Google Has $100 For Teachers Who Steer 20+ Children To 'Google CS First' 25
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: In what has become a holiday tradition of sorts, Google is again rewarding teachers who steer kids to Google Hour of Code lessons with $100 gift codes. "When teachers in grades 2-8 complete the Google CS First activity 'Code Your Hero' with at least 20 of their students and fill out our Classroom Rewards form," explains the DonorsChoose Help Center, "they'll receive a $100 DonorsChoose.org gift code."
According to the posted FAQ, that might work out to be about $2.50 or less per child-hour. ("We estimate that this can take up to 2 hours of class time").
For this year's Computer Science Education Week, Google has also enlisted the help of the ever-likable Chance the Rapper to get its CS First coding curriculum into classrooms, and provided a $250,000 Google.org grant to support the SocialWorks (Chance's nonprofit) and Chicago Public Schools' CS4All initiatives.
According to the posted FAQ, that might work out to be about $2.50 or less per child-hour. ("We estimate that this can take up to 2 hours of class time").
For this year's Computer Science Education Week, Google has also enlisted the help of the ever-likable Chance the Rapper to get its CS First coding curriculum into classrooms, and provided a $250,000 Google.org grant to support the SocialWorks (Chance's nonprofit) and Chicago Public Schools' CS4All initiatives.
$2.50 per child-hour? (Score:2)
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You must really be a hateful person to see negative in this. I'm sorry but the view that everyone and everything is evil is really dumb. Just because you yourself might be selfish and evil is no reason to project that on others. Live in your own bubble of evil.
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When it comes to selfish and evil, Google have pretty much proven that with their privacy invasive and targeted manipulative advertising regardless of potential for psychological harm. This with mass censorship of ideas their corporate leaders oppose, ideas that don't feed the bottom line and their purposeful attempts at the manipulation of the democratic process.
Yeah, I would definitely not trust Children with Alphabet/Google/Youtube/Doubleclick and what kind of shitty teacher sells out their students for
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Not entirely altruistic, but I'm OK with it (Score:1)
Whenever something like this comes up (large tech company offers educational programs in coding) most developers angrily rise up and complain about how they're trying to flood the market. I actually don't feel that way. Of course, they're trying to make sure they have a steady stream of fresh meat to burn out, underpay and exploit in their early 20s, that's guaranteed. But as far as intentionally diluting the market, I'm not so sure. They have had to bribe^W convince Congresspeople to expand H-1B programs t
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Indeed. I think this will eventually just die down as any hype does. There is a very limited supply of people that can write good code. Quite a few are turned away from CS studies and the IT field by bad working conditions, bad career options (and getting fired at 50) and too low wages.
And that is the only thing were something can be done. In any engineering profession, supply of _competent_ people is always somewhat lower than demand, long-term. The cost of hiring incompetent engineers is always much large
Re:Not entirely altruistic, but I'm OK with it (Score:4, Interesting)
That story isn't specific to software development. Every single kind of trade has those exact same issues. The people who make a living by selling a specific skill set will benefit from the scarcity of that skill set. They have a natural incentive to seek to limit the labor supply, because they get paid more that way. And of course every single one of them feels entitled to this, no matter how easy it may be to pick up that skill set.
On the flip side, employers don't want to pay a fortune to get work done. Why would they? They have a direct incentive to do whatever they can to increase the supply of talent, because THEY are just as interested in furthering their own profits as the tradesmen.
Everybody wants money, feels entitled to it, and hates whoever takes actions to reduce it.
My own suspicion is that, in the case of programming skills specifically, genetics plays a strong role. This is part of why the big educational pushes that the industry has been making for some time now have been met with limited success. Learning alone just isn't enough.
If they really wanted to make more computer programmers, what they really need is a breeding program. Good luck with that, though.
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They do not want more computer programmers. They want more Google-fans.
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While true, I doubt they even look at it that way at the Google from the business side. They have basically unlimited money and can attract whatever talent they want, restricting the supply of programmers is actually tougher on competitors and in par
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I know a bunch of Googlers, and they really do have a strong streak of trying to do the right thing to benefit society. It's nice to have a huge guaranteed revenue stream to count on (Google Search) to fund things that are socially good but not about making money short-term.
Re:Not entirely altruistic, but I'm OK with it (Score:4, Interesting)
"On the flip side, employers don't want to pay a fortune to get work done. Why would they? They have a direct incentive to do whatever they can to increase the supply of talent, because THEY are just as interested in furthering their own profits as the tradesmen."
I'm hoping that sometime before I retire, software development and systems engineering will merge and become a real branch of engineering. That way, there's some hope of a real profession forming around it with real barriers to entry. I'm so tired of fake-it-till-you-make-it types getting lucrative positions because they're better BS artists than people who know what they're doing.
Medicine is the ultimate example. The training is difficult and incredibly hard to even qualify for -- they select for perfect grades and a photographic memory, and even getting through it once you're in is intentionally designed to only graduate the best. In return for this academic hazing, the medical profession agrees to keep the newbie supply low and buys legislation to ensure doctors' salaries are always insanely high and will never decrease. Think about it...if there wasn't legal protection in place, United Healthcare and Blue Cross would set up "doctor bootcamps" the same way the startups are setting up coder bootcamps. That would definitely be a way to flood the market! "Learn emergency medicine and JavaScript in just 18 months!"
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> I'm hoping that sometime before I retire, software development and systems engineering will merge and become a real branch of engineering
BWAHAHA, sadly, no. :-(
Kids these days make every mistake in The Mythical Man Month [amazon.com] and then wonder why their app is slow, bloated, has a shitty UI, and takes ages to build.
They throw more money at hardware because they are:
a) too lazy to manage memory thinking the Garbage Collector will "magically" do it for them or
b) optimize their code. They are under the delusion
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This is fairly specific to the US. Outside the US, schools can graduate as many doctors as are actually qualified, so doctors get paid well but not absurdly more than other demanding professions. It's only in the US that the supply is artificially limited in order to drive up their salaries. But then, it's really only in the US that doctors are forced to go massively into debt to get trained - we have to fix that, too.
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The goal of teaching kids to code isn't that they'll all become software engineers, but that by gaining tech literacy they learn how to use computers better, learn how to solve problems logically, and learn that computers are devices that follow our instructions, not mysterious black boxes to be obeyed. They're not all going to turn into software engineers. Hopefully, there will be some kids who become great engineers because they were exposed to basic programming as a kid, and that's a good thing because t
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Seriously, if you see pure evil in this it must be the evil inside you. Think about it.
Everything can be shown to be motivated by selfishness if you yourself are selfish. There is literally nothing a person can do to make your brain think otherwise because it is evil-seeking wired.
Beware the Grey Flannel Trojan Horse (2001) (Score:2)
From Beware the Grey Flannel Trojan Horse [fno.org]: "The whole notion of 'channeling' (steering, directing, leading) runs counter to long-standing traditions of education that argue for independent thought. The minds, preferences, and brand loyalties of young students should not be for sale or for rent by those entrusted with their upbringing."
Good luck trying that in Germany. :)) (Score:2)
Google might aswell be the devil himself (No offense, Satan. I'm not saying you're Google.) here in Germany, nowadays. Especially among the older and clueless. Which is fuckin awesome. Like an old digital native's dream come true.
The parents would rip any teacher trying this a new asshole that goes up to his chin.
Wow (Score:2)
A Hundred WHOLE Dollars? Be still my wallet. How can Google, a bazillion dollar company afford to be so generous???
hahaha $100 to corrupt people! (Score:1)