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Get Big Fast: "500 Club" Delivers Teachers For Code.org
theodp writes: The Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier reports that Ben Schafer, an associate CS prof at the Univ. of Northern Iowa, was recognized at Code.org's annual summit for training 570 K-12 teachers in Iowa, which is equivalent to 5.5 percent of all U.S. teachers trained. Schafer ranked No. 2 in the '500 Club', a Code.org affiliate of trainers who trained more than 500 teachers in the first year of the program. Code.org's K-5 Affiliates "deliver one-day, in-person workshops to local elementary school teachers to teach computer science in a format that's fun and accessible". A Term Sheet explains to potential Affiliates that "Code.org will pay you $50 per workshop-attendee to cover costs, including food, and to compensate you and any teaching assistants." According to a White House' Fact Sheet, Code.org plans to use $20 million in philanthropic funds to train 10,000 teachers by fall 2015 and 25,000 teachers by fall 2016. You can follow their progress on Twitter, kids!
You're going to "train" a teacher, who has no formal CS training, in ONE DAY, to teach CS?
The teachers don't "teach" programming. The kids follow an online curriculum, and the teacher just needs to know enough to help them when they get stuck. 90% of the time, that is is not because the kid doesn't understand the concepts, but because they are using the IDE wrong.
At my kids' school, they don't train all the teachers, they just teach a handful, and then rotate the kids through the computer lab. Each class spends an hour per week, and "computer guy" teaches them, along with a few parent volunteers. The normal classroom teacher is not involved, and most of them use the hour as downtime to prep future lessons.
These are 4th to 6th graders, using Scratch. I am one of the volunteer parents. It all seems to work well. They learn to solve math problems, to create graphic art, and even make simple shoot-em-up games. The kids enjoy it, and many of them can soon create their own programs. They can use the computer lab after school too, and many of them do that.