...sadly, no 1-up mushrooms in real life.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean tech execs aren't trying to use their money and "massive distribution channels" for political messages in support of their efforts.
Kids learning programming is fine. Whether public education should depend on the philanthropy of tech companies and their billionaire leaders whose grants may come attached with conditions for who teachers/schools should educate and how is another matter. Microsoft's reported insistence on CS-education-their-way in return for agreeing to pay taxes is also reason for concern, IMO.
From DataKind: A Justice League for Geeks: "By day they work for the Man. But on weekends, these computer whizzes volunteer their services to analyze big data and help nonprofits foster social change. What if a group of data scientists, computer wizards, coding geniuses and statistical savants were able to come together and combine their talents to solve some of the nation's thorniest problems? The result would be a kind of Justice League for geeks, an organization dedicated to assisting nonprofits by crunching the complex data they collect and using the results to help foster environmental, social and economic change." Join 'em, and you could be this century's John Snow!
Taught by Code.org Affiliates who are experienced computer science educators, our free workshops will prepare you to teach the Code Studio courses for grades K-5. Workshop details: The Microsoft Store @ The Domain will host a FREE Code.org workshop. FREE CPEs for educator re-certification will be provided!..Priority: Title I Schools. Waiting List: Non-Title I Schools. THANK YOU GOOGLE & MICROSOFT FOR SPONSORING THIS EVENT!
"Engineering without management is art." -- Jeff Johnson