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College Board Puts Code.org In Charge of AP CS Program
theodp writes: "The College Board," reports GeekWire, "is endorsing Code.org as a coursework and teacher training provider for its upcoming AP Computer Science Principles course and will help Code.org fund the teacher training work required to establish new computer science classes." So what's the catch? "Schools that commit to using the [new] PSAT [8/9 assessment] to identify middle school students who have potential for success in computer science will be eligible to receive curriculum, training, and funding for programming classes." The organization is bankrolled by some of tech's wealthiest leaders and their corporations. Code.org board member Brad Smith, Microsoft's General Counsel, proposed the idea of "producing a crisis" to advance Microsoft's "two-pronged" National Talent Strategy to increase K-12 CS education and the number of H-1B visas. Just months thereafter, nonprofit organizations Code.org and Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us, which is lobbying for H-1B reform, were born.
Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
And if you threw a party
Invited everyone you knew
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.
Am I supposed to be outraged at this? The summary seems to indicate so. I'm not seeing the issue. Code.org is doing a good job, and is much preferable to the alternative: which is nothing. Don't tell me the Department of Education should be doing this instead.
Typical Silicon Valley liberal bullshit. From Code.org's website (bold added for emphasis)
The College Board and Code.org will encourage schools to offer the new PSAT 8/9 assessment as a way of identifying more students, particularly those from traditionally under-represented groups, for enrollment in these new courses.
So did you think this was going to mean some CS classes for you, poor little Appalachian white boy? Well TOUGH LUCK! That oppressed girl from Grosse Pointe beats you out again.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Code.org - is it good, or is it whack?
The plan is to flood the market with low-tier half-assed teenage programmers to displace older workers. In few years labour market for skilled programmers in USA will be no different from that of Russia where they had CS in high schools for 30 years and programmers are being paid less than janitors.
The "College Board" is a private company that provides educational testing materials. Their tests are becoming irrelevant and they're scrambling to keep up.
We identify all students with "leadership potential" and put them into either a class on business administration or JROTC. What could possibly be the objection there? Don't we also have a shortage of good management? Classes on leading and managing civilians or getting a taste for being a NCO or commissioned officer would do wonders to make more young folks ready to lead others in the business world!
What's that you say? That would dilute the wages of management/make a lot of competition for upper management?
Shit, son, why do you hate America? If diluted wages are good for engineers, how much better are they for the people who lead them!
American k-12 schools have enough trouble teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. That was before 'No Child Left Behind'. Most kids are not interested in computer programming. Now, code.org, wants school districts to spend more money of their limited budget on computer programming classes. There will be unpopular, thus small, and thus expensive per student, programming classes.
There are so many foil hats in this post that my fillings are starting to hurt. Yes, America will soon be over run by brown-skinned CS programmers. OH NOEZ MY RACIAL PURITY IS IN DANGER. HILARY CLINTON IS TAKING ALL THE TREES TO MEXICO AND SELLING OUR CHILDREN TO CHINA FOR SEX SLAVES.
I am a middle school teacher and I have been using hour of code to introduce my students to "the coding mindset." However, other than the puzzle tutorial I don't see much that is1. interesting to students and 2. contains a grading metric.
Is there a teacher handbook? I do have access to the teacher site; but I really don't see much. I would like to be able to assign, and track progress in, other modules and activities; but it has the 20 activities that I can track and view in the teacher screen, then it has a more advanced set of puzzles (that I cannot track progress). Then is an "Elsa" on ice module, that, again, I cannot track progress in at the same time I am tracking the students who have not finished the basic module.
At that point it kicks the students off to Kahn academy with no teacher tracking at all.
Yes, the tracking is essential as most students will not do the activities if they do not see it, directly, translating into a grade. I have students who have had 18 weeks and have not started the first 20 activity module. They plan to find out how many points they need for a C (or D) after the final and then do only that many activities in the Hour of Code lessons.
I would like to do more with Hour of Code and Code.org; but on the teacher side of the program there isn't much there.
also thankyou for reading at -1