theodp shares a report from Chicago Sun-Times, written by Frank Main: When the school system [Chicago Public Schools] shifted to having students learn remotely in the spring of 2020 near the beginning of the pandemic, it lent students iPads, MacBooks and Windows computer devices so they could do school work and attend virtual classes from home. CPS then spent about $165 million to buy Chromebook desktop computers so that every student from kindergarten through senior year in high school who needed a computer could have one. Students borrowed 161,100 Chromebooks in September 2020. By June 2021, more than 210,000 of those devices had been given out. Of them, nearly 40,000 Chromebooks have been reported lost — nearly a fifth of those that were lent.

“Schools have made repeated efforts to recover the lost devices from families without success,” according to a written statement from CPS officials in response to questions about the missing school property. Also missing are more than 9,600 iPads, 114 televisions, 1,680 printers and 1,127 audiovisual projectors, among many other items. Officials say CPS has bought new computer devices to replace the missing ones. Longtime Slashdot reader theodp notes that “there were 340,658 students enrolled in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) at the start of the 2020-2021 school year.”

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Two-thirds of technology firms are experiencing a shortage of skilled workers, reports the BBC (citing a recent report from recruitment firm Harvey Nash).

But what’s the solution? In an article shared by Chrisq, the BBC’s business technology reporter field-tested some computer programming training:
I attended Teach the Nation to Code, a free one-day Python coding workshop run by UK training firm, QA… But when it works, there’s not much pay-off — just some lines on a screen. I also took classes with Cypher Coders and Creator Academy to teach me Scratch — a coding language for children with a simple visual interface… [I] found the step change from learning Scratch to Python similarly jarring in the children’s toys — you suddenly go from colourful blocks to an empty screen with no handholding. What could help bridge this gap from fun games for kids, to more professional level complex coding?

Garry Law, founder of Australian coding training firm, Creator Academy, says IT education needs to be better. “We need to teach kids coding with visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles, and we need to adapt this learning method for adults, to attract more people to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM),” he says….

Cost is also a big problem. According to Anna Brailsford, chief executive of social enterprise Code First: Girls, it typically costs £10,000 to learn coding and often there isn’t a clear link between what is taught and the jobs available.
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo remembers that “the way I got started was by borrowing books from the library that contained example programs.”
Back then there were loads of books that were nothing but little BASIC apps for various machines. That got me started with a program that worked and often did something quite interesting or useful, like a graphical effect. Then I could tinker with it and learn that way.
But is that enough of a reward to attract new programmers — or should beginning courses target more learning styles? Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments.

Do we need better computer programming courses for visual learners?

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California is in the process of approving new guidelines for math education in public schools that “pushes Algebra 1 back to 9th grade, de-emphasizes calculus, and applies social justice principles to math lessons,” writes Joe Hong via the San Francisco Standard. The new approach would have been approved earlier this month but has been delayed due to the attention and controversy it has received. Here’s an excerpt from the report: When Rebecca Pariso agreed to join a team of educators tasked in late 2019 with California’s new mathematics framework, she said she expected some controversy. But she didn’t expect her work would be in the national spotlight. […] Every eight years (PDF), a group of educators comes together to update the state’s math curriculum framework. This particular update has attracted extra attention, and controversy, because of perceived changes it makes to how “gifted” students progress — and because it pushes Algebra 1 back to 9th grade, de-emphasizes calculus, and applies social justice principles to math lessons. San Francisco pioneered key aspects of the new approach, opting in 2014 to delay algebra instruction until 9th grade and to push advanced mathematics courses until at least after 10th grade as a means of promoting equity.

San Francisco Unified School District touted the effort as a success, asserting that algebra failure rates fell and the number of students taking advanced math rose as a result of the change. The California Department of Education cited those results in drafting the statewide framework. But critics have accused the district of using cherry-picked and misleading assertions to bolster the case for the changes. The intent of the state mathematics framework, its designers say, is to maintain rigor while also helping remedy California’s achievement gaps for Black, Latino and low-income students, which remain some of the largest in the nation. At the heart of the wrangling lies a broad agreement about at least one thing: The way California public schools teach math isn’t working. On national standardized tests, California ranks in the bottom quartile among all states and U.S. territories for 8th grade math scores.

Yet for all the sound and fury, the proposed framework, about 800-pages long, is little more than a set of suggestions. Its designers are revising it now and will subject it to 60 more days of public review. Once it’s approved in July, districts may adopt as much or as little of the framework as they choose — and can disregard it completely without any penalty. “It’s not mandated that you use the framework,” said framework team member Dianne Wilson, a program specialist at Elk Grove Unified. “There’s a concern that it will be implemented unequally.”

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theodp writes: Leading entrepreneurs and luminaries representing a swath of the technology sector are uniting to voice their support for Code.org and Hour of Code in a call for increased computer science access and equitable representation of women and people of color across the industry,” Code.org announced Thursday. “For a limited time from November 9 through December 2, a collective of leaders — including Marc Benioff, Stacy Brown-Philpot, Mark Cuban, Reid Hoffman, Ashton Kutcher, Ellen Pao, Jennifer Tejada, and more — are offering supporters the unique opportunity to receive an elusive Twitter “follow” from one of them, and at the same time, make a meaningful impact in advancing computer science education, particularly for young women and students from groups underrepresented in computer science.” Valued at $2,500-$5,000, the tech billionaires and others’ Twitter ‘follows’ are being auctioned by Charitybuzz.

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theodp writes: On Tuesday, Code.org announced that the new activities for kids in this year’s Hour Of Code will include yet another Minecraft-themed tutorial from Code.org Diamond Supporter Microsoft, making it seven years in a row that the best-selling videogame of all time has ‘headlined’ the Hour of Code during the holiday buying season. Going into the Hour of Code in 2018, Microsoft boasted that 100+ million Minecraft Hour of Code tutorials had already been logged by students.

In this year’s Hour of Code: TimeCraft tutorial, kids will “learn basic coding concepts to correct mysterious mishaps throughout history!” An accompanying one-size-fits-all lesson plan for ages 6-18 instructs students to: “Experience a choose-your-own-adventure game, exploring key moments in human achievement. Using your coding superpowers, save the future by solving mysterious mishaps in time.” Among other things, the coding challenges have K-12 students travel back in time to save Jazz from a kazoo future, prevent the Great Pyramids from being built as cubes, save the Great Wall of China from destruction by pandas, and wipe the frown off of the Mona Lisa. New this year, Microsoft notes, is that educators can sign up to have a Microsoft Education Expert lead their classroom through an Hour of Code lesson with Minecraft, thanks to the magic of Microsoft Teams Live Events.

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