements.
ReplyDeleteKevin Ryan Which replacements have you found to work best?
ReplyDeleteBarbara Hoskins Sakamoto Probably the closest you can get is Google Groups. If you can set up Google Classroom with your students that is also very similar (but you need to register for Google Classroom as a school, individual teachers can't. I've tried.) If you don't want to go the Google route, Edmodo is a good way to communicate between class members. I use Moodle, mostly because I have been using Moodle for a long time. It has the highest learning curve, but the most options. Edmodo is a good easier option. I have heard Canvas is good as well, but worry that they will start charging (a lot) because they are for-profit. Some teacher I know have used Facebook groups, but I find that distracting. Here in Japan we have a twitter-like Line for messaging, and you can get Band (Line Band) as an add-on to communicate in groups. But students don't like to use their personal accounts for school work, at least at the university level.
ReplyDeleteSchoology another option. I've never used it, just observed others using it.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kevin Ryan and Vance Stevens!
ReplyDeleteI briefly tried Edmodo in its early days and thought it had good potential, too, so would also consider revisiting it.
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