Slashdot Mirror
Girls Take All In $50 Million Google Learn-to-Code Initiative
theodp writes: On Thursday, Google announced a $50 million initiative to inspire girls to code called Made with Code. As part of the initiative, Google said it will also be "rewarding teachers who support girls who take CS courses on Codecademy or Khan Academy." The rewards are similar to earlier coding and STEM programs run by Code.org and Google that offered lower funding or no funding at all to teachers if participation by female students was deemed unacceptable to the sponsoring organizations. The announcement is all the more intriguing in light of a Google job posting seeking a K-12 Computer Science Education Outreach Program Manager to "work closely with external leaders and company executives to influence activities that drive toward collaborative efforts to achieve major 'moonshots' in education on a global scale." Perhaps towards that end, Google recently hired the Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), who was coincidentally also a Code.org Advisory Board member. And Code.org — itself a Made With Code grantee — recently managed to lure away the ACM's Director of Public Policy to be its COO. So, are these kinds of private-public K-12 CS education initiatives (and associated NSF studies) a good idea? Some of the nation's leading CS educators sure seem to think so (video).
most of the guys currently dominating c.s. learned to code in their parents' basement when they were 12, because they wanted to. they didn't (and perhaps still don't) care about money. sure, if you give people enough money they'll do what you want them to do, but it will never be the same.
End of story.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
No, it's more like "why is ~50% of the country not pursuing IT?"
Because when people find out that anything useful in CS that nobody has ever done before requires actual math knowledge, most of them will are stumped.
Ezekiel 23:20
If you're in the world, since the beginning of time, a lot of you are not worth what you're paid.
FTFY
No, it's more like "why is ~50% of the country not pursuing IT?"
Nah; it's more like 99%. The majority of young men are also not very interested in becoming computer geeks.
The problem is that young women are being systematically discouraged from even trying to be part of the 1%. This is, of course, not restricted to just CS/IT topics.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Asian males and white males get screwed.
http://www.thisismetis.com/rub...
They aren't paying the female students, they're paying the school administrators, who may or may not be women.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF