Rupert Murdoch Won't Be Teaching Your Children To Code After All 57
theodp writes: Plans for Rupert Murdoch & Co. to teach your children to code just hit a bump in the road. Murdoch's News Corp. last week announced it plans to exit the education business as it announced a $371 million write-down of the investment in its Amplify education unit, which aimed to reinvent education via digital tools, tablets and curriculum reinforced with snazzy graphics. The news may help to explain why Amplify MOOC, the entity that offered online AP Computer Science A to high school students, was re-dubbed Edhesive ("online education that sticks") a couple of months ago. Tech-backed Code.org, whose $1+ million "Gold Supporters" include the James and Kathryn Murdoch-led Quadrivium Foundation, announced a partnership with Edhesive to bring CS to schools in June, around the same time Edhesive LLC was formed.
Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whoever (Score:2)
I didn't want that bastard teaching kids anything at all. I don't need any immoral cutthroat bastards in the family, thank you very much.
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Cthulhu will have IPU's soul for dinner.
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It's only immoral if you can't explain it away as "an essential part of our free market system." (or, as it's translated into non-bullshit, "FUCK THE REST OF YOU! I'M RICH!")
Re: Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whoever (Score:2)
It was about tax breaks, I guarantee it.
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MOOCs: my worst education experiences ever. (Score:1)
I'm a life-long learner. I can't get enough of learning. I have three college degrees, a couple of diplomas from community colleges, plus some IT certs. I try to attend conferences and training sessions whenever I can to afford to, time-wise and cost-wise. I've also taken several MOOC courses.
The MOOC courses have been, by far, the worst out of all of them. It isn't the quality of the lessons or the material that's the problem. Those actually tend to be top notch. It's the social aspect of MOOCs that are ab
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That's what forum moderation is for. Without it, forums are useless, even with a restricted user base. At least the forums weren't public which would have allowed spam bots. Hooray!
But uh the whole idea that learning is about interacting with other students seems to be a pretty subjective viewpoint. There are plenty of folks out there that can (and do) learn just as well, if not better, alone. Talking to anyone other than the instructor can be counterproductive for some.
The worst thing about MOOCs is t
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So many of the other forum participants were from India, China, or some African country, asking for their certificate PDF even before the course had started! I mean, the course videos, assignments and exam weren't even available yet, but these people demanded that the professor leading the course send them the certificate that they had not earned right away!
I'm not sure it's a "foreign" thing.
When I was teaching, I had one student come up to me at the start of the semester asking if I would write him a recommendation (he turned out to be of the same stripe as those you described above). Gave me no indication that he was an immigrant.
What I think you're describing is someone who needs the certificate to secure something else. They put on the overconfidence front (and generally are lousy students to boot...this young man certainly was: he needed the class to g
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So many of the other forum participants were from India, China, or some African country, asking for their certificate PDF even before the course had started! I mean, the course videos, assignments and exam weren't even available yet, but these people demanded that the professor leading the course send them the certificate that they had not earned right away!
And people wonder why outsourcing to India isn't always such a great idea.
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Re: MOOCs: my worst education experiences ever. (Score:2)
It wouldn't surprise me if these forum members were just a few people hired by the education industrial complex (Pearson, et al) to intentionally spoil the experience for others.
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Learning isn't supposed to be "social", especially with technical subjects. Why would you need to "interact" with other students?
Apparently, you never got picked to be on a team of any sort, much less a baseball/basketball/football team.
All through school, I remember being pushed into groups, for the reason that often times cooperative group learning is more effective than banging your own single head on the book on your desk.
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Sophomore year of high school. Three man teams assigned to come up with projects for the science fair. Freddy, Joey and I demonstrated how temperature affects viscosity of several fluids, including Prell shampoo and some cheap brand of motor oil.
In all three years of high school biology, we were broken up into teams to turn frogs into tiny labeled pieces.
Foreign language classes, similar treatment for projects. Art classes, ditto. Literature class, a couple of times.
You, on the other hand, probably didn
Re: MOOCs: my worst education experiences ever. (Score:2)
Your point doesn't follow. Nobody said anything negative about the utility of the social aspect, yet you draw conclusions about others. The AC might have the type of background you highlight, but if someone studies the 10th programming language for fun or work, he mostly needs technical concepts and exercises. Good forums are useful but not all courses need a lot of social interaction; also, good forums don't guarantee appropriate social interaction where it's crucial.
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All through school, I remember being pushed into groups, for the reason that often times cooperative group learning is more effective than banging your own single head on the book on your desk.
Group learning is really helpful to the people that need the help and not so helpful for those using their time to help others in the group rather than learning new things.
Here's a novel idea. The learning group is the whole class, and it is the teacher + assistants are the ones helping everyone, and to compensate the teacher + assistants, they are paid money.
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I take it then, that you have a doctoral degree in education? And, thirty years experience in the field? I don't know where you got the idea that the brightest person in a group is going to be held back. If that were so, the brightest people in the class of 20 or 30 students will also be held back by the class.
Teacher + assistants? I've never experienced such a thing. One teacher, or one professor. Assistants? WTF for?
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I take it then, that you have a doctoral degree in education?
If I did, you would just believe me?
And, thirty years experience in the field?
I know plenty of people with 30+ years of experience in the field of education that don't know shit.
I don't know where you got the idea that the brightest person in a group is going to be held back.
Are you asking me where I got the idea that people who aren't challenged with what they are learning aren't actually learning anything?
If that were so, the brightest people in the class of 20 or 30 students will also be held back by the class.
If you were ever one of the brightest people in a class of 20 or 30 students, you might have experienced being bored (i.e. not challenged) by the material.
If you were never one of the kids in a learning group who totally understood the mater
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Actually, numerous studies have shown that social interaction is extremely important in determining successful outcomes in higher education. Here's a concise (and heavily footnoted) summary of why that is:
College Is Not A Content Delivery System: Interpersonal Interactions and Student Success [blogspot.com]
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What part of "heavily footnoted" did you not comprehend, AC?
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2. energy. You know what happens when we run out of usable energy at the heat death of the universe? Learning grinds to a halt.
3. organic molecules. DNA? absolutely essential for transferring genetic material to you from your parents and creating proteins. ATP? There's that important energy thing again. Witho
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You could have just said "tl;dr" and saved yourself a lot of typing.
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Probably realized he didn't need it (Score:1)
Why wait 20+ years for cheap workers when you can bribe Congress to give you all the H1B's you want RIGHT NOW?
A writedown or a boondoggle with heads falling? (Score:2)
A $371 M loss on an education program that never even got off the ground would have the GOP in the House and Senate calling for heads on platters. But if it's a big business, hey - it's a just a writedown.
And before you rank and file tea party start talking about "your money" vs "corporate money" you need to make sure that none of your 401k/IRA/retirement/investment holdings include this large cap stock (or any iteration of the S&P500) because if you do - it *is* your money.
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Well, I guess that depends ... if they get a tax break for this write down, then it's not just a write down.
If they do get a tax break, then expect a slew of corporations to start meddling in education, failing, and then taking their tax break and leaving.
If corporations are risking their own money, great. If they're just passing the buck back to the taxpayers, all they're really doing is diverting money for their own purposes.
Misread headlines (Score:2)
Totally misread that initially as, "Rupert Murdoch won't be touching your children after all".
I was a bit disappointed when I reread it, not gonna lie.
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Outrage! (Score:1)
Education is a hard problem (Score:2)
It has a host of psychological,political, economic, and sociological factors which cannot be addressed by technology alone. Anyone who thinks that throwing a bunch of technology at the problem and then snapping their fingers to find everything fixed overnight is, to be charitable, arrogant or stupid.
There is no magic bullet.
What, no "snazzy graphics" anymore? (Score:2)
I must have misunderstood this "education" business completely, despite about a decade or so of teaching experience! If I had only known it was all about "snazzy graphics" and the right technology, maybe I would have been more successful at teaching!
Or not. This may be the most pathetic large-scale fail in the the history of teaching.
I'm Stunned (Score:2)
By the way, AP Pascal in a high school in upstate New York in the '80's had you programming recursive descent parsers in a Pascal environment on Apple 2 (II, //, //e, etc) computers and would have put you ahead of what most colleges were teaching in Freshman CS at the time. So, way to take a step back, nation's educational system.