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Submission + - "The Internet's Own Boy"

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The Internet's Own Boy, the documentary about the life and death of Aaron Swartz, was appropriately released on the net as well as in theaters this weekend, and is getting good reviews from critics and audiences. Which is kind of remarkable, since the Achilles' heel of this documentary, as critic Matt Pais notes in his review, is that "everyone on the other side of this story, from the government officials who advocated for Swartz’s prosecution to Swartz’s former Reddit colleagues to folks at MIT, declined participation in the film." Still, writer/director Brian Knappenberger manages to deliver a compelling story, combining interesting footage with interviews from Swartz's parents, brothers, girlfriends, and others from his Internet projects/activism who go through the stages of joy, grief, anger, and hope that one sees from loved ones at a wake. "This remains an important David vs. Goliath story," concludes Pais, "of a remarkable brain years ahead of his age with the courage and will to fight Congress-and a system built to impede, rather than encourage, progress and common sense. The Internet’s Own Boy will upset you. As it should." And Quinn Norton, who inadvertently gave the film its title ("He was the Internet’s own boy," Quinn said after Swartz's death, "and the old world killed him."), offers some words of advice for documentary viewers: "Your ass will be in a seat watching a movie. When it is done, get up, and do something."

Submission + - Google: CS Global Impact Awards Make Teachers, Boys Beholden to Girls

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: After announcing that it's investing $50 million to get girls to code, it's no surprise that the Google Global Impact Awards for Computer Science are, for the most part, reserved for girls. Some may be surprised, however, by how Google is touting the benefits of its Promoting Introductory Computer Science for All, a no-boys-allowed initiative that sets aside $1,000,000 for DonorsChoose credits that girls who complete Codecademy and Khan Academy online programming tutorials can use to reward teachers and classmates. Google explains, "'Girls in the program have not only learned a new skill — they can also point around their classroom at exciting new materials and say, 'I earned that for our class by learning to code.'" Which may sound empowering to Google, but to others it may sound a little like how Don Draper established his dominance over Betty on Mad Men ("Birdie, what do you put in that freezer I bought you?"). One also wonders what pressure teachers might put on girls to get them to deliver close to $4,000 in DonorsChoose gift codes (e.g., 28 $100 codes + 2 $500 bonus codes). The Sun-Times notes that Chicago Public School (CPS) teachers are participating in a summer professional development program hosted by Google in its efforts to CS to schools in K-12 throughout Chicago: "The launch of CS4All [Computer Science for All], in partnership with Code.org and supported by Google, starts this fall in 60 CPS schools to try to bridge the digital divide and prepare students."

Comment CS Version of What Your 6th Grader Needs to Know? (Score 1) 113

by theodp (#47340929) Attached to: Is K-12 CS Education the Next Common Core?

Ever thumb through the series of books like "What Your Sixth Grader Needs to Know" by now-retired E. D. Hirsch, Jr. to see if your kids were missing anything "big"? With schools in NYC and Chicago rolling out K-12 CS programs starting next Fall, has anyone seen a grade-by-grade proposed syllabus or checklist along these lines showing what's going to be covered at each grade level?. BTW, Hirsch unsurprisingly supports giving Common Core the old college try, although he conceded, "Not even most prescient among us can know whether the Common Core standards will end in triumph or tragedy."

Submission + - Is K-12 CS Education the Next Common Core?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In an interview with The Washington Post's Lyndsey Layton that accompanied her report on How Bill Gates Pulled Off the Swift Common Core Revolution (the Gates Foundation doled out $233 million in grants to git-r-done), Gates denied that he has too much influence in K-12 education. Despite Gates' best efforts, however, there's been more and more pushback recently from both teachers and politicians on the standards, GeekWire's Taylor Soper reports, including a protest Friday by the Badass Teacher Association, who say Gates is ruining education. “We want to get corporations out of teaching,” explained one protester. If that's the case, the "Badasses" probably won't be too pleased to see how the K-12 CS education revolution is shaping up, fueled by a deep-pocketed alliance of Gates, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and others. Google alone has already committed $90 million to influence CS education. And well-connected Code.org, which has struck partnerships with school districts reaching over 2M U.S. students and is advising NSF-funded research related to the nation's CS 10K Project, will be conducting required professional development sessions for K-12 CS teachers out of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offices this summer in Chicago, New York City, Boston, and Seattle. So, could K-12 CS Education ("Common Code"?) become the next Common Core?

Submission + - Should Billionaire-Backed Code.org Pay Its Interns?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Code.org's Corporate and Founding Donors page reads like a Who's Who of the world's wealthiest corporations and individuals. But a job posting entitled Marketing / Communications Intern (Seattle only, part-time, unpaid, Sept-Dec) (screenshot) makes it clear that no portion of the tax-deductible donations will trickle down to the successful candidate, who will be required to put in an unpaid 10-20 hours/week "under pressure" in a "fast-paced environment" for four months "assisting marketing efforts for December’s global Hour of Code campaign, coordinating prize packages, managing partner commitments and events in databases and researching media prospects." So, does this count as one of the "high-paying jobs" provided by the computing revolution that Code.org supporters told California Governor Jerry Brown about last May in a letter touting the Hour of Code? Perhaps Code.org is just trying to be frugal — after all, it's requiring K-12 teachers from school districts in Chicago, New York City, Boston, and Seattle to report to the presumably rent-free offices of Corporate Donors Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to be re-educated on how Computer Science should be taught.

Submission + - Facebook's Tech Workforce is 15% Female, 1% Black

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Facebook is mostly white dudes, writes Valleywag's Sam Biddle, cutting to the chase of Facebook's inaugural disclosure of diversity figures. "We're serious about building a workplace that reflects a broad range of experience, thought, geography, age, background, gender, sexual orientation, language, culture and many other characteristics," said Facebook, which has a tech workforce that's 15% female and only 1% Black. By contrast, Wikipedia's Baseball Color Line article notes that "by the late 1950s, the percentage of blacks on Major League teams matched or exceeded that of the general population." So, is it surprising that the company whose stated mission is "to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected" is having problems connecting with the general population in 2014?

Submission + - K-12 CS Teachers to be Re-Educated in Google, Microsoft, Amazon Offices

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Before they can teach K-12 Computer Science next fall under partnerships their school districts struck with Code.org, teachers will be required to attend professional development over the summer. After Code.org asserted that "we don't pursue the special interests of [our tech company] donors" — which include Google, Microsoft, and Amazon — some might be surprised to see that teachers from school districts in Chicago, New York City, Boston, and Seattle will be required to report to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offices for their professional development. One imagines Google's recently-announced $50 million set-aside for girls may be the elephant in the room when high school teachers are asked to "reflect heavily on issues related to access and equity" on Google's turf!

Submission + - Computational Thinking: AP Computer Science vs AP Statistics?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "What if learning to code weren't actually the most important thing?" asks Mother Jones' Tasneem Raja. "Rather than increasing the number of kids who can crank out thousands of lines of JavaScript, we first need to boost the number who understand what code can do." Computational thinking, Raja explains, is what really matters. So, while Google is spending another $50 million (on top of an earlier $40 million) and pulling out all the stops in an effort to convince girls that code and AP Computer Science is a big deal, could AP Statistics actually be a better way to teach computational thinking to college credit-seeking high school students? Not only did AP Statistics enrollment surge as AP CS flat-lined, it was embraced equally by girls and boys. Statistics also offers plenty of coding opportunities to boot. And it teaches one how to correctly analyze AP CS enrollment data!

Submission + - Girls Take All in $50 Million Google Learn-to-Code Initiative

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: On Thursday, Google announced a $50 million initiative to inspire girls to code called Made with Code. As part of the initiative, Google said it will also be "rewarding teachers who support girls who take CS courses on Codecademy or Khan Academy." The rewards are similar to earlier coding and STEM programs run by Code.org and Google that offered lower funding or no funding at all to teachers if participation by female students was deemed unacceptable to the sponsoring organizations. The announcement is all the more intriguing in light of a Google job posting seeking a K-12 Computer Science Education Outreach Program Manager to "work closely with external leaders and company executives to influence activities that drive toward collaborative efforts to achieve major 'moonshots' in education on a global scale." Perhaps towards that end, Google recently hired the Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), who was coincidentally also a Code.org Advisory Board member. And Code.org — itself a Made With Code grantee — recently managed to lure away the ACM's Director of Public Policy to be its COO. So, are these kinds of private-public K-12 CS education initiatives (and associated NSF studies) a good idea? Some of the nation's leading CS educators sure seem to think so (video), although boys who aren't invited to the Made With Code Party could be excused for adopting a wait-and-see stance.

Submission + - How to share sensitive information 1

Submitted by UrsaMajor987
UrsaMajor987 writes: I just recently retired after along career in IT. I am not ready to kick the bucket quite yet, but having seen the difficulty created by people dying without a will and documenting what they have and where it is, I am busy doing just that. At the end of it all, I will have documentation on financial accounts, passwords, etc. which I will want to share with a few people who are pretty far away. I can always print a copy and and have it delivered to them, but is there any way to share this sort of information electronically? There are lots of things to secure transmission of data, but once it arrives on the recipients' desktop, you run the risk of their system being compromised and exposing the data. Does anyone have any suggestions or is paper still the most secure way to go?

Submission + - Yahoo's Diversity Record Is Almost as Bad as Google's 2

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Comparing Yahoo's diversity numbers to Google's, writes Valleywag's Nitasha Tiku, is "like comparing rotten apples to rotten oranges." Two weeks after Google disclosed it wasn't "where we want to be" with its 17% female and 1% Black U.S. tech workforce, Yahoo revealed its diversity numbers aren't that much better than Google's, with a U.S. tech workforce that's 35% female and 1% Black. The charts released by Yahoo indicate women fare worse in its global tech workforce, only 15% of which is female. So, with Google and Yahoo having checked in, isn't it about time for U.S. workforce expert Mark Zuckerberg and company to stop taking the Fifth and ante up numbers to show students what kind of opportunities Facebook offers?

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