An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Last month, as students at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Ontario, Canada, began studying for their midterm exams, many of them had to memorize not just the content on their tests, but a complex set of instructions for how to take them. The school has a student body of nearly 18,500 undergraduates, and is one of many universities that have increasingly turned to exam proctoring software to catch supposed cheaters. It has a contract with Respondus, one of the many exam proctoring companies offering software designed to monitor students while they take tests by tracking head and eye movements, mouse clicks, and more. This type of surveillance has become the new norm for tens of thousands of students around the world, who -- forced to study remotely as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, often while paying full tuition -- are subjected to programs that a growing body of critics say are discriminatory and highly invasive.

Like its competitors in the exam surveillance industry, Respondus uses a combination of facial detection, eye tracking, and algorithms that measure "anomalies" in metrics like head movement, mouse clicks, and scrolling rates to flag students exhibiting behavior that differs from the class norm. These programs also often require students to do 360-degree webcam scans of the rooms in which they're testing to ensure they don't have any illicit learning material in sight.

Some of the requirements for Wilfrid Laurier students went even further. In exam instructions distributed to students, one WLU professor wrote that anyone who wished to use foam noise-cancelling ear plugs must "in plain view of your webcam place the ear plugs on your desk and use a hard object to hit each ear plug before putting it in your ear -- if they are indeed just foam ear plugs they will not be harmed." Other instructors required students to buy hand mirrors and hold them up to their webcams prior to beginning a test to ensure they hadn't written anything on the webcam. Another professor told students, "DO NOT allow others in your home to use the internet while you are completing your test," presumably because proctoring software can be a nightmare for students without reliable high-speed internet access. That same exam guide also said that students should not sit in front of pictures or posters that contain animal faces because the software might flag them as suspicious for having another person in the room -- not a reassuring requirement, given that one of the chief criticisms of exam proctoring software is that they often fail to recognize students with darker skin tones. One of the main reasons why this is such an issue is because most universities have chosen not to set standards for how instructors should use proctoring software.

"As a result, campuses that use the programs are increasingly seeing students voice their anger not just with the programs themselves, but with how individual professors use them," reports Motherboard. Students also aren't accepting the excuse universities and proctoring software companies often make: that professors decide how to use the tools, so they're the ones responsible for the harms they cause.

theodp writes: The upcoming "Hack the Classroom: STEM Edition," Microsoft explains, "is a [3-day] free virtual event series designed for K-12 educators, parents, and guardians. The sessions will feature resources and tutorials to help educators support students in learning future-ready skills. These lessons can be easily incorporated into classroom curriculum while preparing for this year's Hour of Code event -- a global effort to teach and demystify coding, during Computer Science Education Week, December 7-13."

Microsoft has boasted that the Hour of Code enabled it to reach tens of millions of schoolchildren each year with its drag-and-drop Minecraft-themed tutorials. New for middle and high schoolers this year is the Minecraft Python Hour of Code, which presumably taps into the just-released Python Content for Minecraft: Education Edition (sample Python 101 Lesson). The Hour of Code is run by Microsoft-funded Code.org, whose Board of Directors include Microsoft President Brad Smith.

Appearing on ABC, former Chicago Mayor and Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on Friday volunteered some suggestions for an economic recovery plan that America's next president could implement. "One of the things we've got to do to rebuild, mainly on infrastructure," he begins, before switching to additional ideas for also offering a more promising future to laid-off retail workers by trying to train them for better jobs. "There's going to be people like at JCPenney and other retail — those jobs aren't coming back. Give them the tools..."

One such possible job he offered as an example? Computer programming. "Six months, you're going to become a computer coder. We'll pay for it.... we need to give them a lifeline to what's the next chapter." He believes lots of people would be interested. Although before any of that, Rahm stressed, "The first part of the stimulus is creating a floor so the economy doesn't sink any more. You can't get an economy growing if states and companies are laying people off."

While computer programming was apparently meant as just one example of possible jobs training programs, this appears to have been twisted into claims that Rahm Emanuel believes millions of laid off retail workers should become computer programmers.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp does point out that Emanuel has held a long-standing faith in the potential of computer science education. ("Before leaving office, Emanuel worked to make Computer Science a high school graduation requirement beginning with the Class of 2020, although the Chicago Public Schools waived the requirement this year, citing the pandemic.") But is that also one possible solution for older generations who didn't receive computer science training in high school?

What do Slashdot's readers think? Leave your own thoughts in the comments. Should the retraining programs offered to laid-off retail workers include computer programming?

The night before America's election, Fast Company reported: On the internet, we're subject to hidden A/B tests all the time, but this one was also part of a political weapon: a multimillion-dollar tool kit built by a team of Facebook vets, data nerds, and computational social scientists determined to defeat Donald Trump. The goal is to use microtargeted ads, follow-up surveys, and an unparalleled data set to win over key electorates in a few critical states: the low-education voters who unexpectedly came out in droves or stayed home last time, the voters who could decide another monumental election. By this spring, the project, code named Barometer, appeared to be paying off. During a two-month period, the data scientists found that showing certain Facebook ads to certain possible Trump voters lowered their approval of the president by 3.6%...

"We've been able to really understand how to communicate with folks who have lower levels of political knowledge, who tend to be ignored by the political process," says James Barnes, a data and ads expert at the all-digital progressive nonprofit Acronym, who helped build Barometer. This is familiar territory: Barnes spent years on Facebook's ads team, and in 2016 was the "embed" who helped the Trump campaign take Facebook by storm. Last year, he left Facebook and resolved to use his battle-tested tactics to take down his former client. "We have found ways to find the right news to put in front of them, and we found ways to understand what works and doesn't," Barnes says. "And if you combine all those things together, you get a really effective approach, and that's what we're doing...."

By the election it promises to have spent $75 million on Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, Hulu, Roku, Viacom, Pandora, and anywhere else valuable voters might be found... Barnes had been a Republican all his life, but he did not like Trump; he says he ended up voting for Clinton. The election, and his role in it, left him unsettled, and he left Facebook's political ads team to work with the company's commercial clients... In the wake of Trump's election and its aftermath, Barnes helped Facebook develop some of its election integrity initiatives (one of Facebook's moves was to stop embedding employees like him inside campaigns) and even sat down for lengthy interviews with the Securities and Exchange Commission and with then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Last year, after some soul-searching, some of it in Peru, Barnes registered as a Democrat, left Facebook, and began working on a way to fight Trump... Acronym and a political action committee, Pacronym, were founded in 2017 by Democratic strategist Tara McGowan, in an effort to counter Trump's online spending advantage and what The New Yorker called his Facebook juggernaut...

For Barnes, Acronym's aggressive approach to Facebook, and Barometer's very existence, isn't just personal, but relates to his former employer: Facebook hasn't only failed to effectively police misinformation and disinformation, but helped accelerate it... But while Barnes is using some of the weapons that helped Trump, he's at pains to emphasize that, unlike the other side, Acronym's artillery is simply "the facts."
The PAC's donors include Laurene Powell Jobs, Steven Spielberg, venture capitalists Reid Hoffman and Michael Moritz, and (according to the Wall Street Journal) Facebook's former product officer, Chris Cox (who is also an informal adviser.)

But in addition, the group "can access an unprecedented pool of state voter files and personal information: everything from your purchasing patterns to your social media posts to your church, layered with AI-built scores that predict your traits..."

On planet K2-141b, oceans are made of molten lava, winds reach supersonic speeds and rain is made of rocks. "Scientists have referred to the bizarre, hellish exoplanet as one of the most 'extreme' ever discovered," reports CBS News. From the report: According to a new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, scientists from McGill University, York University and the Indian Institute of Science Education have uncovered details of one of the newest "lava planets" -- a world that so closely orbits its host star that much of it is composed of flowing lava oceans. Scientists found the atmosphere and weather cycle of K2-141b to be particularly bizarre. The Earth-sized exoplanet appears to have a surface, ocean and atmosphere all made of the same ingredients: rocks.

While analyzing the planet's illumination pattern, scientists found that about two-thirds of the planet experiences perpetual daylight. K2-141b's close proximity to its star gravitationally locks it in place -- meaning the same side always faces the star. This scorching hot part of the planet reaches temperatures of over 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit. It's hot enough to not only melt rocks, but also vaporize them, creating a thin, inhospitable atmosphere. The rest of the planet is cloaked in never-ending darkness, reaching frigid temperatures of negative 328 degrees Fahrenheit.

A series of tweets by one Miami University student that were critical of a proctoring software company have been hidden by Twitter after the company filed a copyright takedown notice. TechCrunch reports: Erik Johnson, a student who works as a security researcher on the side, posted a lengthy tweet thread in early September about Proctorio, an Arizona-based software company that several U.S. schools -- including his own -- use to monitor students who are taking their exams remotely. But six weeks later, Johnson received an email from Twitter saying three of those tweets had been removed from his account in response to a request by Proctorio filed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Proctorio, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, says its proctoring software is privacy friendly. Students are required to install its Chrome extension before taking a test, which the company says students can remove once they're done. Unlike desktop software, most Chrome extensions can be easily downloaded and their source code viewed and examined. Johnson did this and tweeted his findings. Three of those tweets described under what circumstances Proctorio would "terminate" a student's exam if it detected signs of potential cheating -- such as if a student "switched networks" or if "abnormal clicking" and "eye movements" were detected. The tweets also included a link to snippets of code found in Proctorio's Chrome extension, which Johnson posted to code-sharing site Pastebin. Those three tweets are no longer accessible on Twitter after Proctorio filed its takedown notices. The code shared on Pastebin is also no longer accessible, nor is a copy of the page available from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which said the web address had been "excluded." Proctorio emailed TechCrunch a statement through its crisis communications firm Edelman, claiming Johnson "violated Proctorio's exclusive rights by copying and posting extracts from Proctorio's software code on his Twitter account," and in response, Proctorio filed the DMCA takedown request "to ask that the content be removed and Twitter removed it."

"Mr. Johnson's claim that he has the right to reproduce the code because he was able to download it is simply not true. Regardless of his ability to download the files, they remain protected under the Copyright Act. Also, had Mr. Johnson looked at the files he downloaded, he would have seen the multiple copyright notices in the header of each file that state expressly that the code is owned by Proctorio and that 'unauthorized reproduction, display, modification, or distribution of this software, or any portion of it, may result in severe civil and criminal penalties, and will be prosecuted to the full extent permitted by law.' His reproduction of that code violated Proctorio's rights, which is why Proctorio asked Twitter to remove it," said Edelman's senior vice president Andy Lutzky, on behalf of Proctorio.

In Shanghai's latest effort to preserve historic structures, engineers have relocated an 85-year-old, five-story building in its entirety using new technology dubbed the "walking machine." CNN reports: [E]ngineers attached nearly 200 mobile supports under the five-story building, according to Lan Wuji, chief technical supervisor of the project. The supports act like robotic legs. They're split into two groups which alternately rise up and down, imitating the human stride. Attached sensors help control how the building moves forward, said Lan, whose company Shanghai Evolution Shift developed the new technology in 2018. "It's like giving the building crutches so it can stand up and then walk," he said. A timelapse shot by the company shows the school inching laboriously along, one tiny step at a time.

According to a statement from the Huangpu district government, the Lagena Primary School was constructed in 1935 by the municipal board of Shanghai's former French Concession. It was moved in order to make space for a new commercial and office complex, which will be completed by 2023. Workers had to first dig around the building to install the 198 mobile supports in the spaces underneath, Lan explained. After the pillars of the building were truncated, the robotic "legs" were then extended upward, lifting the building before moving forward.

Over the course of 18 days, the building was rotated 21 degrees and moved 62 meters (203 feet) away to its new location. The relocation was completed on October 15, with the old school building set to become a center for heritage protection and cultural education. The project marks the first time this "walking machine" method has been used in Shanghai to relocate a historical building, the government statement said.

ByteDance on Thursday unveiled its first consumer hardware product, a smart light lamp with a display and camera, that it says is part of its education technology portfolio as the Chinese internet giant continues to expand to categories beyond social video. From a report: The Dali smart lamp features a display, camera, and a built-in digital assistant. The Dali smart lamp, which starts at $119, is aimed at school-going children who can use the device to finish their homework, ByteDance said at a press conference. The camera will enable parents to tutor their kids and check in remotely via a mobile app.

About half of Americans on both sides of the aisle back the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against Google, while fewer than a third oppose it, according to a new poll from progressive groups Demand Progress and Data for Progress shared exclusively with Axios. From a report: There's a growing pile of evidence that regulatory action against Big Tech has bipartisan support, as state and federal antitrust action circles companies like Google and Facebook. While there are many party-line splits on tech policy issues like content moderation, privacy and misinformation, more policymakers and average Americans than ever agree tech is too big and powerful. Winning antitrust suits represents a massive lift for the government and passing new antitrust legislation is hard. In an online survey of 979 likely voters polled by Demand Progress and the Demand Progress Education Fund from October 24-25 (with a margin of error of +-3.1 percentage points), 48% said they strongly or somewhat support the DOJ's lawsuit. 32% strongly or somewhat oppose it. The numbers were fairly consistent across both parties, with 52% of Republicans supporting the suit, compared to 49% of Democrats. 26% of Republicans polled opposed it, while 32% of Democrats did.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The first requests that upended Seesaw, a popular classroom app, came in January from teachers and education officials abroad. Their schools were shutting down because of the coronavirus, and they urgently wanted the app adjusted for remote learning. The company figured it could do that with a single short hackathon project. "We were so naive," said Emily Voigtlander Seliger, a Seesaw product manager. Weeks later, reality hit: The virus spread to the United States, where more of the app's users are. Seesaw had been designed for students in a classroom to submit an audio comment or a digital drawing after a lesson. But thousands of teachers suddenly wanted it to work as a full-featured home learning tool. Rather than using Seesaw for a couple of assignments a week, they were using it for hours each day. It seemed like every start-up's dream: racing to keep up with demand from people desperate for your app. And in many ways, that has worked out well for Seesaw, a San Francisco company. The number of student posts on its app increased tenfold from February to May, Seesaw says, and the paid customer base has tripled from last year. The app is now used in more than three-quarters of American schools, including big districts like Dallas and Los Angeles.

[...] But Seesaw's experience also shows the kinds of hurdles that a company must jump in such extreme circumstances, going through years' worth of growing pains in a few months. Other digital education products, like Zoom and Google Classroom, experienced similar growth spurts and ran into their own problems -- such as unwelcome strangers who dropped into those early weeks of Zoom school. But they are public companies with resources to spare. Seesaw had just 60 employees in February, when the coronavirus hit the United States, and was trying to prove that it deserved a tryout for the big leagues. Small issues that the company knew about but hadn't addressed before the pandemic became significant problems. Teachers begged for app reliability, but some changes Seesaw made for at-home use didn't always work smoothly. While Seesaw executives wanted the app to be interesting for students, it had to be streamlined enough for frazzled parents suddenly running at-home school.

America's national health agency "halted a public-service coronavirus advertising campaign funded by $250 million in taxpayer money after it offered a special vaccine deal to an unusual set of essential workers: Santa Claus performers."

The Wall Street Journal reports: As part of the plan, a top Trump administration official wanted the Santa performers to promote the benefits of a Covid-19 vaccination and, in exchange, offered them early vaccine access ahead of the general public, according to audio recordings. Those who perform as Mrs. Claus and elves also would have been included....

The decision comes as the Covid-19 spread continues to accelerate in most states, and the vaccines are unlikely to be broadly available to the public before the holiday season. The coronavirus ad effort — titled "Covid 19 Public Health and Reopening America Public Service Announcements and Advertising Campaign" — was intended to "defeat despair, inspire hope and achieve national recovery," according to a work statement reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It was to include television, radio, online and podcast announcements, starting immediately. The public-relations blitz began to fizzle after some celebrities, including actor Dennis Quaid, shied away from participating, a former White House official said, amid concerns that the campaign would be viewed as political rather than aiding public health....

[Former pharmaceutical lobbyist Alex Azar, now serving as America's Secretary of Health], has "ordered a strategic review of this public health education campaign that will be led by top public health and communications experts to determine whether the campaign serves important public health purposes," Health and Human Services officials said in a statement.
Santa's vaccines were the brainchild of Michael Caputo, a political strategist/lobbyist also appointed to America's Health and Human Services as assistant secretary, according to the Journal. But an HHS spokesman now tells them that the Santa "collaboration will not be happening."

They also get a quote from Ric Erwin, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas — who called the news "extremely disappointing." In a 12-minute phone call in late August, Mr. Caputo told Mr. Erwin of the Santa group that vaccines would likely be approved by mid-November and distributed to front-line workers before Thanksgiving.

"If you and your colleagues are not essential workers, I don't know what is," Mr. Caputo said on the call, which was recorded by Mr. Erwin and provided to the Journal. [In audio of the call published by the Journal, Santa responds by saying "Ho ho ho ho, ho ho ho. I love you."]

"I cannot wait to tell the president," Mr. Caputo said at another point about the plan. "He's going to love this." Mr. Erwin said on the call: "Since you would be doing Santa a serious favor, Santa would definitely reciprocate."

Mr. Caputo said: "I'm in, Santa, if you're in...."

Mr. Caputo said he wanted Santas to appear at rollout events in as many as 35 cities. In exchange, he said the Santas would get an early crack at inoculation.

A surge in worldwide demand by educators for low-cost laptops has created shipment delays and pitted desperate schools against one another. Districts with deep pockets often win out. From a report: A surge in worldwide demand by educators for low-cost laptops and Chromebooks -- up to 41 percent higher than last year -- has created monthslong shipment delays and pitted desperate schools against one another. Districts with deep pockets often win out, leaving poorer ones to give out printed assignments and wait until winter for new computers to arrive. That has frustrated students around the country, especially in rural areas and communities of color, which also often lack high-speed internet access and are most likely to be on the losing end of the digital divide. In 2018, 10 million students didn't have an adequate device at home, a study by education nonprofit Common Sense Media found. That gap, with much of the country still learning remotely, could now be crippling.

"The learning loss that's taken place since March when they left, when schools closed, it'll take years to catch up," Ms. Henry said. "This could impact an entire generation of our students." Sellers are facing stunning demand from schools in countries from Germany to El Salvador, said Michael Boreham, an education technology analyst at the British company Futuresource Consulting. Japan alone is expected to order seven million devices. Global computer shipments to schools were up 24 percent from 2019 in the second quarter, Mr. Boreham said, and were projected to hit that 41 percent jump in the third quarter, which just ended. Chromebooks, web-based devices that run on software from Google and are made by an array of companies, are in particular demand because they cost less than regular laptops. That has put huge pressure on a supply chain that cobbles laptop parts from all over the world, usually assembling them in Asian factories, Mr. Boreham said. While that supply chain has slowly geared up, the spike in demand is "so far over and above what has historically been the case," said Stephen Baker, a consumer electronics analyst at the NPD Group. "The fact that we've been able to do that and there's still more demand out there, it's something you can't plan for."

Just a week after news broke that SpaceX was gifting Starlink internet service to Washington State's Emergency Management department, the state has revealed SpaceX's satellites are also benefitting the Native American Hoh Tribe. Teslarati reports: Now, with SpaceX's help and encouraged by the Washington State Military's successes, the Washington State Department of Commerce's Broadband Office has deployed Starlink terminals at the Hoh Tribe's Reserve in Forks, WA. Remote and rural, Hoh Tribe Vice Chairman Melvinjohn Ashue described trying to work with the reservation's existing communications infrastructure like "paddling up-river with a spoon" until Starlink's introduction.

Ashue was at least as effusive as [Washington State Military Department emergency telecommunications leader Richard Hall], frankly stating that "it seemed like out of nowhere, SpaceX came up and just catapulted [the Hoh Tribe] into the 21st century." They added: "Our youth are able to do education online and participate in videos. Telehealth is no longer going to be an issue, as well as telemental health. The Hoh Tribe is not alone. Many people in rural parts of [Washington] don't have high-speed internet connectivity, but we're changing that. We're helping create partnerships and find resources so every community in our state can access this critical bridge to jobs, education, healthcare and so much more."

The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded on Thursday to Louise Gluck, one of America's most celebrated poets, "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal." The award was announced at a news conference in Stockholm. From a report: Gluck, who was born in New York in 1943, has written numerous poetry collections, many of which deal with the challenges of family life and growing older. They include "The Wild Iris," for which she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993, and "Faithful and Virtuous Night," about mortality and grief, from 2014. She was named the United States' poet laureate in 2003. At the Nobel announcement, Anders Olsson, the chair of the prize-giving committee, praised her minimalist voice and especially poems that get to the heart of family life. "Louise Gluck's voice is unmistakable," he said. "It is candid and uncompromising, and it signals this poet wants to be understood." But he also said her voice was also "full of humor and biting wit."

Google today announced that G Suite is being rebranded as Google Workspace. In another nod to the Google brand, four-color icons are coming to the Workspace productivity apps: Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet. From a report: Workspace is also getting new features, like linked previews, smart chips, Doc creation in rooms, and Meet picture-in-picture. Oh, and there are new pricing tiers, so you can't say it's just a rebrand. In July, Google started integrating Chat, Meet, Docs, and the rest into Gmail. Along with the new name, that integrated experience is now generally available to all paying Workspace customers. Google is promising to bring Workspace to education, nonprofit customers, and consumers "in the coming months." "Work is no longer a physical place that we go to, necessarily," Google Workspace VP Javier Soltero said yesterday in a press briefing. "Even though we've had mobile technology in the past, and people have been able to do some work on the go. The idea that we're able to build and run organizations, governments, financial institutions, any size of business, and do it in a way that doesn't require a physical presence that was previously referred to as an office will stay with us. Not because we will never return to offices, but because I think it's important to note that work will take place everywhere in between and that those offices will take on a different role."

Nvidia has debuted the Jetson Nano 2GB, a new developer kit for students and hobbyists with an interest in robotics. ZDNet reports: The Jetson Nano 2GB is geared towards robotics enthusiasts, students, and educators that want to enter the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Nvidia says the entry-level Jetson Nano 2GB has been priced at $59 -- including online tutorials and certification -- to "make AI easily accessible for all." The Jetson Nano 2GB is a small package with a punch: not only supported by the Nvidia JetPack software development kit (SDK), the device also comes with Nvidia container runtime and a full Linux environment suitable for software development.

In addition, the Jetson Nano 2GB is powered by CUDA-X, a collection of libraries and tools designed to support AI-based features, data processing, machine learning (ML), and deployment. Nvidia says that this combination "allows developers to package their applications for Jetson with all its dependencies into a single container that is designed to work in any deployment." Free online training and certification are on offer, alongside open source projects, tutorials, and how-tos already contributed by thousands of Jetson developers. It's currently available for pre-order, but orders won't start shipping until the end of the month.

"Universities have been conscripted as the arbiters of opportunity, as the dispensers of the credentials, as the sorting machine," warns a Harvard political philosopher, in a new interview in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "The Insufferable Hubris of the Well-Credentialed."

The meritocratic hubris of elites is the conviction by those who land on top that their success is their own doing, that they have risen through a fair competition, that they therefore deserve the material benefits that the market showers upon their talents. Meritocratic hubris is the tendency of the successful to inhale too deeply of their success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way. It goes along with the tendency to look down on those less fortunate, and less credentialed, than themselves. That gives rise to the sense of humiliation and resentment of those who are left out...

Our credentialing function is beginning to crowd out our educational function. Students win admission to these places by converting their teenage years — or their parents converting their teenage years — into a stress-strewn gauntlet of meritocratic striving. That inculcates intense pressure for achievement. So even the winners in the meritocratic competition are wounded by it, because they become so accustomed to accumulating achievements and credentials, so accustomed to jumping through hoops and pleasing their parents and teachers and coaches and admissions committees, that the habit of hoop-jumping becomes difficult to break. By the time they arrive in college, many find it difficult to step back and reflect on what's worth caring about, on what they truly would love to study and learn. The habit of gathering credentials and of networking and of anticipating the next gateway in the ladder to success begins to interfere with the true reason for being in institutions of higher education, which is exploring and reflecting and questioning and seeking after one's passions.

What might we do about it? I make a proposal in the book that may get me in a lot of trouble in my neighborhood. Part of the problem is that having survived this high-pressured meritocratic gauntlet, it's almost impossible for the students who win admission not to believe that they achieved their admission as a result of their own strenuous efforts. One can hardly blame them. So I think we should gently invite students to challenge this idea. I propose that colleges and universities that have far more applicants than they have places should consider what I call a "lottery of the qualified." Over 40,000 students apply to Stanford and to Harvard for about 2,000 places. The admissions officers tell us that the majority are well-qualified. Among those, fill the first-year class through a lottery. My hunch is that the quality of discussion in our classes would in no way be impaired.

The main reason for doing this is to emphasize to students and their parents the role of luck in admission, and more broadly in success. It's not introducing luck where it doesn't already exist. To the contrary, there's an enormous amount of luck in the present system. The lottery would highlight what is already the case.

"To teach the next generation of computer scientists the basics of Python programming, Microsoft recently announced a partnership with NASA to create a series of lessons based on space exploration efforts," reports TechRepublic: Overall, the project includes three different NASA-inspired lessons... The Introduction to Python for Space Exploration lesson will provide students with "an introduction to the types of space exploration problems that Python and data science can influence." Made up of eight units in total, this module also details the upcoming Artemis lunar exploration mission.

In another learning path, students will learn to design an AI model capable of classifying different types of space rocks depicted in random photos, according to Microsoft. However, the company recommends a "basic understanding of Python for Data Science" as a prerequisite for this particular lesson. The last of the three learning paths serves as an introduction to machine learning and demonstrates ways these technologies can help assist with space exploration operations.

Students are presented real-world NASA challenges, particularly rocket launch delays, and learn how the agency can leverage machine learning to resolve the issues... Microsoft also announced partnerships with Wonder Woman 1984 and Smithsonian Learning Labs to curate five additional programming lessons for students.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A contractor who works on Google's G Suite for Higher Education/Google For Education team alleged Google discriminated and retaliated against her after she suffered a knee injury in 2019 by removing her from team meetings, in a complaint reviewed by Motherboard that was filed with the New York State Division of Human Rights on Wednesday. In a mass email sent on Wednesday to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and thousands of Google employees, a sales development representative for the vendor Vaco who works in Google's New York City office, wrote that in 2019 Google requested her employer Vaco place her on a continuous performance improvement plan for failing to attend meetings without prior warnings, write-ups, or documentation of the meetings she missed. She claims she never missed meetings with notifying her team beforehand.

According to the contractor's complaint filed with the New York State Division of Human Rights, Google discriminated against her for a "knee injury," by denying her training, giving her a disciplinary notice, denying her request for accommodation for her disability and benefits, and harassing and intimidating her. Motherboard agreed to keep the worker anonymous because she fears retaliation from future employers. "I received this [performance improvement plan] on 11/13/2019 the day before my scheduled Knee Surgery on 11/14/19," the contractor alleges in the complaint. "I believe this was intended to cause psychological harm. Google is aware that during this time I was disabled and needed surgery. Since receiving the [performance improvement plan, I have not been invited to Higher Ed Monthly meetings that included other [temps, vendors, and contractors]." [...] In the letter, she says that she plans to resign from her role on October 2, and hopes that her letter will result in meaningful changes for how Google administers performance improvement plans for TVCs and how it treats workers from marginalized groups.

theodp writes: Despite the $80+ million Google.org alone spent promoting K-12 CS, a new Google-commissioned Gallup report on students in grades 7-12 shows that "students are generally unconvinced that computer science is important for them to learn," adding that "Interventions from parents, educators, community leaders, policymakers, nonprofits and the technology industry are needed to encourage girls, Black students and Hispanic students to take computer science courses." According to the report, only 22% of boys and 9% of girls "believe it is very important to learn CS."