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NSF Makes It Rain: $722K Award To Evaluate Microsoft-Backed TEALS

theodp writes: Microsoft has $92 billion in cash parked offshore, so it’s kind of surprising to see a $722K National Science Foundation award is going towards validating the efficacy of Microsoft TEALS, the pet program of CEO Satya Nadella that sends volunteer software engineers with no teaching experience into high schools to teach kids and their teachers computer science. Among its Program Changes for 2015, TEALS said it “explicitly commits to provide a core set of curriculum materials that are complete, organized, and adaptable,” which should help improve the outcome of the Developing Computer Science Pedagogical Content Knowledge through On-the-Job
Learning NSF study schools are being asked to participate in. Meanwhile, CSTUY, a volunteer organization led by experienced CS teachers (including Slashdot user zamansky), finds itself turning to Kickstarter for $25K to fund Saturday Hacking Sessions. So, as Microsoft-backed Code.org — which has also attracted NSF award money to validate its CS program — is fond of saying: What’s wrong with this picture?

(To be fair to TEALS: it may have Microsoft backing, but it’s not strictly a Microsoft effort, and also started out as a pure volunteer effort, as founder Kevin Wang explained earlier this year.)


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