Bill Gates, Amazon and Google Urge Followers To Share Data On Teacher Friends 65
theodp writes: Facebook may be facing the threat of a multi-billion dollar FTC fine for privacy lapses that included allowing companies to obtain users' email addresses from their friends, but that didn't discourage Bill Gates from taking to Twitter to urge his 46.5 million followers to give up the names and email addresses of teachers so they can be contacted by tech-bankrolled Code.org for a chance to receive a "Computer Science Scholarship" (attend Professional Development workshops). Or Amazon. Or Google. "The success of our professional learning program depends on the work of our partners to spread the word," explained Code.org in a Medium Post. "Corporate partners like Amazon, Infosys, and Google are rallying their employees and communities to nominate a teacher, and so are fellow teachers, parents, and students. We couldn't do it without you! [...] Code.org (and these scholarships) are supported by: Amazon, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Facebook, Google, Infosys Foundation USA, Microsoft [...] Code.org has prepared almost 100,000 educators to teach our courses, and they give our program rave reviews. We welcome teachers from all subject areas-no CS experience needed!"
In May, Code.org announced it was crowdsourcing a database of U.S. K-12 schools that teach -- or don't teach -- CS, with a goal to "gather data for 100% of U.S. schools by the end of 2018." The database would be used by the nonprofit and the CS community to "make our shared vision [for every school to teach computer science] a reality." Several months later, Amazon disclosed its involvement with the data collection effort, explaining it "will help us bring access to the schools that need it most." Amazon on Thursday announced it had selected 1,000 high schools to receive Amazon-funded CS classes and will be tapping another lucky 1,000 schools in the next few months. An Amazon press release said the company hopes to "inspire and educate 10 million children and young adults each year from underprivileged, underrepresented, and underserved communities to pursue careers in the fast-growing field of computer science and coding" through its Amazon Future Engineer program, which the e-tailer describes as "a four-part, childhood-to-career program."
In May, Code.org announced it was crowdsourcing a database of U.S. K-12 schools that teach -- or don't teach -- CS, with a goal to "gather data for 100% of U.S. schools by the end of 2018." The database would be used by the nonprofit and the CS community to "make our shared vision [for every school to teach computer science] a reality." Several months later, Amazon disclosed its involvement with the data collection effort, explaining it "will help us bring access to the schools that need it most." Amazon on Thursday announced it had selected 1,000 high schools to receive Amazon-funded CS classes and will be tapping another lucky 1,000 schools in the next few months. An Amazon press release said the company hopes to "inspire and educate 10 million children and young adults each year from underprivileged, underrepresented, and underserved communities to pursue careers in the fast-growing field of computer science and coding" through its Amazon Future Engineer program, which the e-tailer describes as "a four-part, childhood-to-career program."
I will avoid formatting my friends (Score:5, Insightful)
If the GAFAMs really want to help education, they may start by paying their taxes.
Re: I will avoid formatting my friends (Score:1)
But the goal is to pump out CS majors in order to flood the market with them to drive down salaries. How could anyone possibly be against that? Can't do that and collect and store email addresses in a database if people aren't told to signal boost....
On the count of three, everybody with me now! ... One! ... Two! ... Ethics is for suckers when it comes to business as usual in the US of friggin A!
If you can do 'em, screw 'em. People don't become wealthy, they don't live their best lives, by being squeemish o
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Honestly, forget about salaries, think about quality of life while at work. A friend of mine is working on a degree in something and is having to take a python course. He asked me for some help and the stuff he didn't understand I didn't believe somebody could find confusing. He's a nice guy and all, but some people just aren't wired to program. I'll play TTRPGs with him, but I don't want to work with him.
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I'm curious - which of the GAFAMs didn't pay their taxes?
If you know that they didn't, I have to assume you're a tax lawyer who works for one of them, and didn't report whatever illegal activity you noticed when doing so, so you should be able to cite chapter and verse of the tax law(s) they broke, as well as provide info to the relevant prosecutors....
Do note that if (as I suspect) you're NOT a tax lawyer, it's unlikely in
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Well, it was in the news last week that amazon was paying 0 in taxes on something like 5 billion in profits. Now, it's perfectly legal, but one could rightfully argue it is also them "not paying taxes" which may be what the GP actually meant.
Re:I will avoid formatting my friends (Score:4, Informative)
It was $5B in '17 and over $11B in '18. That doesn't mean they're doing anything illegal, or immoral. From CNN...
"This is tax avoidance, not tax evasion. There's no indication of any wrongdoing, except on the part of Congress," said Matthew Gardner, senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal think tank.
US tax code allows money-losing companies to reduce their future taxable income.
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Not disagreeing at all. I'm a conservative, but believe we need to get the money out of politics because it's corrupting the system. SCOTUS fucked up when they bought into the "corporations are people" bullshit.
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Actually, the correct answer is all of them because they all shelter money made overseas in tax havens. Amazon is just lucky enough to pay 0 taxes on US earned money. I will happily vote for anyone that campaigns on breaking them up, as I feel they are the greatest threat to society right now - those taxes are all getting handed over to smaller businesses like mine.
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You can fuck off now.
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It wouldn't be entirely bad if it really made people suitable for employment, but it strikes me more as a *vanity* project than as anything actually practical.
You can teach anyone with a decent education to code in a few weeks. Mastery takes longer, of course, but starting out young with only marginally competent teachers is a recipe for a lifetime of mediocrity.
Better to focus on analytical/inductive reasoning skills, effective writing, and a broad and sound understanding of science, math, and culture.
Bill Gates? Who the fuck is Bill Gates? (Score:2, Funny)
And why would I want to "follow" him? On Twitter, of all things?
What's this "Twitter" thing, anyway?
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Oddly enough, Twitter is a place where you get banned [reddit.com] for telling people to "learn to code"...
data share (Score:1)
Underprivileged, underrepresented (Score:2)
Without needing extra non academic consideration.
Full academic scholarships for the very best in every state after all passing exams.
Years of testing should find the top percentage of every generation, every decade.
The underrepresented can sit the same free tests, pass the same exams as all other students.
Data sets, workshops, a new CoC, money, academic programs, charity cant help people who can't and won't study.
Some
I guess all these efforts to monitize teachers (Score:2)
just forgot to buy the data from Bookface. /s
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Here's the evidence that these people are nothing but a bunch of narcissistic psychopaths. Collecting information on unrelated people, invading their privacy at your own convenience at any time with out a thought or care ...The mental disconnect of these people are unfathomable.
The real mental disconnect here is that Gates will most likely succeed in getting email addresses for almost every teacher on the planet. A sufficient percentage of his followers will comply with his request - either unthinkingly or with full knowledge of the implications, and frankly I'm not sure which is worse.
We as a society are selling out each other's privacy, and making ourselves available to brainwashing programs, at an astonishing rate and with hardly ever a second thought. What we're allowing the t
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While I'm in general agreement with your comment on the companies, I don't think public school teacher's email addresses should be private. They're paid for by our taxes, so unless there's a specific privacy/security concern, I don't think any government data should be kept private. Am I missing something?
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While I'm in general agreement with your comment on the companies, I don't think public school teacher's email addresses should be private. They're paid for by our taxes, so unless there's a specific privacy/security concern, I don't think any government data should be kept private. Am I missing something?
It isn't a privacy issue, it is yet another way to aggregate data for darn near nothing. email addresses of individual teachers can be found on school web pages, no doubt all of their students and their parents hve them. But to en masse send them to billyboy, or you know many will be posted right to Twitter's toxic environment, this will be a problem. There are people in this world who don't like teachers for their political leanings (perceived or otherwise).
It's like my email address isn't any secret, b
A Test? (Score:3)
Maybe it's a test of basic courtesy? When you enter someone's details, they get contacted and asked if someone asked their permission to post their email address. If they say no, an orbital laser fries the brain of the person who DIDN'T HAVE THE COMMON FUCKING COURTESY TO ASK BEFORE SHARING PEOPLE'S DETAILS.
Onto a more legitimate point, at least they are asking people and not just skimming it all automatically.
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Anyone have experience with these programs? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to wonder about programs that are supposed to get ordinary teachers to teach CS. I expect many of us had teachers (especially in primary school) who were teaching stuff they personally did not like or understand. Seems to me that's the likely result here: take someone who doesn't really like CS, and doesn't really understand it either - and have them try to teach it. Seems like a great way to turn students off.
Anyone have practical experience with these programs, who can comment?
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I don't have any practical experience with these programs, but I do have practical experience with the companies and have even worked at a couple. So I can say they aren't to be trusted. These programs aren't being developed for the benefit of the students or society in general. You don't need to look at the programs, look at who's creating them and their history and how they currently operate. As petty as local governments can be, do you really want to aid the slow slide to corporate funded education?
A good argument for data privacy laws (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like intimidation to me (Score:2)
Urging followers to "out" the friends of teachers...
Nope (Score:3)
Employee value (Score:2)
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virus (Score:2)
Do not do it (Score:2)
If it's a legitimate request, it will be forwarded to them via their schools, colleges, and universities.
If they're just trying to monetize the teachers and have them work below scale for others, it won't.
Amazon (Score:1)
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