Harvard: Prospective CS50 AP Teachers Must cc:Microsoft On Training Applications 79
theodp writes: Did you know that Microsoft has supported Harvard in creating a new version [of its wildly-popular CS50 course] called CS50 AP, designed specifically for secondary school educators?" asks a Microsoft Born to Learn Blog post. "If you might like to teach CS50 AP (and, in turn, AP CS Principles) in your own classroom this year," Harvard informs prospective teachers, "you are cordially invited to join us at one of our teacher training workshops to be held in various locations around the country and the world!" But before applications can be successfully submitted, teachers are required to respond to the following statement, and Harvard won't take 'No' for an answer: "Our friends at Microsoft are helping us distribute the teacher support materials for this version of CS50 for secondary school teachers and students. By checking the box below, you acknowledge that we may share the data you submitted through this form with them as part of this planning process." Microsoft is certainly calling the K-12 CS education shots these days — heck, the White House even let Microsoft President Brad Smith brief reporters about plans to spend $4B in tax dollars on a new CS for All K-12 initiative before the President told taxpayers about it. By the way, the CS50 AP Wiki contains a CS50x/CS50 AP Authorization and Release form which, among other things, requires camera-shy CS50 AP students to agree to "sit in a 'no-film' zone" if they do not want photos or videos of themselves used by Harvard to promote the Microsoft-supported course."
From the agreement: "I understand that my teacher will take reasonable steps, with my cooperation, to avoid including identifiable images of me in the Recordings. I understand that I am free to opt out of the Recordings in this way, and that doing so will not affect my grade or my ability to participate in course activities. Unless I opt out of the Recordings as described above and take the steps that will be outlined by the instructor to avoid being filmed, I authorize Harvard and its designees to use the Recordings. I understand and agree that the Recordings may include my image, name, and voice. I also understand and agree that, even if I opt out of the Recordings, my spoken name and voice may be picked up by microphones outside any "no-film" zone and may be included in the Recordings.
Why are we tolerating this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Would people be okay with the idea of Exxon helping to design AP Environmental Science curriculum? Should criminal justice coursework be overseen by Smith and Wesson? Corporate sponsors don't belong in these roles but for some reason everyone throws caution to the wind when they hear "computer."
Re:Why are we tolerating this? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's irrelevant whether it's coerced or not. A major corporation is trying to gain control of education in order to promote their products and services. So the question is whether we should stand by meekly and allow this or to tell Microsoft to shove off.
CS 50 AP is a silly idea anyway. It's not really computer science and it would be better for studens to know core fundamentals about mathematics before learning computer science. We need to stop treating universities as job training mills.
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You could easily do the same thing with Jupyter Notebooks and they're free.
It's trivial to spin up a JupyterHub instance on an old machine. It exports to PDF, HTML, LaTeX and Markdown.
If you don't want to do it Microsoft's way don't take their money and do it your own.
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We need to stop treating universities as job training mills.
Then perhaps we should stop acting like university degrees are required for jobs.
And further we should stop promoting government (tax) funded university education. Those who can do better without a university education shouldn't be paying for those who want it.
Re:Why are we tolerating this? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are already schools oriented towards being job mills. They're called trade schools. For engineering related stuff these would be IIT, DeVry, and so on. And trade schools can produce graduates who are very good and who continue their learning process after graduation. However these are not the same as universities. A university should be preparing the student for a lifetime in a particular field, whereas a trade school prepares the student for their first few entry level jobs only. A university is overkill for a technician whereas a trade school underprepares people for a full engineering mid level job.
Of course there are university graduates who are incompetent as well as made trade school graduates who are top notch. The difference is that the former didn't make good use of their education while the latter excelled above and beyond their education.
A university education is absolutely not needed for many jobs; street cleaning, traffic cop, board rework technician, IT help desk, etc. But if you have a knowledge worker then it makes sense to have someone who's been given knowlege and trained in how to learn. A lot of companies outsource the lower level jobs to places in the third world; not because those workers necessarily have a better education but because they're cheap. So skipping out on good education means competing directly against those workers. If the US wants to remain a top country with the best knowledge workers then it needs to encourage high level education instead of just enough to get a basic job.
There are people who can do without a university education and still succeed, but everyone can do better with one.
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There are people who can do without a university education and still succeed, but everyone can do better with one.
I've known several people who received university degrees, and they didn't use their skills in their eventual job at all. They felt like they "should" have gone to college even though they had no specific career plans, and maybe they'd figure out something... but that didn't really improve by the time they finished.
Even if the university experience marginally helps them at their current job, it wasn't nearly worth the cost.
Also, you can't outsource many jobs easily. Particularly jobs that require you to b
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A university should be preparing the student for a lifetime in a particular field
Then you'd need to ratchet up the difficulty a notch or two and have no qualms about kicking out the people who can't keep up (or just not admitting them to begin with) or just want to party. Given the high and growing cost of a college education, subsidizing something that often turns out to be of no real value to so many individuals (either because they've done nothing with their degree or as you mentioned didn't make good use of their education) is absurd.
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We need to stop treating universities as job training mills.
Oh yes, because no one goes to university to improve their chances of being employed once they leave university.
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I'm thinking one can't opt out of contributing to that $4.1B CS For All budget item, the need for which arose after Microsoft suggested producing a national CS K-12 crisis [slashdot.org] to advance their workforce agenda. :-)
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It doesn't take a gun to force someone to do something. The fact that a corporation is forcing public schools to segregate students based on if they want to be photographed for advertisement is disturbing in itself. Take the larger privacy implications into account and we have to wonder if we are slowly turning our educational system into a corporate hegemony.
Re:Why are we tolerating this? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's kind of like saying hotels are forcing non smokers into non-smoking rooms.
No, it isn't.
You may or may not want to smoke. Hotels don't give you a smoking room unless you request otherwise. Instead, they ask your preference without presuming what it is.
The course presumes you want to be photographed unless you indicate otherwise. That's wrong on its own. But what's worse is the presumption that course participants would be used to promote a private company at all. Any such promotion agreement should be strictly between the company and the participants, and should be decoupled entirely from the course and the institution that is hosting it.
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So don't complain about anything until there's guns to people's heads? That's your position?
Let me guess, when things get so bad that there's absolutely no ugly way out, you're the first to respond with "You should have said something long ago, before it got this bad!"
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If you don't like it, don't participate. Nobody is putting a gun to anyone's head. It's really that simple.
Simple and wrong.
The "if you don't like X, then don't have anything to do with X" argument has rarely been an effective solution to anything. It's particularly ineffective when X has a pernicious effect on things that matter.
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Exactly. It used to be Apple who dictated what was taught in high school computer science courses, but it looks like they let Microsoft take over.
If you don't like it, get your big tech company to throw some money at lobbyists and fix the problem. Facebook is already working on the younger generation of future coders.
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>> Apple who dictated what was taught in high school computer science courses
Given their direction on Swift 2, I wouldn't let Apple within 100 yards of anyone who wanted a job in CS someday. (http://www.infoworld.com/article/3027100/mobile-development/seven-swift-2-enhancements-every-ios-developer-will-love.html)
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Okay, totally off-topic, but I'll bite.
What makes Swift 2 the Black Death of programming languages?
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Re:Why are we tolerating this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. It used to be Apple who dictated what was taught in high school computer science courses, but it looks like they let Microsoft take over.
Umm, yes and no.
I did the teaching thing for a living (HS and Collegiate-level CS, no less), and here's how it really works:
Option A: Write your own curriculum, your own syllabus, your own tests, your own labs, select your own textbooks (within an approved list, from state-approved vendors), insure your classroom and your school both have the budget for it (doubly so if any of it relies on equipment such as desktops, servers, networking gear, etc), insure that it all tracks with state education standards for your subject matter and level of competence, get it all approved by the state office of education... And then maybe next year you can start teaching it, but note that you'll have to do it all over again as soon as newer information and technologies come out. Also note that anyone in the bureaucratic morass can (and sometimes often will) happily veto the whole thing with a long list of objections, causing you to spend countless hours and metric tons of paper in justifying it.
--or--
Option B: Have $megacorp arrive and provide all the syllabi, curricula, tests, labs, and in some cases even the textbooks - for free! Hell, they'll even give you a massive discount on the equipment. The state board of education (never known for their technical acumen) has already rubber-stamped approval for it, and as a bonus you, your managers, your principals/administrators... they're all salivating at the massive PR (and potential career) boost they'll get when they present it to the public with lots of pomp and circumstance. Oh, and the school board will just love you to death - maybe even give you a plaque for your wall at home, calling you an 'innovator' or suchlike.
Now... throw in the fact that most (not all, but disturbingly "most") teachers are career-oriented folks (to be too charitable about it), and they are inherently averse to either rocking the boat, or to doing more work than they already do.
So, in light of those facts, guess which option gets chosen the most? Note that I've done Option A [linuxtoday.com], and I gotta tell you; it's not the class-side grunt work that's so intensive - it's the bureaucracy that sucks down all your time (and your soul, etc). But then, a labor of love is exactly that, so I don't regret it... however, way too may teachers out there, sadly, think differently on the subject.
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It already exists. You have the misconception of thinking that "CS" is still a college required career. It's a skilled trade. Ford did (and still does) have a hand in helping to craft automotive repair tech courses.
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Would you allow Ford to design an automotive engineering course that danced around the actual principles of operation of internal combustion engines (2-stroke/4-stroke, carburetor/fuel injector, petrol/diesel, timing, intake/exhaust systems, operation of turbochargers for diesel, etc) the left the student out of their depth when presented with a Mitsubishi or Volvo design?
That being said, I always bring my Ford car to the Ford dealership because all the independent garages around here are incompetent scumba
Re:Why are we tolerating this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would people be okay with the idea of Exxon helping to design AP Environmental Science curriculum?
No, because they have a vested interest obfuscating the issue, and a history of doing so in the past. Designing a curriculum in geology, or mineral extraction? Why not, they probably have quite a bit to offer, here.
Should criminal justice coursework be overseen by Smith and Wesson?
No, because they're a manufacturer of precision machined products, and have no core competency in law. I'm sure, though,they their engineers and machinists would do a hell of a job in educating those on the vo/tech side of the high school educational path.
Should Microsoft be able to contribute to CSCI educational coursework? (I'm putting words in your mouth, for the sake of argument)
Yes, yes, they should. Apple, Google, Cisco, HP or whatever they're calling themselves these days, etc, yes, they can absolutely play an important role, here.
Corporate sponsors don't belong in these roles
Now we come to the crux of the issue. Despite my statements above, the idea that Microsoft should be interesting themselves in the AP process to the point where they must be included on all correspondence is absolutely ridiculous and should NOT be allowed. "Giving back" by devoting some of the talent an experience these companies have at their disposal? Yes, absolutely. Being part of the "process?" Fuck no.
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This, and I'd go a couple further.
In a value-neutral way, what's basically happening here is that Microsoft is looking to make the education system produce graduates who can work in IT fields.
However, in a less value-neutral way, they're looking to socialize vocational training for future employees by making the educational system turn out graduates skilled in what they believe is useful in their business.
You could possibly view this as a positive -- schools are open to all kinds of criticism for teaching s
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So if the experts in a given field shouldn't be designing courses, then who the fuck should be?!
Setting aside your false implication that a software tool vendor (aka Office) is an "expert" in educational curriculum development, it should be done by people, preferably experts, who do so without abrogating their rights to a third party corporate entity. Since the MAJORITY of funding comes from the tax payer, I propose a random professor from the field, from each public university submits a draft. The widely agreed parts can be approved by consensus and variations of the themes from more contentious port
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-1, moot
Microsoft is not participating in the design of public school AP curricula. Microsoft is participating in the design of the teacher training conducted by another private entity.
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It's not, and they don't. This is purely for the teachers interested in presenting CS50 AP to their students - that is all.
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This is purely for the teachers interested in presenting CS50 AP to their students - that is all.
From TFS:
By the way, the CS50 AP Wiki contains a CS50x/CS50 AP Authorization and Release form which, among other things, requires camera-shy CS50 AP students to agree to "sit in a 'no-film' zone" if they do not want photos or videos of themselves used by Harvard to promote the Microsoft-supported course.
From the agreement: "I understand that my teacher will take reasonable steps, with my cooperation, to avoid including identifiable images of me in the Recordings. I understand that I am free to opt out of the Recordings in this way, and that doing so will not affect my grade or my ability to participate in course activities. Unless I opt out of the Recordings as described above and take the steps that will be outlined by the instructor to avoid being filmed, I authorize Harvard and its designees to use the Recordings. I understand and agree that the Recordings may include my image, name, and voice. I also understand and agree that, even if I opt out of the Recordings, my spoken name and voice may be picked up by microphones outside any "no-film" zone and may be included in the Recordings.
Also, the form (complete with legalese) linked from the summary has a signature block for the Student (or Parent/Guardian). I guess it's Ok as long as they don't steal the kids' candy.
People still care about Havard? (Score:3)
Really? When is this silliness going to end?
They aren't there to teach you, they are there to take your money and make a profit.
Stop pretending this organizations are about education and you'll stop looking stupid when you talk about them. American Universities are profit centers, not educational facilities. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but in America, thats the case.
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So? (Score:1)
What are you, twelve years old? Harvard is a private institution that can do what it wants. And trust me, the student body and faculty are MORE than capable of fighting back against policies they don't like.
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What are you, twelve years old? Harvard is a private institution that can do what it wants. And trust me, the student body and faculty are MORE than capable of fighting back against policies they don't like.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/why-is-harvard-subsidized-by-the-taxpayer/
Except they get federal funding. Historically and still to this day. And tax subsidies and abatements. And preferential tax treatment on their investment income.
Other than that though sure. I'd like to open a chain of private toll roads, focusing on bridges acquisition. Once I do, its private, and I should be able to say "No Blacks, Jews or A-Rabs." because it's private right? OR maybe a private security firm that goes around murderi
More Proof Harvard is Bullshit (Score:2)
Harvard can't make money because its education quality is falling through the floor, thus they have to rely upon partnering with large corporations.
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"Um, and you know this how? You are a college flunk out yourself."
It's funny when you can't even get the details right.
So let's correct them for you.
First, it's high school dropout. Katrina hit and fucked our home business over. I took survival in comfort over living in the streets, and used my prior work experience starting at age 15 as an apprenticed Oriental chef to land work.
Second, I continued my education on my own. I did everything from hacking college accounts to get access to library materials and
CS50 is a great course (Score:5, Informative)
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Pay their taxes (Score:3)
No Film Zone (Score:3)
I wouldn't read too much into the "no film zone". All Harvard classes that are recorded have that clause, and have had it for at least 10 years. Maybe longer, but I can't remember that far back.