US Department of Education Spending $4 Million To Teach 3,450 Kids CS Using Minecraft 38
theodp writes: Among the 45 winners of this year's Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program competitions is Creative Coders: Middle School CS Pathways Through Game Design (PDF). The U.S. Dept. of Education is providing the national nonprofit Urban Arts with $3,999,988 to "use materials and learning from its School of Interactive Arts program to create an engaging, game-based, middle school CS course using [Microsoft] Minecraft tools" for 3,450 middle schoolers (6th-8th grades) in New York and California with the help of "our industry partner Microsoft with the utilization of Minecraft Education."
From Urban Arts' winning proposal: "Because a large majority of children play video games regularly, teaching CS through video game design exemplifies CRT [Culturally Responsive Teaching], which has been linked to 'academic achievement, improved attendance, [and] greater interest in school.' The video game Minecraft has over 173 million users worldwide and is extremely popular with students at the middle school level; the Minecraft Education workspace we utilize in the Creative Coders curriculum is a familiar platform to any player of the original game. By leveraging students' personal interests and their existing 'funds of knowledge', we believe Creative Coders is likely to increase student participation and engagement."
Speaking of UA's EIR grant partner Microsoft, Urban Arts' Board of Directors includes Josh Reynolds, the Director of Modern Workplace for Microsoft Education, whose Urban Arts bio notes "has led some of the largest game-based learning activations worldwide with Minecraft." Urban Arts' Gaming Pathways Educational Advisory Board includes Reynolds and Microsoft Sr. Account Executive Amy Brandt. And in his 2019 book Tools and Weapons, Microsoft President Brad Smith cited $50 million K-12 CS pledges made to Ivanka Trump by Microsoft and other Tech Giants as the key to getting Donald Trump to sign a $1 billion, five-year presidential order (PDF) "to ensure that federal funding from the Department of Education helps advance [K-12] computer science," including via EIR program grants.
From Urban Arts' winning proposal: "Because a large majority of children play video games regularly, teaching CS through video game design exemplifies CRT [Culturally Responsive Teaching], which has been linked to 'academic achievement, improved attendance, [and] greater interest in school.' The video game Minecraft has over 173 million users worldwide and is extremely popular with students at the middle school level; the Minecraft Education workspace we utilize in the Creative Coders curriculum is a familiar platform to any player of the original game. By leveraging students' personal interests and their existing 'funds of knowledge', we believe Creative Coders is likely to increase student participation and engagement."
Speaking of UA's EIR grant partner Microsoft, Urban Arts' Board of Directors includes Josh Reynolds, the Director of Modern Workplace for Microsoft Education, whose Urban Arts bio notes "has led some of the largest game-based learning activations worldwide with Minecraft." Urban Arts' Gaming Pathways Educational Advisory Board includes Reynolds and Microsoft Sr. Account Executive Amy Brandt. And in his 2019 book Tools and Weapons, Microsoft President Brad Smith cited $50 million K-12 CS pledges made to Ivanka Trump by Microsoft and other Tech Giants as the key to getting Donald Trump to sign a $1 billion, five-year presidential order (PDF) "to ensure that federal funding from the Department of Education helps advance [K-12] computer science," including via EIR program grants.
I mean... ok` (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Our high school here charges $19K/yr with 4-7 classes per kid depending on track.
Though I suppose a full break down of program costs would be in the grant application.
Re: I mean... ok` (Score:1)
Minecraft for Education is a finished app. NYS already funds both Internet access and laptop/tablets for every pupil from K through 12. Teachers are paid for very well.
This is just government spending at its best, $1000 for an app that costs less than $20 retail.
Minecraft 365 student only $1000/seat per year! (Score:5, Insightful)
Minecraft 365 student only $1000/seat per year!
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Great, more bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
I am really sick and tired of these meaningless stunts. In the end, this just gives $4M to Microsoft that they do not deserve and makes teaching a tiny bit worse in the same step.
Re: Great, more bullshit (Score:2)
Not sure how you get that figure? Minecraft is $5/user for educational, so for the 4000 users it means Microsoft is getting $20k.
The summary said the $4M is going to a different organization to develop the curriculum.
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Ah, sorry. That part of the story was a bit hard to read, hence I did not bother. So most of the money goes to some other peddler of crappy products.
But wait, there's more! (Score:2)
Word problem time: Q. If students are required to have 5.5 hours of daily instruction for 180 days [ed.gov] in a school year and it costs $37,000-a-year to educate a student [nypost.com], what's an estimated cost of enrolling 3,450 students in a middle school CS course that requires 108 hours [ed.gov]? A. 3,450 students X $37,000 per student X 108 hours per CS course / (5.5 hours per day * 180 days per year) = $13.9 million
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Extra credit: Q. Estimate how much it might cost to rollout the 108-hour course to 11+ million middle schoolers [ed.gov].
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Hard to read because this is the standard bullshit "look at how the government is wasting pennies and ignore the massive waste elsewhere!"
There was Senator Proxmire who did his annual "golden goose" awards for government waste, and he'd regularly target hard science grants, many of which were big winners in the long run. While he was good at pointing out real waste (naval shipyards that served no purpose except to bring tax dollars to legislators' districts, which he failed to stop), his focus on science pr
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So teh money is going for 70+ new teachers, facilities, and general resources?
Re: Great, more bullshit (Score:2)
Meh, they messed up and put CRT in the press release so this is DOA for most of the South.
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Re: More Republican voters (Score:2)
Might be the first actual solution to make coders (Score:2)
why not the free options? (Score:2)
Sorry to all my U.S.A. friends, but this kind of news makes me kinda proud to not be American (as in: proud to not be part of all that lobbying that is eating away at a great country).
Come on, if you really want to teach using voxels, there are plenty of FREE options (https://edu.ihom.app/en/, https://github.com/edu-minetes... [github.com], etc.).
But I guess this does not sit well with plutocracy, sadly.
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But I guess this does not sit well with plutocracy, sadly.
I assure you the plutocracy has no idea what Minecraft is, let alone its free-to-play competitors.
In the meantime, Minecraft is what the kids are into, and it's Turing-complete, so Minecraft is as good an introduction to programming as any (and better than some). You might as well meet your audience where they are.
Waste of money (Score:2, Flamebait)
When are people going to realize that new CS degrees are completely pointless? In 10 years there are only going to be enough jobs for the most senior, most talented devs who studied or adopted AI hardest. The easier stuff just isn't going to be around anymore.
Kids, STOP LEARNING TO PROGRAM!
minetest (Score:3)
Allow me to astroturf for the FLOSS champion in this corner: https://www.minetest.net/ [minetest.net]
Minetest is the better tool for engaging interest in coding and modding and developing a curriculum around it for $4M would be in the public interest unlike giving Microsoft another hand-me-down-job.
give them all laptops (Score:2)
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Minecraft: Is it like a gigantic Virtual Lego set (Score:2)
Three questions (Score:2)
(2) How will they measure how well pupils have actually achieved them?
(3) What will happen when the data shows that appropriate, well-designed, well-implemented maths lessons work better?
"coding" is NOT computer science! (Score:3)
Difficult, but not that difficult (Score:1)
CS? Minecraft? (Score:2)
*Almost* $4 million (Score:2)
C'mon guys, I'm sure we can scrape together the extra twelve bucks to get them to an even 4 million.