Google Fiber's rollout in Nashville has not been smooth and is nowhere near complete, and Google itself will likely never make a profit here. But it did its job for me: AT&T FINALLY enabled last-mile fiber rollout in a lot of neighborhoods near their existing hubs, and now I have gigabit for $70/month; the same price Google would charge me. AT&T so far hasn't been any more reliable as an ISP than Comcast was (less, actually) but once the inevitable initial snags with billing are worked through, I'm confident I won't need to talk to them for a long time.

I may actually drop down to a lower tier eventually - gigabit is insanely more than I need, and for $40/month they are offering 45 Mbps symmetric. And let's be honest; it's the symmetric that I'm actually in it for. I just want to upload to the cloud as quickly as I download. Only negative is the lower tiers come with a 1 TB data cap, though I rarely hit that when not backing up EVERYTHING I own (which, of course, I did in about 10 hours as soon as I was activated.)

This is an absolutely false equivalence.

Not to say that Jimmy Carter made the right call there - I personally am liberal enough to think he probably did not, and likely would have been pretty upset with the decision, as I am with many decisions President Obama has made - but it is absolutely not the same thing. We are NOT in a state of military conflict with the entire religion of Islam, as we were with Iran at the time. If you believe that we are, then THAT is the problem.

You could use this move as an argument to reject Syrian visas and expel Syrian diplomats if you want. Except we already did. We severed relationships and closed our embassy in 2012. Officially they can still apply for immigration visas, but we've essentially made the process impossible. Obviously, we are (sort of) accepting refugees, but they are thoroughly vetted to make sure they are not connected either to the Syrian government or Isis, both of which we are in conflict with. So... yeah. We're already doing everything Carter did, pretty much. Have been for years. And refugees were allowed in from Iran during the Carter period too - one of your quotes specifically says "except for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons".

Assuming all people who believe in the religion of Islam are at war with our country is a completely wrongheaded idea that can and should be met with anger and disgust. (Though probably not computer-based terrorism of our own. Let's just vote against Trump and continue to try to overwhelm his narrative with one of reasonable people who are doing their best not to be bigoted.)

I think you will find many colleges offering a course similar to AP CS Principles right now. In fact, the course curriculum is based on curricula from courses offered at several partner universities, including this course from Berkeley: http://bjc.berkeley.edu/websit...

It is intended for non-CS majors at the college level, but I think both Berkeley and many high schools (including mine) are hoping that it will be an accessible jumping-off point for students to realize they like CS more than they think. Or, just as importantly, begin to introduce concepts of computing to students who WON'T do it professionally but should know the basic ideas - like, in this age, almost everybody.

Math and (future) CS teacher here (starting a program at my all-girls school next year): Just factually, it's worth noting that AP Computer Science A (the course done by this MOOC and that has been around for many years) and AP Computer Science Principles (the new AP course that code.org, among many others, will offer a curriculum for next year) are designed from the ground up to be wildly different animals.

AP CS A is a traditional programming course that uses Java as its required language. It goes fairly in depth into topics like algorithms and big-O notation and analysis, but is primarily focused on procedural and OO programming skills. It has a 3-hour exam, mostly multiple choice but with a small "hand-write a program to do x" section as well, as its final assessment.

AP CS Principles is designed to be a project-based course covering general topics such as abstraction, data and information, using computers for creative expression, the internet, collaborative problem solving, and the global impact of computing, as well as an introduction to programming. Teachers and students can use any programming language they'd like - early curriculum materials exist that use everything from Scratch to Javascript to Python. The assessment consists of a shorter multiple choice test (any programming examples in the test use a very simple, well-defined pseudo-code, rather than requiring specific language knowledge) AS WELL AS two submitted digital projects: one programming project (with both individual and collaborative components) and one research project on global impact of computing. Like the AP Studio Art projects, rubrics and basic guidelines for these projects are required, and readers will be looking for specific knowledge on topics such as abstraction and algorithms, but the project itself is designed and chosen by the students themselves.

CS Principles is not likely to scale as well to a MOOC (and frankly I have doubts that code.org's implementation will be amazing either). Personally, I'm very excited about the course as we HAVE had a hard time keeping enrollment numbers up for traditional programming courses in my smallish all-girls school - I think this one allows for a little more room for the exploration and creativity that seems to be of more interest to girls.

In the "Teacher Home Page" you can create new sections that are assigned to specific courses. You can see the courses offered at the bottom of the Teacher Dashboard here: http://code.org/teacher-dashbo... .

Courses 1-4 are far more extensive than the hour of code or Introduction to Computer science courses. You could make separate sections for each course so that students can progress up the ladder on their own or change the course for the entire section at once by editing the section. You can track progress throughout the course. Each course includes some group and "unplugged" activities that you can do when the entire group is there.

I teach math at an all girls school. I also teach coding, both within my class and in summer camps and a short, optional 3-week class in the winter. Next year, I hope to be teaching a full semester Computer science course. And the answer to this question is a solid YES. The Hour of Code tutorials are amazing, but my girls last summer were only vaguely interested in the plants, zombies, and angry birds of last year. Elsa and Anna will hold their attention more, help them learn the basics, so that when they dive into full-fledged Scratch (and can design whatever they want), they have those skills ready. It is absolutely, 100%, WORTH IT.