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K12CS.org: Microsoft, Google, Apple Identifying What 1st Graders Should Know
theodp writes: On Sunday, The Simpsons declared computer coding class the nation's latest educational fad (script). Proving Principal Skinner's point, K12CS.org on Thursday announced a New Framework to Define K-12 Computer Science Education, the collaboration of participants from a number of states (MD, CA, IN, IA, AR, UT, ID, NE, GA, WA), large school districts (NYC, Chicago, San Francisco), technology companies (Microsoft, Google, Apple), organizations (Code.org, ACM, CSTA, ISTE, MassCAN, CSNYC), and individuals (higher ed faculty, researchers, K-12 teachers, and administrators). "A steering committee initially comprised of the Computer Science Teachers Association, the Association for Computing Machinery, and [tech bankrolled and led] Code.org will oversee this project," explained a CSTA blog post. "Funding for the project will be provided by Code.org and the ACM. The framework will identify key K-12 computer science concepts and practices we expect students exiting grades 2, 5, 8, and 12 to know."
In a FAQ, K12CS.org envisions a Programming and Algorithms standard for 1st Graders that calls for the 5-year-olds to "Work collaboratively in clear roles (e.g., pair programming) to construct a problem solution of a sequence of block-based programming commands." A day before the announcement, Politico reported that K-12 CS education is expected to get a State of the Union mention this year, and that the White House and U.S. Dept. of Education have been trolling for CS success stories in conjunction with the announcement of a broad set of new commitments to CS Education in early 2016.
In a FAQ, K12CS.org envisions a Programming and Algorithms standard for 1st Graders that calls for the 5-year-olds to "Work collaboratively in clear roles (e.g., pair programming) to construct a problem solution of a sequence of block-based programming commands." A day before the announcement, Politico reported that K-12 CS education is expected to get a State of the Union mention this year, and that the White House and U.S. Dept. of Education have been trolling for CS success stories in conjunction with the announcement of a broad set of new commitments to CS Education in early 2016.
How likely is it that 20 or 30 years from now humans will even think of programming. Computers are the perfect programmers not people. We just need to get the computers started and stand back.
People need to supply the human imagination. Children up to about the age of 7 should be allowed to develop their imagination while the brain is most plastic to it. Later they can strengthen their use of rules and cold discipline and control when they become older and more cynical.
Not everyone needs to know how to code. What everyone does need to understand is information. How do I find the information I need to solve a problem? How do I discern the quality of that information? I'm I looking at different information or multiple views of the same information. How does visualizing information in different ways help us solve problems.
Why don't we let experts on education tell us what children need to know, instead of multinational corporations telling us what they want kids to know for their own personally tailored "workforce of the future"?
These kids are being set up to be wage slaves which serve the interests of the companies.
I sincerely doubt any of these companies truly gives a fuck about the future of these kids.
Five year olds don't need to learn "pair programming".
So much self-serving bullshit which has nothing at all to do with educating children.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The very same corporations that spent 40 years insisting we didnt need to code, didnt need to understand, and could subsist through blind consumer lust are reaping the rewards of a sustained campaign to maximize short term profit at the expense of corporate sustainability.
to rephrase, Johnny cant code because Sony, Microsoft, and a wealth of other conglomerates told him he didnt need to. The product would "just work" in the words of Steve Jobs, and in the spirit of the DMCA is was heresy to disassemble, to hack, to question the nature of that great gift that had been bestowed upon him by so many corporate cloistered elite. Step back 20 more years and antithetic culture to nerds and science in the United states ensured even remote interests were extinguished in favour of sportsball, gender-enforced labour roles, and the empty promise of a working class labor market. Corporations are waking up a day late and a dollar short to the party where a six-figure class of non-disposable labor is beginning to not only act as a serious liability, but a serious long term threat to the profitability of labor reforms ushered in during the carter and reagan administration.
you dont just backflip out of this in a decade with code.org and a hard fast pelvic thrust into the public education system. Charter schools have ensured little Johnny puts more thought into matching his uniform and cleaning his shoes to avoid meaningless conformist regimen than the arithmetic thats thrown at him daily by a wageslave instructor fudging test scores to save his job for another year and make it to some form of retirement. You get out of this in the long term. another 40 years of eschewing stereotypes and building the foundation of good education through building blocks you've torn down for short-term goose to the stakeholders wealth. You fund schools, stop trying to malnurish them with definitions of a tomato as a vegetable on pizza and you repeal the DMCA. whats more, you make sure that the fist school that attempts to railroad a bright young child with an electronics project into prison for terrorism gets the brunt of your reformist policies. You stop funding the political shills in local government that push this kind of FUD and you take it on the chin come tax time. Because if you dont, in another 40 years anyone who likes to code and hack isnt working for you, theyre working on their emigration plan.
Good people go to bed earlier.