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Reading, Writing, 'Rithmetic, and Blockly
theodp writes As teachers excitedly tweet about completing their summer CS Professional Development at Google and Microsoft, and kids get ready to go back to school, Code.org is inviting educators to check out their K-5 Computer Science Curriculum (beta), which is slated to launch in September (more course details). The content, Code.org notes, is a blend of online activities ("engineers from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter helped create this tutorial," footnotes explain) and 'unplugged' activities, lessons in which students can learn computing concepts with or without a computer. It's unclear if he's reviewed the material himself, but Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is grateful for the CS effort ("Thank you for teaching our students these critical skills").
Oh wait - they already know
How could they know? Guns are illegal in Chicago, hence guns don't exist in Chicago.
The first thing I saw when I got to the third course beta was a picture of three goony looking creatures, two of whom were Gates and Schmuckerberg. Seriously. Then I clicked on "Computational Thinking" and there was a message "Students use the steps of computational thinking (decompose, pattern match, abstract, algorithm) to figure out how to play a game that comes with no instructions." and a button that said Finished. Continue to next stage. I'm thinking the developers of this website might want to learn how to program before they teach others. For a real hoot, checkout what happens when you click the aforementioned button. Seriously? If this is teachning kids how to program, I'm Rip Frigging Van Winkle.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
"640 test questions ottah be enough for any student" -Gill Bates
Table-ized A.I.
They are not some benevolent, altruistic educational nonprofit. They are a special interest PAC / Think Tank / PR campaign with the sole intention of lowering the cost of engineers to business.
I first learned about computers in grade school, we did several exercises on a 'paper computer' ... cutout paper pieces representing cpu, registers, ACL, etc ... my first introduction to what seems to be embedded or machine control programming today. it was interesting, fun, logical and set the basis for how i perceive and manage systems today.
Guess that low level teaching of the basic computer vanished over the years ... I attended grade school in Michigan, USA.
It says "beta" on it and I'm already traumatized because just now they tried (again) to make me use beta. Is there a way to make them quit messing with me, or do I have to go to soylentnews?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
So you outsource the teaching of children to engineers because they are known for being good at such stuff?
How can you teach computer science basics without teaching how to think logically ?
Wont that be directly opposed to all the socialist/PC indoctrinization the rest of their 'learning' is composed of ?
Lets see how long this lasts or how far it gets.
If you carefully look at the youtube stats of the code.org angry bird tutorial you find that out of the supposedly 16 million participants only a ridiculous 5000 made it to the end and got to play the "congratulations you are done" movie. Translation: it is less likely ( 1:3000) to finish that tutorial than being hit by lightning. With an approach like this what could possibly go wrong with educating large numbers of teachers?
"Here's your grandpappy's Penthouse, kid. Knock yourself out."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.