Slashdot Mirror
NSF Makes It Rain: $722K Award To Evaluate Microsoft-Backed TEALS
theodp writes: Microsoft has $92 billion in cash parked offshore, so it's kind of surprising to see a $722K National Science Foundation award is going towards validating the efficacy of Microsoft TEALS, the pet program of CEO Satya Nadella that sends volunteer software engineers with no teaching experience into high schools to teach kids and their teachers computer science. Among its Program Changes for 2015, TEALS said it "explicitly commits to provide a core set of curriculum materials that are complete, organized, and adaptable," which should help improve the outcome of the Developing Computer Science Pedagogical Content Knowledge through On-the-Job
Learning NSF study schools are being asked to participate in. Meanwhile, CSTUY, a volunteer organization led by experienced CS teachers (including Slashdot user zamansky), finds itself turning to Kickstarter for $25K to fund Saturday Hacking Sessions. So, as Microsoft-backed Code.org — which has also attracted NSF award money to validate its CS program — is fond of saying: What's wrong with this picture?
(To be fair to TEALS: it may have Microsoft backing, but it's not strictly a Microsoft effort, and also started out as a pure volunteer effort, as founder Kevin Wang explained earlier this year.)
that is documented independently.
I'm not sure that is a great idea. Some people are great at teaching, others are not. Someone with no teaching experience has a good probability of being on the "not" side. Even people WITH teaching experience are often poor teachers.
My concern with this is that you'll get someone with no experience that is also a poor teacher, and that person will turn the kids off to what could be an interesting field of study.
Love sees no species.
Funny thing is that I've been told that my graduates form the largest subset of all the NY area TEALS volunteers.
Meanwhile we continue to produce results but struggle to raise funds while the rich get richer.
To everyone reading this, please do check us out at cstuy.org, vet us, and draw your own conclusions.
Oh well, back to the grind.
for a Federal government program with ramifications beyond a small number of citizens.
Sure, it could flop in the sense that the recommendation is not to proceed further. But, less than $1M of Fed. taxpayer money - that's chump change for a program undertaken in good faith.
The money they earned was from outside the USA, and they have not repatriated the money, and it is not taxed until repatriated, so it is not your money (yet).
Which is kind of bullshit since US Citizens are taxed on worldwide income. Maybe that is a reason to go to Mars?
The slash article says, "a core set of curriculum materials that are complete, organized, and adaptable." As a middle school teacher I would love to get some material that meets those qualifications.
Because Computer Science is not a core subject, the teachers are left making up things as we go along. At this point I have a pretty good scheme of work that eaves the students leaving with a lot more than they came in with. However, it would be nice to have some real standards and expectations for each grade level. Meaningful material for hitting those goals would be even better; but at the present the teachers really don't have anything beyond what some department head thinks is important.
(BTW: for my classes, giving full authority to a department head, who doesn't even teach at my school or at my level, meant I got an edict of "No programming!"
Even Arduino boards got nixed. I can show them to the students; but they are not allowed to program, or play with, them. I was told, "Even you have said they are controllers. The students might learn how to control things, and we can't have that happening." I was left with ??? on my face.
Fear of "hacking," something that the administrators cannot even define, is hobbling us.)
So, provide the material, let teachers try to present it as a "standard" curriculum.
From the TEALS Volunteer FAQ: Is TEALS a Microsoft program? Yes, TEALS operates as a citizenship project within Microsoft. Microsoft is a huge supporter of computer science education, and provides most of the funding for TEALS.
Nice little tax dodge we give away to them, huh? Eh, whatever, I guess we're all okay with it. It's not like this would ever be an election issue or anything. Certainly not in this cycle
You can mod this offtopic if you want, but it was at the top of the summary, so I figure somebody is interested in the abyss where our money disappears
It's not a tax dodge if it's legal. Also, MS and all the other companies doing it are being good corporate stewards. I want that money back into the U.S. as much as anyone else. I bet it could do tremendous things for our economy. But as it stands under current tax code:
-MS brings $92 billion back to the U.S.
-IRS taxes $32 billion of it away from the in corporate tax incoming to the U.S.
-MS pays the remaining $60 billion into their stock buyback / dividends / debt program.
-IRS taxes $12 billion of it as capital gains tax from the people who receive it.
-The remaining $48 billion get spent by MS Shareholders.
-Sales Tax, Income Tax, etc eat the money on the other side.
I sympathize. With the U.S. government double and triple taxing the same money, taxing it forward and backwards, taxing it every time it changes hands - I'd leave my earnings overseas too.
And just think, when those people spend that money, it then goes to another company that pays tax. And they give it to employees who pay tax on it. And they spend it again and there more tax! It's infinite tax! The horror!
It isn't "your" money. As others have commented. It gets parked offshore due to the fact is was earned and generated in other countries and the moronic tax laws in the US that deem income earned anywhere in the world by a US Citizen/Company to be taxable in US if you bring the money back to the US. The US is one of the only countries on the planet with such insane outlook in how taxation should work and they deservedly suffer the penalty for not changing it (companies keep money OUT of the country and they invest elsewhere instead of the US).
Not to mention pushing Microsoft development tools and technologies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's not a tax dodge if it's legal.
You have the mentality of a peasant. Just because something is "legal"does not mean that it is automatically fair or correct. The law is riddled with exceptions that enrich and empower the few at the expense of everyone else. This is not an accident. These kinks in the laws are bought and paid for by the rich and powerful so they (and their heirs) can keep and expand their wealth and power.
All you have to do is look at the ever growing gap between the wealthy and every one else to see how things really work. Theoretically in an capitalistic meritocracy, rewards are related to individual effort. If you believe that and look at the increasing inequality, then you would have to conclude that the 1% are working harder and getting smarter and the 99% are slacking off and getting dumber. How likely is that?
But you are a well trained peasant who is incapable of critical thinking, so it never occurs to you that you are playing in a rigged game. You would have fit in well in the era of the divine right of kings.
Why is Snark Required?
It's a five year grant. In my field, that would be barely enough funding to hire one postdoctoral researcher and one graduate student to do the research. That's assuming no equipment or supplies are needed. Typically health insurance and overhead cost a lot.
Simon's Rock College
Not to mention pushing Microsoft development tools and technologies.
No, it is about teaching computer science and pretty much anybody in the industry can volunteer to be a part of it. But you saw "Microsoft" and immediately projected your own bias rather than actually doing any research or educating yourself about it didn't you. So from the TEALS site:
What’s the curriculum?
Our partner schools select from two TEALS courses: Intro CS (“Introduction to Computer Science Principles”) and AP CS A (“Introduction to Java Programming”).
Intro to CS uses Berkeley's Snap! visual programming language to teach CS fundamentals, not Microsoft tools.
Introduction to Java Programming? That doesn't sound very Microsoft does it. It's actually based on a text from Washington University.
Seriously it's all on the website, instead of being an ignorant naysayer spreading FUD you could actually contribute.
You have the mentality of a peasant, now let me tell you as insultingly and snarkily as I can why my shit doesn't smell bad...
I see - you don't have a CPA or a tax professional minimize your tax exposure. You donate extra funds to the IRS in your generosity. You want big businesses to replicate your attitude. Good for you!
Personally, I don't like giving up what I've earned to a government that has proven at every turn to be terribly incompetent, corrupt, and incapable of financial responsibility. I hold no ill feelings towards other people (include boards of directors) who feel the same.
You keep riding your high horse though, and prance about. Or go back to your Occutard bullshit.
I doubt they bring in the cash on their persons. If this conspiracy theory were true, these people don't need the cash here in the US. Once you've got enough money in banks across the globe in a global bank (eg. HSBC) you can take out 'loans' against that money in other countries because your global 'net worth' is billions of dollars.
People like Mr. Trump and Mr. Gates have millions if not billions of dollars in debt which is neatly managed, repackaged and sold, yet they are 'worth' billions, not because they have the cash on hand but because they have 'investments' and 'holdings' and 'real estate'.
If someone tells you a rich/famous person's 'net worth' you can easily read "socialized debt".
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Had a look at this. It's not cheap, is it? 116.13 USD from amazon.com (about 75 GBP). On amazon.co.uk it was 91.99 GBP.
Is this meant to be a book bought by individuals, or by schools?
The two volumes of Core Java, 10th Edition, will be cheaper together than this when they are published. (90.81 USD from amazon.com or 73.98 GBP from amazon.co.uk)
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
That's $4.46 per hour.
It's not a salary, it's a stipend. Intended to cover the costs incurred by the volunteers. Clue is even in the URL and mentioned multiple times on the website:
http://www.tealsk12.org/ volunteers/FAQ/
There's much more than that in the teals website.
Yes there are a lot of things, including Microsoft, Google and Facebook technologies outside of the core curriculum. But the core curriculum is very platform and vendor agnostic.