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Finding the Next Generation of Teachers With "Innovative Microsoft Ads"
theodp (442580) writes "Back in 2011, the U.S. Dept. of Education delegated teacher recruitment to Microsoft (RFP, pdf). 'The decision to turn over TEACH to [Microsoft] Partners in Learning serves to expand the already outsized influence Gates and his fortune have on public education,' wrote the Washington Post at the time. So, 'what happens when a public institution in a democracy — the US Department of Education — outsources its goal of recruiting good teachers to a private industry?' Well, in addition to Teach.org and redundant social media efforts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube, the U.S. is now relying on 'Innovative Microsoft Advertising to Recruit the next Generation of Teachers'. From the press release, 'The Ad Council and TEACH have formed a unique outreach campaign with Microsoft's Advertising team in an effort to recruit the next generation of teachers who will drive innovation and redefine teaching in K-12 classrooms. Microsoft donated over 125 million impressions across Xbox 360, Windows 8, and MSN in order to encourage consumers to rediscover teaching through interactive ad units. This media effort is an extension of the Ad Council and TEACH's public service advertising (PSA) campaign, Make More...Throughout March, consumers were able to engage with TEACH "NUads on Xbox", via gesture, voice or controller on their Xbox 360 consoles...Most recently, Microsoft leveraged their Windows 8 platform to provide a unique experience to consumers, enabling them to navigate through a series of questions to help "discover their true passion," along with the opportunity to play challenging mind and word games, such as a word scramble and tangrams.' Check out the demo of the Windows 8 platform experience [YouTube], in which a person is advised 'You'd Make a Great Science & Tech Teacher,' on the basis of a 'Personality Quiz' consisting of five dragged-and-dropped photos."
M$ shouldn't be allowed anywhere **near** children.
Gates is trying to end public education with his charter school fund.
This stupid, reductive, publicity-focued initiative is just another in an expensive line of turds M$ has dropped in the education punch bowl
Get these data-gathering, exploitative, anti-user businesses AWAY FROM OUR KIDS
As a former teacher, the problem is that people want to spend money on ***EVERYTHING*** other than what will help educate children: public schools with the highest-paid, best trained teachers in the world
Without the above, no ammount of tech, "social media" or "big data" will ever make even a dent in the problem
Thank you Dave Raggett
MS, Apple, Facebook, etc: "Buy from our stores! Don't mind being locked in! Don't dare to want freedom and openness, it's scary and not good for you!"
They all want to teach kids to grow up to be good little consumers. Spending all their money at the locked-in store. Giving all their personal information to the company. Develop an app of your own? Too bad unless you want to give 30% to Apple and be under their control for whether you can even publish it or not.
Why can't we just teach openness, freedom, and having control over your own computing experience? A TRUE social internet, not the data-mined and controlled garden those companies all want us to have, so people get locked into their marketing and advertising engines, and their ecosystems.
Apparently Bill Gates is still doing things to make money. When you have $70 billion, you still need more?
finding the Next Generation of Teachers with more financial ad programs, better wages and an actual career path? Seriously, I know a lots of teachers and unless you're willing to drop what you're doing and hall ass to another state whenever the budget cuts come you're in for a pretty lousy time. Oh, and no, they don't take summers off. Most of them spend summers either tutoring for extra money or getting yet another degree (Masters, Doctorate) in a desperate attempt to earn a little more money :(.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
DAE read that as "Nudes on Xbox"?
Microsoft in education...
Cable company lobbyists in the FCC...
The whole concept of lobbying (AKA "legal bribes")...
Mandatory private health insurance instead of what every other modern country does...
+1
agreed.
my wife is enrolled in one of the top four colleges known for their educational programs and is currently the top of her class (4.0gpa). she has yet to be contacted by any type of recruiter or school district, and it looks like she's going to have to work for a semester for free before she can get her license (teacher certification).
Isn't that the obvious ploy of this move.
Embrace the education establishment
Extend the curriculuim so that ONLY MS tools can be used
Extinguish all non compliant teachers as being obsolete
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
As someone who has spent his career in IT, and actually acquired a Master's Degree in Education while working IT full time, I can give a couple things that have kept me from completing the transition. The biggest, number one reason is student teaching. While I qualify to become a teacher in every way, it is impossible for me to enter a classroom in that role unless I completely give up all working for four months. I've done pretty good putting money away for emergencies; but the return on investment simply isn't there to give up an income for four months. A few places offer in-service student teaching, but the list of qualifications for those programs is very long, targeting a very specific subset of the population. One of the reasons there is such a barrier to becoming a teacher is the teacher's union. There may be some states where it's different, but the ones I know about force all registered teachers to pay dues to the union whether they want to join or not. Because education is compulsory, all taxpayers are held hostage by the union's demands. There is no option to lock out the union, no option to balance negotiations. Hiring decisions, training decisions, and certification requirements are all heavily influenced, if not completely determined, by the union. The existing status quo cannot change until either the attitude of the union changes, or the law changes to weaken the union's power.
Anyone who would "Make a great Science & Tech teacher" can make twice as much in the private sector. I could teach any high school math or science class but I'm not taking a 70% pay cut to do it.
Once upon a time most professional careers were closed to women. This left a large number of bright young women who were willing to teach for relatively low wages. Now those bright young women are becoming physicians and attorneys and engineers and earning three to ten times a teacher's wage. But we haven't increased teaching salaries to match, so mostly the profession is mostly attracting mediocre students. Yes, there are still a few great people who love to teach and are willing to put up with public school politics and relatively low wages, and I salute them. But if we want to attract the best and brightest to teaching, we have to pay teachers like they are the best and brightest. It's not a money problem. There are 3.7 million public school teachers. We could give them all a $40K raise for $160B/year. That's maybe a tenth of the US defense budget. We just need to get our priorities straight.
the ability to put up other people's worthless ass kids is a calling and if it's not your calling you're going to do a shit job and the kids will continue to be worthless. there, their, and they're!
lose != loose
you're splitting pennies for one of the essential functions of human existence: teachers to our young...
however we just pass MILLIONS$$$ and BILLIONS$$$ around when discussing business executive pay or defense contracts
it's absolutely ridiculous, from a free market capitalist perspective, to expect to get the best people for a fraction of what they typically can earn in other fields
Thank you Dave Raggett
Microsoft donated over 125 million impressions across Xbox 360, Windows 8, and MSN in order to encourage consumers to rediscover teaching through interactive ad units. This media effort is an extension of the Ad Council and TEACH's public service advertising (PSA) campaign, Make More...Throughout March, consumers were able to engage with TEACH "NUads on Xbox", via gesture, voice or controller on their Xbox 360 consoles.
Masters in education, good experience in other districts, just moved to the area, you may be a good candidate. Now, if you really want the job, go out and buy some Microsoft products, and then we'll give you a shot. You should also probably make sure you have created a rich and carefully crafted demographic footprint on each of the incumbent cloud surveillance networks:
Well, in addition to Teach.org and redundant social media efforts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube,
Prostrate yourself before the oligarchy or be unemployed! Our nation cannot afford to have teachers who have any awareness of the value of attenuating corporate rule or pervasive surveillance! Young minds must be formed only by those who do not question the oligarchs!
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Who is going to pay for all this crap? Remember, LA Unified school district just shelled out something like a billion dollars for ipads. So there is big money to be made here.
The danger for the public is that it might not accomplish anything.
If all the promises of the technology pan out then its money well spent. If not, then its an unforgivable waste of finite public resources.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So You Want to be a Teacher? -- Time
Just one in a series of videos about the realities of the teaching profession.
http://www.linux.com/news/feat...
As much fun as listening to the motivational bullhorns and louspeakers on some Norh-Korean style dictatorship. Primitive, totalitarian, imposing, ... well, that's all out 'marketing' brainwashing. Turn off the cellphones, find a place without mikes, cameras, satellites, or bugs - and ask any geezer who had go through that style of prison-camp 'society'.
This is just another instance of oligarchs taking over government functions "because they know better". There is also more profit in it.
The oligarchs and their Republican enablers have been transferring public assets and functions to the private sector for years and the result is fewer public resources and higher costs for everyone.
All hail the Oligarchs! Capitalism triumphs!
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
You missed the point. Yes Mr. Gates gives money away, but he also links those donations to schemes to make more money, it seems obvious to me.
At least with business interest, chances are actual education is intended.
"Microsoft created probono interactive advertisements .. Microsoft leveraged their Windows 8 platform to provide a unique experience to consumer"
Are you taking the piss, I can remember when slashdot was a real technology site ...
Giving all their personal information to the company.
All what personal information? The only thing Apple has that isn't publicly available for me is my credit card number. They dont have anything else I would care about.
Develop an app of your own? Too bad unless you want to give 30% to Apple and be under their control for whether you can even publish it or not.
Or just develop it for an open platform like HTML5 web app, Android, various Linux distros, OSX or Windows (yes even Windows, so long as it isnt a ModernUI app). Nobody says you need to develop for iOS, in fact it is the minority among those other players.
Why can't we just teach openness, freedom, and having control over your own computing experience?
Because 99% of people dont give a shit about that and dont want to deal with having to control their computing experience, it's just a tool to do a job and they dont want the added overhead of control and maintenance while anybody actually interested in that can certainly learn it on their own. People get indoctrinated into the incumbent way of doing things - such is the nature of it - and don't break out of that unless they have an interest in doing so. Suggesting everybody should have to do that just because you want them to is just demonstrating how out of touch you are.
But you know what? The beauty is you could teach that if you really wanted to!
A TRUE social internet, not the data-mined and controlled garden those companies all want us to have, so people get locked into their marketing and advertising engines, and their ecosystems.
You can do that too. You dont need to utilize corporate ad networks, you dont need to mine your visitors' data and you dont have to visit websites that do that especially given the proliferation of various ad blockers and the ease of use of HOSTS files, yet another place that even Apple and Microsoft (on their desktop platforms) provide you the ability to control your computing but is rarely used by many people in practice. You could even create and host your own site that does not do these things and monetize it with a payment gateway if you must.
Some of the Free Software community do (and do well) but those who can't do, complain. And they complain loudly about any sort of corporate competition to their interests, it isnt enough to "build it and they will come", you need to build something good and really get it out there.
Very bad idea to let private corporation mess with recruitment of teachers. Specially corporation that is known to have monopoly and will to abuse its position to stiff innovation and prevent competition by breaking standards.,,
Do we really want corporations thats main goal is increase profits to choose who gets to teach new generation of people. People that oneday need to solve problems we have created today...
Oh no! Neither MS nor Apple? What has the world come to? How are the students going to be good software consumers? They might even begin to write their own programs! Heavens, they'll al become evil hackers!
thegodmovie.com - watch it
My wife has been teaching for 32 years in downstate Illinois. One of two National Board Certified teachers in the district (meaning she meets the "Highly Qualified" standards for NCLB). She just past the $60K threshold last year (although with the supplies she buys it is still below that). We recently increased her monthly Salliemae payments so they will be paid off by retirement.
Research shows that highly effective teachers (teachers whose students regularly make more than 1 year of academic progress per school year) make a large and lasting difference in outcomes. More so than technology.
So identifying, rewarding and developing highly effective teachers should be a national priority. The economics of moving the median up for students would mean a huge gain for the economy.
As for Gates influencing our national education policy with his wealth, it shouldn't be possible. He can contribute to the discussion and do Foundation research, but that effort should be swamped by the dollars and attention the subject of education reform is getting. If he has too much influence, it just shows he is focusing on education while most of the rest of us aren't.
There are plenty of people who have just graduated high school who want to be teachers. There are plenty of people in college whose collegiate experiences inspire them to teach. The problem isn't finding teachers (or good teachers for that matter), but making sure they don't get lost in the complicated morass of certification, continuing education, and the bureaucracy of tenure. They also are, typically, willing to accept the likelihood of lower wages, but need to have proper support, small classes, and the guarantee of an good benefits and retirement plan.
Pay now or pay later. But you have to pay.
you can do **all of those things** you moron
1. raise salary
2. reduce workload
I ADVOCATE FOR BOTH
you're using teacher's own idealism to **justify paying them less**...it's bullshit and it's ruining education
you can pay more AND reduce workload!
Thank you Dave Raggett
you can still do both increase pay dramatically AND reduce workload & class size
and you can cover your ears and say "la la la" all day, but **paying teachers what they deserve** (an order of magnitude more) is the way our economy has always shown the value of a position
simple/complex is different than easy/difficult
the solution to our education woes is simple...but that doesn't mean it is easy! first we have to shut down morons like you forever!
stop denying teachers the pay they deserve in the name of doing *other* things they *also* deserve
WE...CAN...DO....BOTH
Thank you Dave Raggett
...which you have presumably invented to be able to give all these people an order of magnitude increase in salary and also to be able to fund thousands of more positions for teachers. how much might this cost do you think and where should that money come from? while we are at it with pie-in-the-sky spending why not give *everyone* an order of magnitude increase in their salary?
have you looked at executive pay or defense contract figures?
look at the tax rate on those executives...and on those military/industrial complex corps
all we have to do is take tax rates back to 1950 levels
it's a simple fix...not *easy*...it's difficult...simple but difficult...because of jerk-offs like you
Thank you Dave Raggett
Rich Republicans are the bitchiest people in human history...
they pay next to nothing in taxes and then yell and scream 'fraud!' at Pell grants or Medicare
Thank you Dave Raggett