Finding the Next Generation of Teachers With "Innovative Microsoft Ads" 122
theodp (442580) writes "Back in 2011, the U.S. Dept. of Education delegated teacher recruitment to Microsoft (RFP, pdf). 'The decision to turn over TEACH to [Microsoft] Partners in Learning serves to expand the already outsized influence Gates and his fortune have on public education,' wrote the Washington Post at the time. So, 'what happens when a public institution in a democracy — the US Department of Education — outsources its goal of recruiting good teachers to a private industry?' Well, in addition to Teach.org and redundant social media efforts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube, the U.S. is now relying on 'Innovative Microsoft Advertising to Recruit the next Generation of Teachers'. From the press release, 'The Ad Council and TEACH have formed a unique outreach campaign with Microsoft's Advertising team in an effort to recruit the next generation of teachers who will drive innovation and redefine teaching in K-12 classrooms. Microsoft donated over 125 million impressions across Xbox 360, Windows 8, and MSN in order to encourage consumers to rediscover teaching through interactive ad units. This media effort is an extension of the Ad Council and TEACH's public service advertising (PSA) campaign, Make More...Throughout March, consumers were able to engage with TEACH "NUads on Xbox", via gesture, voice or controller on their Xbox 360 consoles...Most recently, Microsoft leveraged their Windows 8 platform to provide a unique experience to consumers, enabling them to navigate through a series of questions to help "discover their true passion," along with the opportunity to play challenging mind and word games, such as a word scramble and tangrams.' Check out the demo of the Windows 8 platform experience [YouTube], in which a person is advised 'You'd Make a Great Science & Tech Teacher,' on the basis of a 'Personality Quiz' consisting of five dragged-and-dropped photos."
Gates wants your children (Score:5, Insightful)
M$ shouldn't be allowed anywhere **near** children.
Gates is trying to end public education with his charter school fund.
This stupid, reductive, publicity-focued initiative is just another in an expensive line of turds M$ has dropped in the education punch bowl
Get these data-gathering, exploitative, anti-user businesses AWAY FROM OUR KIDS
As a former teacher, the problem is that people want to spend money on ***EVERYTHING*** other than what will help educate children: public schools with the highest-paid, best trained teachers in the world
Without the above, no ammount of tech, "social media" or "big data" will ever make even a dent in the problem
what MS/Apple/etc want to teach, vs what we should (Score:4, Insightful)
MS, Apple, Facebook, etc: "Buy from our stores! Don't mind being locked in! Don't dare to want freedom and openness, it's scary and not good for you!"
They all want to teach kids to grow up to be good little consumers. Spending all their money at the locked-in store. Giving all their personal information to the company. Develop an app of your own? Too bad unless you want to give 30% to Apple and be under their control for whether you can even publish it or not.
Why can't we just teach openness, freedom, and having control over your own computing experience? A TRUE social internet, not the data-mined and controlled garden those companies all want us to have, so people get locked into their marketing and advertising engines, and their ecosystems.
order of magnitude more (Score:5, Insightful)
you're splitting pennies for one of the essential functions of human existence: teachers to our young...
however we just pass MILLIONS$$$ and BILLIONS$$$ around when discussing business executive pay or defense contracts
it's absolutely ridiculous, from a free market capitalist perspective, to expect to get the best people for a fraction of what they typically can earn in other fields
Re:Gates wants your children (Score:2, Insightful)
You may want to watch the following video from an *actual* teacher...
So You Want to be a Teacher? -- Time [youtube.com]
It is only one of his "So You Want to be a Teacher" videos that give an insider's perspective on the teaching profession for those of you who think teaching is a normal 8a-4p job, I have never heard of another job that requires so much mandatory, unpaid, extra-curricular work in my life.
Just ask yourself if you would take this job for say... $60k/year.
Re:Gates wants your children (Score:1, Insightful)
How highly do you want them to be paid?
The average teacher salary in Michigan, for example, is in the 60Ks, for nine months of work (and so really in the upper 80Ks adjusted for working nine months).
Well; if you want to have decent people then the answer is much more than that. Currently the average IT person is probably earning about $100k. This is someone who can barely communicate and often doesn't have a higher degree. Certainly not someone who you would want in charge of the future of your country, educating it's children. Then let's take the hell which is being a teacher and having to deal with the demands of the various parents and the risks that some mad people are going to come around blaming you for leading the children into witchcraft. I certainly wouldn't teach in a high school for less than 50% extra on top of my normal salary. Let's say that we go for people who are more "service oriented" and actually like the idea. We still want to pay around $130k as a minimum.
If you pay peanuts you will get monkeys. If you pay $60k you will get the current lot of whiners Simply put, the market says the minimum reasonable price for a teacher is at least double what it is currently.
Sounds like MS is trying to get government money (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is going to pay for all this crap? Remember, LA Unified school district just shelled out something like a billion dollars for ipads. So there is big money to be made here.
The danger for the public is that it might not accomplish anything.
If all the promises of the technology pan out then its money well spent. If not, then its an unforgivable waste of finite public resources.
Re:Gates wants your children (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, some states pay well for teachers. However, the national average is $53k and the average for my home state (NC) has finally increased to a whopping $45k. The 2013-14 salary schedule (PDF link below) indicates that entry level teachers (0-2 years of experience) are paid only $30,800/year. In the same state, CS graduates with no experience can expect to be hired by Cisco, Fidelity, IBM, and other local big companies for no less than $60,000/year. You'll note on the same salary schedule that after 36 years of teaching experience, a NC teacher with a Bachelor's degree would still be paid only $53,180 at today's rate.
I absolutely agree that teachers are very well compensated in some states. However, it cannot be ignored that teachers are paid abysmal rates in some states. It irritates me to no end when I hear people in NC talk about how overpaid teachers are -- the same people are usually surprised to hear the reality of just how little NC teachers are actually paid.
I don't know what the solution is, and I don't think the USDoE is in a position to talk about federalizing a nation-wise education system as a solution in its current form, but what we have today is terrible broken. The differences between states is rather astounding, and to use one state's context as a justification for sweeping nation-wide policy comments is disingenuous at best.
As promised, the NC 2013-14 Salary Guide: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/fbs/finance/salary/schedules/2013-14schedules.pdf