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Amazon Unveils Inspire Online Education Service For Teachers and Schools (geekwire.com)
Amazon on Monday launched a new site called Amazon Inspire where K-12 teachers and schools can upload and access unlimited education and classroom resources such as videos, tests, projects, games, lesson plans with their peers across the country for free of charge. In a statement, the company said, "Our ultimate goal is for every teacher in every single subject to benefit from Amazon Inspire. When they walk into a classroom, we want every teacher to benefit from the collective knowledge, the collective insights and the experience of every single one of their peers." GeekWire reports:It's the latest in a series of moves by Amazon in the education technology market. The company acquired the TenMarks online math startup in 2014, and separately markets e-books and tablets for teachers and school districts. The company describes the project as an outgrowth of its involvement in the U.S. Department of Education's GoOpen initiative. Amazon also provides technical resources and support for the department's Learning Registry open database.
Before the data can be stored, it'll be automatically scanned to make sure it provides the minimum required amount of social justice material
It's easier for school districts to find money to build a new football field than pay for school supplies, smaller classroom sizes or computers to access unlimited content.
"Our ultimate goal is for every teacher in every single subject to benefit from Amazon Inspire
No, their ultimate goal is for every school to pay Amazon for material. Fuck you, marketing department and fuck your blatant lies.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
More free-ish crap teachers have to wade through.
I can see it now: A glorious curriculum coordinator (aka someone who has little power other than to make teacher lives annoying) sees this and now demands that teachers use this as a new resource as it will be free-ish. This will make more teachers sigh and leave the profession. To bad only the good ones leave who can actually do something else. Those that are left will be frustrated with common core even more and chunk out more crappy lessons.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
I guess propagandizing through the Washington Post isn't having the effect Bezos wanted. Time to go for the long game and start with the children.
"They" between them want to build a profile of everyone from Kindergarten to grave. They'll know how to make us jump wherever they want by poking us in just the right place, and arrest those they deem a risk at sixteen before they have a chance to commit a crime, however they decide to define crime. I wonder if it's already too late for us to opt out.
I am a Middle School computer teacher. My curriculum has been rewritten for me, starting this coming year; I had no input in the process. As a Computer Science (Computer Science is now a STEM subject) teacher at a middle school I am forbidden to teach any programming. I am also being told to stop teaching computer fundamentals ( . . . whats in the box, why is more RAM [up to a point] going to make the computer work better and how does the internet work. . . material like that)The focus, and the test, is entirely on computer applications.
All the time that was going into a core understanding of computers is to be switched to more presentations. I am not against presentations; I just feel that there is a limit to how much time we spend on it (and they do the same thing in several other classes). We will also take time from spreadsheet fundamentals (understanding what they are doing, instead of just putting stuff in cells . . . for that matter, what is a cell?). The reasoning is that, "kids like making pictures," and, "that other stuff is just too hard."
The trouble is that my students have measurable understanding and skill in the topics called for by the district that exceeds that of the other district teachers; so what to do with this? Full stop. Return to a consistent curriculum. That is the district decision, not mine. Part of the problem is that several of the teachers do not have the background to understand what I am teaching, let alone teach it.
However, the real problem is this; my students are entering the High School with significantly more knowledge than the students from the other district middle schools. I do understand the districts problem, there is a real problem when the student’s get to the High School and get mixed into a class when they “already know this stuff,” and the other students have not been exposed to it. Further, the students from my classes expect to learn, not to review what I already taught them.
As far as the programming, there is a fear that knowledge of programming could lead to, “Hacking.” As such, it is to completely stop, even in the “after school” extracurricular classes. The same with the computer fundamentals, the district decision is that “kids don’t need to know that anymore.” Fear of knowledge and the need for a consistent curriculum outweigh small, hard to scale, class improvements.
I was just, as in this week, told that what the teachers before me were doing was sufficient. Okay, of three teachers before me, one handed the kids a typing book and told them they needed to do one typing lesson a day and then they could play games. The second had so many personal problems that she didn't try to teach anything, she just let them play games. The most recent required them to produce something (yes, something was loosely defined), then they could . . . you guessed it, play games.
As such, I am told "the children don't like lectures and the parents think your class is hard." Here is the reality, the . . . I will say it . . . upper income, education driven, parents are in my corner; but the ones that don't come to meetings, they just call the district to complain, parents are unhappy because I, and I quote, "expect him [the student] to study."
The result is that I have been given, and mandated, a curriculum for next year, as far as daily lesson plans (that don't even fit my class schedule; but that is a different issue). Guess what, work is out, make it fun, make it easy is back in. I was told that my class needs to be a place where students can take a break from their important classes. As a closing statement, when the district consultant finished telling me what I was going to do next year, he said "it is true, we will have less content; but I feel we will have greater engagement."
What we need is a standard test so the districts that treat the computer class as a recess period (because the schools don't receive funding during recess periods) will be held accountable. It would also make it clear what content needs to be covered. What we have now provides the districts with no guidance or accountability.