A new government agency report found that U.S. workers are failing to improve the skills needed to succeed in an increasingly global economy. Bloomberg reports: The National Center for Education Statistics asked 3,300 respondents ages 16-to-65 to read simple passages and solve basic math problems. What the researchers found is that literacy, numeracy and digital problem-solving ability in the U.S. have stagnated over the past few years. Some 19% of the test-takers ranked at the lowest of three levels for literacy and 24% lacked basic digital problem-solving abilities. Meanwhile, a shocking 29% performed at the lowest level for numeracy, the same as findings from the previous study conducted in 2012-2014. Almost one in three couldn't correctly answer "how much gas is in a 24-gallon tank if the gas gauge reads three-quarters full."

There were a few bright spots among the research. Latino adults saw their overall scores improve in both literacy and digital problem solving. Some 35% ranked at the highest of three levels for the latter, up from 24% during the 2012-2014 survey period. In addition, high school graduation rates climbed 2 percentage-points to 14%, while the percentage of people with more than a high school diploma jumped 3 percentage-points to 48%.

Singularity University, a Silicon Valley institute offering education on futurism, is reckoning with its own uncertain future. The chief executive officer is stepping down, and the organization plans to eliminate staff. From a report: The changes were outlined in an email Tuesday reviewed by Bloomberg that was sent to faculty by Erik Anderson, the executive chairman. They mark an extended decline for the company, which has in recent years lost an annual grant from Google and faced allegations of sexual assault, embezzlement and discrimination. Rob Nail, who ran Singularity for the last eight years, is leaving to pursue new career opportunities, Anderson wrote in the email. Singularity is conducting a CEO search, said a spokesman. The announcement of job cuts was made in line with U.S. labor law, which requires 60-day notice for companies with more than 100 employees, the spokesman said. Singularity declined to specify how many jobs would be affected, but a person familiar with the matter put the total at about 60. This person said many of those workers were informed of the news while attending a Singularity summit in Athens that ended Tuesday. Singularity, which takes its name from the notion that humans will someday merge with machines, was introduced in 2009 during a TED Talk by futurist Ray Kurzweil. The group operates for profit but with a mandate for social responsibility. Many alumni of its programs credit the organization with teaching them about cutting-edge concepts and helping them think more expansively.

In an interview about the 16-inch MacBook Pro, Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller made a direct attack on Chromebooks. When asked about the growth of Chrome OS in the education sector, Schiller attributes the success of Chromebooks to their being "cheap." He said: Kids who are really into learning and want to learn will have better success. It's not hard to understand why kids aren't engaged in a classroom without applying technology in a way that inspires them. You need to have these cutting-edge learning tools to help kids really achieve their best results. Yet Chromebooks don't do that. Chromebooks have gotten to the classroom because, frankly, they're cheap testing tools for required testing. If all you want to do is test kids, well, maybe a cheap notebook will do that. But they're not going to succeed.

UCLA's new mobile surgical lab is a zero-emission, all-electric vehicle that will move back and forth between two UCLA campuses, collecting, sterilizing and repairing surgical instruments for the medical staff there. TechCrunch reports: Why is that even needed? The usual process is sending out surgical instruments for this kind of service by a third-party, and it's handled in a dedicated facility at a significant annual cost. UCLA Health Center estimates that it can save as much as $750,000 per year using the EV lab from Winnebago instead. The traveling lab can operate for around eight hours, including round-trips between the two hospital campuses, or for a total distance traveled of between 85 and 125 miles on a single charge of its battery, depending on usage. It also offers "the same level of performance, productivity and compliance" as a lab in a fixed-location building, according to Winnebago.

theodp writes: Q. What's the difference between Andrew Carnegie and Google? A. Andrew Carnegie used his wealth to help build libraries, while Google's using its wealth to get libraries to help build its brands. "In advance of Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek)," announced the American Library Association (ALA), "an annual event to get students excited about coding, ALA will be awarding $300 mini-grants to school and public libraries that facilitate a program for youth during Computer Science Education Week, December 9-15, 2019, using Google's CS First Hour of Code activity. This year, youth can use their imagination to turn a real-life hero into a superhero using code. Code Your Hero is an activity that honors the everyday heroes in our students' lives who use their powers to better their communities. Libraries Ready to Code is an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA) and sponsored by Google, which aims to ensure libraries have the resources, capacity, and inspiration to embrace activities that promote computational thinking (CT) and coding among our nation's youth."

Last month, the ALA announced it had received a $2 million Google.org grant to develop library entrepreneurship centers. In advance of last December's CSEdWeek, Google announced a $1 million sponsorship to the ALA, creating a pool of micro-funds that local libraries could access to bring digital skills training to their community in conjunction with the Libraries Lead with Digital Skills and Libraries Ready to Code ALA-Google joint initiatives.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's people face "untold suffering due to the climate crisis" unless there are major transformations to global society, according to a stark warning from more than 11,000 scientists. "We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency," it states. "To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. [This] entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems." There is no time to lose, the scientists say: "The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity."

The statement is published in the journal BioScience on the 40th anniversary of the first world climate conference, which was held in Geneva in 1979. The statement was a collaboration of dozens of scientists and endorsed by further 11,000 from 153 nations. The scientists say the urgent changes needed include ending population growth, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, halting forest destruction and slashing meat eating. Prof William Ripple, of Oregon State University and the lead author of the statement, said he was driven to initiate it by the increase in extreme weather he was seeing. A key aim of the warning is to set out a full range of "vital sign" indicators of the causes and effects of climate breakdown, rather than only carbon emissions and surface temperature rise. "A broader set of indicators should be monitored, including human population growth, meat consumption, tree-cover loss, energy consumption, fossil-fuel subsidies and annual economic losses to extreme weather events," said co-author Thomas Newsome, of the University of Sydney. Other "profoundly troubling signs from human activities" selected by the scientists include booming air passenger numbers and world GDP growth.

The scientists did identify some positive signs, including decreasing global birth rates, increasing solar and wind power and fossil fuel divestment, and a falling rate of destruction in the Amazon. They also listed a series of actions people can do to help the "climate crisis":

- Use energy far more efficiently and apply strong carbon taxes to cut fossil fuel use
- Stabilize global population -- currently growing by 200,000 people a day -- using ethical approaches such as longer education for girls
- End the destruction of nature and restore forests and mangroves to absorb CO2
- Eat mostly plants and less meat, and reduce food waste
- Shift economic goals away from GDP growth

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Code.org's tech sponsors haven't been shy when it comes to using the annual Hour of Code as an infomercial of sorts, and it seems unlikely 2019 will be any different. For this year's event, Google is not only offering Code Your Hero, a one-hour coding activity for kids from Google CS First, it's also asking educators to sing the praises of Google CS First in the already-underway Code Your Hero Social Media Teacher Contest. From the Code Your Hero Official Rules:

"The Code Your Hero Social Media Teacher Contest (the "Contest") is a skill contest where entrants must submit an essay that describes what teachers like best about using CS First for Hour of Code. [...] To enter the Contest, visit the Contest website located at TBD ('Contest Site') during the Contest Period and follow the instructions for submitting an entry that consists of screenshots or photos of students' saved work in Scratch (requires CS First account registration for teachers and students) and brief description of why CS First was helpful in the classroom. Entries are posted to social media using both of these hashtags: '#csfirsthourofcode' and '#codeyourhero' to qualify."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: To make good on the proposal that snagged it a share of the Amazon HQ2 prize last year, the State of Virginia pledged to produce an additional 25K-35K grads annually with computer science or closely related degrees. And while university leaders in the Greater Washington DC area appear to be on the same page with Amazon when it comes to filling the region's ever-growing demand for tech talent, the Washington Business Journal reports there's an understanding that as universities in the region grow their faculty to meet the demands of Amazon, the schools will likely also have to compete with Amazon for those same educators.

At a panel discussion on the future of Amazon HQ2 and education, interim president of George Mason University Anne Holton noted that the local schools are all going to be competing for faculty talent ("It's going to be elbows out"). Turning to Ardine Williams, VP of workforce development at Amazon, Holton added, "We are jostling with you for the new people too."

So, if the people who are qualified to educate the next generation of STEM students for Amazon can also get paid more to work for Amazon, is professor poaching history likely to repeat itself?

Gaggle monitors the work and communications of almost 5 million students in the U.S., and schools are paying big money for its services. Hundreds of company documents unveil a sprawling surveillance industrial complex that targets kids who can't opt out. Caroline Haskins writes via BuzzFeed News: Using a combination of in-house artificial intelligence and human content moderators paid about $10 an hour, Gaggle polices schools for suspicious or harmful content and images, which it says can help prevent gun violence and student suicides. It plugs into two of the biggest software suites around, Google's G Suite and Microsoft 365, and tracks everything, including notifications that may float in from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts linked to a school email address. Gaggle touts itself as a tantalizingly simple solution to a diverse set of horrors. It claims to have saved hundreds of lives from suicide during the 2018-19 school year. The company, which is based in Bloomington, Illinois, also markets itself as a tool that can detect threats of violence.

But hundreds of pages of newly revealed Gaggle documentation and content moderation policies, as well as invoices and student incident reports from 17 school districts around the country obtained via public records requests, show that Gaggle is subjecting young lives to relentless inspection, and charging the schools that use it upward of $60,000. And it's not at all clear whether Gaggle is as effective in saving lives as it claims, or that its brand of relentless surveillance is without long-term consequences for the students it promises to protect. [...] [S]tudent surveillance services like Gaggle raise questions about how much monitoring is too much, and what rights minors have to control the ways that they're watched by adults. "My sense about this particular suite of products and services is that it's a solution in search of a problem," said Sarah Roberts, a UCLA professor and a scholar in digital content moderation, "which is to say that the only way that the logic of it works is if we first accept that our children ought to be captured within a digital system, basically, from the time they're sentient until further notice."

While Gaggle claims that its tool promotes a sense of "digital citizenship," BuzzFeed News says the newly revealed documents show that students often don't understand that their work and communications are being surveilled until they violate the rules.

Alaina Gassler, a 14-year-old inventor from West Grove, Pennsylvania, came up with a clever way to eliminate the blind spot created by the thick pillars on the side of a car's windshield. All it requires is some relatively inexpensive and readily available tech available at an electronics store. Gizmodo reports: Her solution involves installing an outward-facing webcam on the outside of a vehicle's windshield pillar, and then projecting a live feed from that camera onto the inside of that pillar. Custom 3D-printed parts allowed her to perfectly align the projected image so that it seamlessly blends with what a driver sees through the passenger window and the windshield, essentially making the pillar invisible.

Gassler's invention isn't quite ready to be installed in vehicles across the country just yet, but the technologies already exist that would allow it to be implemented in cars without serving as a distraction to the driver. Short-throw projectors could be installed at the base of the passenger side windshield pillar to create the image without having to worry about the passenger blocking the beam. And many cars have already replaced side mirrors with cameras, or include nearly invisible cameras in the rear for safely backing up, so adding one more on the side of the pillar would presumably be trivial. Gassler won the top prize for her invention at this year's Society for Science and the Public's Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology, and Engineering for Rising Stars) science and engineering competition.

The streaming giant is having to navigate different political and moral landscapes, and calls for government oversight, as it seeks subscribers worldwide. From a report: In September, Netflix released a trailer for the "Breaking Bad" sequel "El Camino." In it, a character sits in a car, lights a cigarette and holds it out the window, its orange tip glowing. The next day, Netflix Turkey released its own version. In it, the character sparks a lighter and puts his hand out of the window. But there's a difference: The cigarette has been edited out. It wasn't the first time Netflix had censored one of its trailers here. In January, the streaming giant edited one for "Sex Education," a series about a teenage sex therapist, to blur a character's hands so you couldn't see the raised middle fingers. These changes may seem small, but they are a sign of Netflix trying to get ahead of regulation it could soon face in Turkey.

[...] In Turkey, and in other countries, Netflix must navigate different political and moral landscapes, and calls for censorship, as it expands worldwide. Its 2018 annual report lists both "censorship" and "the need to adapt our content and users interfaces for specific cultural and language differences" as business risks. India is another country where Netflix has been embroiled in debates around regulation and censorship. In 2017, the company offered viewers "Angry Indian Goddesses," a movie that had been released in Indian theaters in a censored form to avoid offending religious sensibilities.ï Netflix, which is not subject to India's movie theater code, initially showed the censored version anyway, to avoid a backlash from religious viewers. But complaints came instead from viewers who wanted to see the movie uncut. Netflix made that version available and released a statement: "Our members reached out to us and we listened."

dryriver writes: In talking to people who are doing software development or other tech work, many told me that they found their tech education at university lacking in various ways. Some were taught outdated software, programming languages, methods, techniques or approaches. Others had problems with academia hostile to new ideas or creative problem solving. Some didn't get enough recognition for the coursework they did at university. Others couldn't get into top-tier universities when they were finishing high school aged 17 or 18 and got a second-rate tech education at a lower-quality academic institution as a result. So to the question: How was the quality of your tech education at university? Was the curriculum up to date? Were you taught the right things? Was academia open to new ideas and new ways of doing things? Did your education prepare you well for real life tech work in a non-academic environment?

"Whereas the fossil fuel industry employs about 900,000 people in the U.S., green economy jobs -- those associated with non-oil energy -- number about 9.5 million," writes long-time Slashdot reader DavidHumus, citing a new study by two researchers at University College London.

On Ars Technica the study's authors shared their analysis of America's emerging green economy: According to new data, by 2016 it was generating more than $1.3 trillion in annual revenue and employed approximately 9.5 million people -- making it the largest green market in the world. It has been growing rapidly, too -- between 2013 and 2016, both the industry's value and employment figures grew by 20%... Our study estimates that revenue in the global green economy was $7.87 trillion in 2016. At $1.3 trillion, the U.S. made up 16.5% of the global market -- the largest in the world.

Our analysis also suggests that in the U.S., nearly ten times more people were employed in the green economy and its supply chains (9.5 million) than employed directly in the fossil fuel industry (roughly 1 million) -- that is, miners, electricity grid workers, infrastructure manufacturers, and construction workers. This wide gap comes despite the U.S. fossil fuel industry receiving huge subsidies, estimated at $649 billion in 2015 alone.

theodp writes: It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft employees wary of empowering the military react to Wednesday's news of an Intel and Microsoft-led alliance that aims to enlist an army of JROTC high school students to fight the war for CS talent, with support from U.S. lawmakers. From the press release: Today, at the 2019 CSforALL Summit, leaders representing CSforALL and Air Force Junior ROTC announced JROTC-CS, an innovative new initiative that could dramatically increase the number of U.S. high school students taking an Advanced Placement computer science course, particularly among underrepresented populations like minority and female students. This public-private partnership is supported by an Advisory Consortium of industry and education organizations including founding members Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Capital One, Lockheed Martin, Snap Inc., the Air Force Association's Cyberpatriot, and the College Board. More than 500,000 cadets at 3,400 high schools across the U.S. and abroad participate in JROTC programs administered by each of the military services. Only 32% of these cadets have access to Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science Principles in their school, according to 2018-19 College Board data. The JROTC-CS initiative seeks to access this untapped human resource to address the national talent shortage in computing and cybersecurity and increase career opportunities for JROTC cadets, who are a highly diverse population — more than half are minority students and 40% are female. Additionally, JROTC is strongly represented in schools serving economically disadvantaged communities. [...] The JROTC-CS initiative is designed to complement the innovative, bi-partisan JROTC Cyber Training Act passed by the U.S. House of Representatives as part of the 2020 House National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on July 12.

Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, writes: You can learn anything on the internet, so why do I so often learn things I don't want to know? When I'm surfing the web I want to be drawn in by articles on Europe's political history or the nature of quasars, but I end up reading trivia like a menu from Alcatraz prison. Why am I not curious about the things I want to be curious about? Curiosity feels like it's outside your control, and trying to direct it sounds as ill conceived as forcing yourself to find a joke funny. But if you understand what prompts curiosity, you may be able to channel it a little better. Across evolutionary time, curious animals were more likely to survive because they learned about their environments; a forager that occasionally skipped a reliable feeding ground to explore might find an even better place to eat.

Humans, too, will forgo a known payoff to investigate the unknown. In one experiment, subjects were asked to choose one of four photos, each carrying some chance of paying a cash prize. Photos repeated, so subjects learned to pick the best-paying, but when a novel photo popped up, they chose it more often than the odds dictated they should. This preference for novelty is, of course, the reason manufacturers periodically tweak product packaging and advertising. But it's good to know about your environment even if it doesn't promise a reward right now; knowledge may be useless today, but vital next week. Therefore, evolution has left us with a brain that can reward itself; satisfying curiosity feels pleasurable, so you explore the environment even when you don't expect any concrete payoff. Infants prefer to look at novel pictures compared with familiar ones. Preschoolers play longer with a mechanical toy if it's difficult to deduce how it works.

An anonymous reader writes: A great migration is happening on U.S. college campuses. Ever since the fall of 2008, a lot of students have walked out of English and humanities lectures and into STEM classes, especially computer science and engineering. English majors are down more than a quarter (25.5 percent) since the Great Recession, according to data compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics. It's the biggest drop for any major tracked by the center in its annual data and is quite startling, given that college enrollment has jumped in the past decade. Ask any college student or professor why this big shift from studying Chaucer to studying coding is happening and they will probably tell you it's about jobs. As students feared for their job prospects, they -- and their parents -- wanted a degree that would lead to a steady paycheck after graduation. The perception is that STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) is the path to employment. Majors in computer science and health fields have nearly doubled from 2009 to 2017. Engineering and math have also seen big jumps. As humanities majors slump to the lowest level in decades, calls are coming from surprising places for a revival. Some prominent economists are making the case for why it still makes a lot of sense to major (or at least take classes) in humanities alongside more technical fields.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been appointed chairman of the advisory board at Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management in Beijing, a role that could provide access to top Chinese leaders at a time the iPhone manufacturer is facing mounting challenges in the world's second largest economy. From a report: Cook will assume the role for three years and replace Jim Breyer, the founder and chief executive of Breyer Capital, according to a statement from the university released on Friday. Cook said he would work with other members on the board, who have not been named, to make the Beijing-based school into a "world-class" education institution. Apple's market share in China is sliding as nationalist rhetoric calling for consumers to switch to Chinese phone manufacturer Huawei has gained momentum amid the trade war between China and the United States. New appointments to the board, which is usually stacked with business and political leaders, could offer clues on the relationship between Beijing and some of the world's most influential business leaders at a time when trade tensions have reached new highs.

"A record number" of U.S. schools are now accepting nearly all of their students without requiring an SAT or ACT test score, reports the Washington Post: Robert A. Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, which opposes the misuse of standardized tests, said the past year has seen the "fastest growth spurt ever" of schools ending the SAT/ACT test score as an admission requirement. Over the summer, more than one school a week announced the change. Nearly 50 accredited colleges and universities that award bachelor's degrees announced from September 2018 to September 2019 that they were dropping the admissions requirement for an SAT or ACT score, FairTest said. That brings the number of accredited schools to have done so to 1,050 -- about 40 percent of the total, the nonprofit said.

While the test-optional list has some schools with specific missions -- there are religious colleges, music and art conservatories, nursing schools -- it also includes more than half of the top 100 liberal arts colleges on the U.S. News & World Report list, FairTest said. Also on the list are the majority of colleges and universities in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District of Columbia and the six New England states...

Research has consistently shown that ACT and SAT scores are strongly linked to family income, mother's education level and race... The University of Chicago, which abandoned the requirement last year, reported in July that its decision, along with an increase in financial aid and outreach, led to a 20 percent increase in first-generation, low-income and rural students and veterans to commit to the school.

China's TikTok this week launched an education program in India as the popular short-video app looks to expand its offering and assuage local authority in one of its biggest markets. From a report: This is the first time TikTok has launched a program of this kind in any market, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. TkTok, owned by the world's most valued startup Bytedance, said it's working with a number of content creators and firms in India to populate the platform with educational videos. These bite-sized clips cover a range of topics, from school-level science and math concepts to learning new languages. The social app is also featuring videos that offer tips on health and mental awareness, and motivational talks. The social platform, which is used by more than 200 million users in India every month, said its education program is aimed at "democratizing learning for the Indian digital community on the platform." (TikTok had 120 million monthly active users in April this year.) It has partnered with edtech startups Vedantu, Toppr, Made Easy and Gradeup that will produce educational content for TikTok.

theodp writes: On Thursday evening, Amazon is hosting a national field trip of sorts, inviting kids and teachers to take part in a Twitch livestream tour inside an Amazon robotics fulfillment center with the goal of inspiring students to learn about robotics and to "illustrate the importance of a computer science education." From the press release: "On the tour, students will see first-hand how teams of associates work alongside robotic technologies to fulfill customer orders. They will see where inventory items are stowed into the system, learn how robots bring storage pods to our associates to pick customer items, and finally, they'll see trucks being loaded with thousands of customer orders." Hey, "program, or be programmed," as they warn kids and parents over at Amazon-bankrolled Code.org!