Rupert Murdoch Won't Be Teaching Your Children To Code After All

theodp writes: Plans for Rupert Murdoch & Co. to teach your children to code just hit a bump in the road. Murdoch's News Corp. last week announced it plans to exit the education business as it announced a $371 million write-down of the investment in its Amplify education unit, which aimed to reinvent education via digital tools, tablets and curriculum reinforced with snazzy graphics. The news may help to explain why Amplify MOOC, the entity that offered online AP Computer Science A to high school students, was re-dubbed Edhesive ("online education that sticks") a couple of months ago. Tech-backed Code.org, whose $1+ million "Gold Supporters" include the James and Kathryn Murdoch-led Quadrivium Foundation, announced a partnership with Edhesive to bring CS to schools in June, around the same time Edhesive LLC was formed.

Comments

Re:MOOCs: my worst education experiences ever.

[LaurenCates]

So many of the other forum participants were from India, China, or some African country, asking for their certificate PDF even before the course had started! I mean, the course videos, assignments and exam weren't even available yet, but these people demanded that the professor leading the course send them the certificate that they had not earned right away!

I'm not sure it's a "foreign" thing.

When I was teaching, I had one student come up to me at the start of the semester asking if I would write him a recommendation (he turned out to be of the same stripe as those you described above). Gave me no indication that he was an immigrant.

What I think you're describing is someone who needs the certificate to secure something else. They put on the overconfidence front (and generally are lousy students to boot...this young man certainly was: he needed the class to get into a "real" college and let me know that when I called him out on not only writing a lousy report but copying someone else's lousy report), but they generally want the assurance of the foregone conclusion that they're just passing the "whatever" obstacle (they take the course that's "beneath" them, whether it be going to a community college or taking a MOOC course) to get to the prize.

Beats me if that's more an immigrant thing than it is a native thing, but it's hardly unique to any culture.