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Should Teachers Get $100 For Steering Kids To Google's 'Hour of Code' Lesson?
Tomorrow's "Hour of Code" kick-off event features Melinda Gates, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and "multiple state governors," reports theodp -- who has some concerns.
With Microsoft boasting that nearly 70 million of its Minecraft Hour of Code sessions have been launched, and tech companies pushing coding and their products into classrooms, it's probably no surprise that the 2017 Hour of Code -- organized by tech-bankrolled Code.org -- seems to have presented a too-hard-to-resist branding opportunity for Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.
And, in what might evoke memories of Dollars for Doctors, some teachers will even be rewarded for steering their kids to Google's Hour of Code lesson. "Thanks to our friends at Google," explains crowdfunding website DonorsChoose.org, "4th-8th grade public school teachers who engage their students in a 'Create your own Google logo' Hour of Code activity can earn a $100 DonorsChoose.org gift code -- and have the opportunity to receive one of five other grand prizes (including $5,000 in DonorsChoose.org credits for your school!)."
And, in what might evoke memories of Dollars for Doctors, some teachers will even be rewarded for steering their kids to Google's Hour of Code lesson. "Thanks to our friends at Google," explains crowdfunding website DonorsChoose.org, "4th-8th grade public school teachers who engage their students in a 'Create your own Google logo' Hour of Code activity can earn a $100 DonorsChoose.org gift code -- and have the opportunity to receive one of five other grand prizes (including $5,000 in DonorsChoose.org credits for your school!)."
You're hooking teachers in for profit, possibly even pushing kids who don't want to perform this activity. If you want to get more 'coders' as this articles like to say, then advertise cool activities that they're familiar with.
Making a simple smartphone app, quick, accessible, and they can show it off. It has cool factor for tweens all over it.
Or perhaps a Tumblr or Wordpress page widgets and additions.
Some of you might cringe, but this is what's hip for kids, and honestly it's a better lure than shaking money and the promise of karma at educators.
I don't read AC
I'll be sure to direct my "students" to your thing if I can... Why shouldn't I figure out a way to game this system and make a few bucks?
Now, where did I put that old Teacher ID I used to have to get all those discounts?
I'm kidding, but you KNOW somebody will put aside their ethics and cash in if they can..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That depends. Is it okay if a pharmaceutical company gives doctors $100 for each kid they diagnose with ADHD? Is it okay if the porn business gives a teacher $100 for each student he/she convinces to go into porn?
Let's make it slightly more ambiguous. What about if doctors got $100 for 'suggesting' an ADHD diagnosis and explaining how it would help the kid get extra teaching aid? What about if the teacher got $100 not for sending a student into porn, but for getting them to audition?
Somewhere on that slope is Google. They're not there yet (paying teachers to force kids into only using Google services), but they're on the road leading there.
Keep in mind that all of the suggestions here are legal, though morally reprehensible, just like Google. And I sure as hell don't trust Google to do something allegedly altruistic after how they handled Damore.
Boys and girls: since the school district lowered my pay to basically zero in order to give more tax breaks and handouts to the ultra rich, we have had to alter the lesson plan a little bit.
First period nutrition class will be: chocolate the wonder food sponsored by Hershey.
Second period history will be: how bankers saved the old west sponsored by Wells Fargo.
Third period science will be: Why everyone who believes in global warming is an idiot sponsored by Koch industries.
Any questions?
How much should they get for selling their students into slavery to our corporate overlords? Because we're just haggling about the price.
Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
Bribing teachers in an attempt to reduce wages by saturating a relatively expensive labor market which doesn't lend itself to college-level-indoctrination programs, thereby cutting costs in the long term while reducing the spending power of anyone who isn't a hopelessly brainwashed plebeian.
I don't expect Google, Microsoft, Apple, or Amazon to not be evil, but it would be nice if they could at least be fined until they go bankrupt for trying this bullshit.
First, the teachers don't get $100... they get a code that allows them to put $100 toward a crowdfunding project at DonorsChoose. So the money goes to a classroom project somewhere. I guess a teacher could apply the code to their own crowdfunding goal, but even then, the money doesn't just go into the teacher's pocket. Oh, and they don't get $100 per student, they get $100 if they get 10 students involved.
Second, the 'grand prizes' are all classroom-oriented things, also.
I've said before, I don't have a lot of confidence that the Hour of Code is that beneficial, and it certainly can have the flavor of corporate marketing in schools, but this is not exactly a major payola scandal that we're looking at here.
Yes, it's a win-win if you think the primary purpose of grade-school is in the budget.
You'd make a great MBA.
How much funding has been spent all over the USA over the past decades trying to educate generations of very average students?
The computers, new math, new textbooks, robot kits, laptops, internet, e books, improved gui ready robot kits and experts?.
Government demanding more from tax payers, public private partnership support, private sector support to try and get passing grades.
Whats the result? Profits for people selling new products to help teachers try and educate.
What would be a better way to use all that new educational support? Test the students in math and science. Find out who can study and get good grades.
Take all that extra funding out of the school system and give it to the best students who can study.
Show some ability to pass a test well? Get a full scholarship to a really good university as that person has the ability to actually study.
All that new education funding can then be offered to a university to ensure the best students have what is needed for science and engineering.
The below average students can be kept busy been supported learning business math, vocational education, art, sport, languages, history music.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The bigger issue is that teachers don't have the things they need to teach, so they might feel the need to do this strictly for the money. The teachers aren't actually getting $100 to take home and spend how they want, they are getting $100 that will got to school supplies. School supplies they often have to buy out of their own pocket for their classrooms. If this is something that bothers you, the solution is to make sure all schools and classrooms are properly funded and supplied. Then the teachers wouldn't need to try and get $100 to spend on supplies.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
But isn't the money spendable only on charities / non profits ? Doesn't seem like the teacher gets to just pocket that
It would have been cool of the activity were something other than Google logo
Use your imagination. In a near future, students would train their own neural networks to deploy as personal robotic assistants in the real world. What could go right? Or wrong?
Dunno the details, but if I was a teacher with 6 classes of 30 students each then everydamnedone of them would be sent to this.
This seems like it would be a solved problem. Clearly, some law must some been written, I would guess, about a hundred years ago that prohibited teachers from advertising products/brands for profit to their students. I have never heard about a teacher being paid to be drinking a coke in every class, or for expounding the virtues of eating MacDonald's while studying. And I guarantee you that advertisers and many teachers would jump at that chance.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Not relevant where it goes. It's already the teacher's job to encourage kid's interest. Funneling then towards a vendor specific product is not.
The going market rate for selling out a child's future is at least $500
Yeah, heaven forbid a teacher should earn a living.
It's not a question of earning a living it is a question of professional ethics. Teachers have a job which is to provide the best possible education for the kids in their charge. If they accept a bribe like this then it calls into question their motive for getting their kids involved. Was it because it offers a great educational opportunity or was it because of the kickback?
This sort of questioning brings a profession into disrepute. How happy would you be taking a drug your doctor prescribed if you knew they got a significant financial kickback from the drug company for prescribing it?
No, historically it was done by clergy who back then were all male.
Given the wage pressures from India and China salaries are already constrained. The real losers from increased local skills will be the H1B contract companies.
It was considered a bad idea to have commercial interests set the academic agenda? It seems to me that after failing to convince school boards across the nation to add their pointless "hour of code" activity to their curriculum, Google is now going after individual teachers and overtly offering them cash to do so.
I anticipate we'll see Exxon Mobil funding an "hour of climate studies" and Monsanto funding an "hour of genetics" if this is successful.
Ken
They have to bribe people to get them interested in what they're offering?
Apparently offering it (Hour of Code) for free wasn't working, even after they got President Obama to promote the project.
Ken
It's pushing kids to code one way.
It does no such thing, it occupies exactly one hour of their lives, it teaches them to follow a pre-written script and how to follow instructions. What do you imagine the kids say at lunch after they "complete" their Hour of Code? I suspect it is something like "that was stupid - if that's what programming is, I don't want anything to do with that!"
Ken
They need to stop this. They are trying to get the children hooked into their proprietary cloud service that they wont be able to escape from years later.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
agreed and agreed, its gonna be irresistible however if there's prizemoney for the schools in it the head and misses heads will push their personnel anyway to do it in a lot of cases. I have not rtfa so i probably miss what "create a logo" has to do with coding unless they use ajax to render it or something vectorgraphics-ish but i think getting kids to understand the innards of the machine is quite important in the age of phoneboy-watch-me-swipe-so-cool, debatable but sponsored events always hold personal intrest ... better something than nothing i guess
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?