Get Big Fast: "500 Club" Delivers Teachers For Code.org 28
theodp writes: The Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier reports that Ben Schafer, an associate CS prof at the Univ. of Northern Iowa, was recognized at Code.org's annual summit for training 570 K-12 teachers in Iowa, which is equivalent to 5.5 percent of all U.S. teachers trained. Schafer ranked No. 2 in the '500 Club', a Code.org affiliate of trainers who trained more than 500 teachers in the first year of the program. Code.org's K-5 Affiliates "deliver one-day, in-person workshops to local elementary school teachers to teach computer science in a format that's fun and accessible". A Term Sheet explains to potential Affiliates that "Code.org will pay you $50 per workshop-attendee to cover costs, including food, and to compensate you and any teaching assistants." According to a White House' Fact Sheet, Code.org plans to use $20 million in philanthropic funds to train 10,000 teachers by fall 2015 and 25,000 teachers by fall 2016. You can follow their progress on Twitter, kids!
"Get Big Fast" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Lemme get this straight... (Score:3, Insightful)
You're going to "train" a teacher, who has no formal CS training, in ONE DAY, to teach CS?
Bullshit six ways from Sunday.
Re: (Score:1)
You can easily afford a top-flight teacher for these classes, assuming the class size is around 100. And lunch is a bag of chips.
Re:Lemme get this straight... (Score:5, Informative)
You're going to "train" a teacher, who has no formal CS training, in ONE DAY, to teach CS?
The teachers don't "teach" programming. The kids follow an online curriculum, and the teacher just needs to know enough to help them when they get stuck. 90% of the time, that is is not because the kid doesn't understand the concepts, but because they are using the IDE wrong.
At my kids' school, they don't train all the teachers, they just teach a handful, and then rotate the kids through the computer lab. Each class spends an hour per week, and "computer guy" teaches them, along with a few parent volunteers. The normal classroom teacher is not involved, and most of them use the hour as downtime to prep future lessons.
These are 4th to 6th graders, using Scratch [mit.edu]. I am one of the volunteer parents. It all seems to work well. They learn to solve math problems, to create graphic art, and even make simple shoot-em-up games. The kids enjoy it, and many of them can soon create their own programs. They can use the computer lab after school too, and many of them do that.
Texas or Montana (Score:2)
> It seems to work well. They learn to solve math problems, to create graphic art, and even make simple shoot-em-up games.
They don't get suspended if their long division vaguely resembles a musket? Are you in Texas, or Montana?
the kids are the same, the adults are different (Score:2)
Kids everywhere like light sabers. Before light sabers, Zorro was big, and pirates, always swords.
In many parts of the US, the ADULTS have an irrational fear of weapons, the concepts of self-defense and defending others, etc. To the point that eating a sandwich got a kid suspended when the shape of remaining half of the sandwich triggered some administator's gun phobia.
Re: Lemme get this straight... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, so I was asked to train high school teachers on programming so they could teach it to their students. I was asked to do a three-day workshop. But other topics started to creep in. The organizers wanted time dedicated to this and that. My three days was gradually whittled down to about 2.5 hours on one morning. 9-noon with a couple of 15-minute breaks. Now, with three days, I could see working through a few
Goody (Score:2)
Hello World!
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Hello World!
My guess it they will be training the new generation of slash dotters like, Moo Cow dude, Golden Girls, and hostile person coders.
For All-Girl Classes, I assume ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Are those teachers for All-Girl Classes, or are all the teachers all women, or are the teachers fined for teaching boys like the mysandrists of Code.org did before ?
Sexist shits.
This should not be confused with (Score:1)
500 club? (Score:4, Funny)
never heard of it.
I guess if they add 200 more, they could sign up that crazy elf-looking man as their mascot.
Why not teach MBA in grade school insetead? (Score:3)
Get Big Fast? (Score:2)
Get Big Fast
Nooo. Get big: eat.
Stakhanov (Score:2)
It if funny to find Stakhanov [wikipedia.org] like celebrated workers in the US
One Day? (Score:2)
"deliver one-day, in-person workshops to local elementary school teachers to teach computer science in a format that's fun and accessible"
So that's all it takes to learn computer science well enough to teach it to others - 1 day? Shit, I wasted my time on that 3 year degree. I can't believe anything of real value could be taught in just one day.