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Google-Advised Disney Cartoon Aims To Convince Preschool Girls Coding's Cool
theodp writes: Cereal and fast food companies found cartoons an effective way to market to children. Google is apparently hoping to find the same, as it teams with Disney Junior on a cartoon to help solve its computer science "pipeline" problem. The LA Times reports the tech giant worked with the children's channel on the new animated preschool series Miles From Tomorrowland, in an effort to get kids — particularly girls — interested in computer science. The program, which premieres Friday, introduces the preschool crowd to Miles Callisto, a young space adventurer, and his family — big sister (and coder extraordinaire) Loretta and their scientist parents Phoebe and Leo. Google engineers served as consultants (YouTube video) on the show. "When we did our computer science research, we found the No. 2 reason why girls in particular are not pursuing it as a career is because their perception was fairly negative and they associated it as a field for boys," said Julie Ann Crommett, Google's program manager for computer science in media. Can't wait for the episode where Google and Disney conspire to suppress Loretta's wages!
Design shit on an iPad and give it to the "boys" to knock out some C# modules to slurp back DB2 recordsets for your shitty app. You go girl.
They can't even get basic computer use or hacking correct in a $200 million movie. How are they going to accurately represent software programming in a cartoon? The computer will probably beep every time she types like some 90's movie.
Or an episode, where she sleeps with journalist to get better review for her application... after all, this is not something which should be ridiculed or condemned, right?