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Google Education Programming

Google Wants Google Doodles Taught In Public School, Warns Kids They Best Behave 146

theodp writes: Well, this year's Hour of Code is almost upon us, and if Google has its way, K-12 schoolchildren across the nation will be learning computer science by creating Google Doodles with Scratch (lesson plan). Curiously, the introductory video for the Create Your Own Google Logo Hour of Code activity from the Google Computer Science Education Department sternly warns kids, "While it is okay to use the Google logo for your personal Doodle, it is not okay [emphasis Google's] to use it anyplace else or outside this activity." In addition to respecting its intellectual property, Google instructs kids that they are to follow the Scratch Community Guidelines when they create Google logos: "Please stay positive, friendly, and supportive towards others in the Scratch Community. Help us keep Scratch a place where people of different backgrounds and interests feel welcome to hang out and create together."
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Google Wants Google Doodles Taught In Public School, Warns Kids They Best Behave

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  • Then decide it's not profitable and shut it down in 2 years. No more book reports bitches!

    • Needs to Stop (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sycodon ( 149926 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @12:45PM (#55514367)

      This whole trend of Big Business dreaming up some curriculum and then trying to push it on public schools has got to stop.

      Not only because it's an obvious shill for their particular technology, but it is often poorly thought out and in some instances politically charged.

      • Re:Needs to Stop (Score:4, Insightful)

        by CanHasDIY ( 1672858 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @12:47PM (#55514385) Homepage Journal

        ... it is often poorly thought out and in some instances politically charged.

        Well then it sounds like a proper fit for Common Core schools.

        • by sycodon ( 149926 )

          LOL..

          Pretty much.

        • Re:Needs to Stop (Score:4, Interesting)

          by networkBoy ( 774728 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @12:57PM (#55514475) Journal

          as a parent of a kid dealing with CommonClusterfuck I can say that this has *nothing* on just how political and railroaded CC is.

          [rant]
          Us parents were billed as "it's an additional method to help us teach, not all kids understand the math lessons we grew up with"...
          BUT!
          My kid is hyper analytical (and an aspie, so...) he thrives on a sheet of graph paper and columns for long division, not this brainfuck of repeated additions and subtractions to find the right answer.
          He was reduced to sobbing trying to figure out how to do his homework, which might as well been written in greek, considering the teachers can't even properly explain it.

          I read it, extracted the actual division problems and taught him how to use graph paper to keep his columns straight for classic long division with remainders. He did the entire worksheet with the right answers. and got an F.

          [/rant]

          • by sycodon ( 149926 )

            Time for Dad to visit the School Board.

            • by slick7 ( 1703596 )

              Time for Dad to visit the School Board.

              That's how you commit suicide by common core. Quiz custodiet ipsos custodet.

          • by Anonymous Coward

            God that shit is horrible. My best friend pulled his kid out of public school and mom and grandma home school he in the more "traditional" way. not only has he caught up to where he is "supposed" to be at but has exceeded it by a fair margin. of course mom having masters in speech therapy/teaching and grandma having BEEN a HS teacher for 35 years helps, but that's not really the point.

          • by mallyn ( 136041 )
            Very eloquently said 'commonclusterfuck'! I luv it! Put that one with 'All Childrent Left Behind' or 'All Of Us Left Behind' when referring to 'no child left behind'.

            Seriously, when I tried to read through the no child left behind documents, I was lulled to a deep sleep and was left miles behind!!

          • I read it, extracted the actual division problems and taught him how to use graph paper to keep his columns straight for classic long division with remainders. He did the entire worksheet with the right answers. and got an F.

            [/rant]

            Same here. It's insanity.

            I'm assuming it was all about someone (or a lot of someones) getting their PhD, not about educating children. After all, it's hard to claim "original research" with tried and true methods.

      • Well then stop putting in politicians that keep on cutting taxes and the budgets of education, and other services, to fund those tax cuts. If the school system was properly funded with good teachers who had time to prepare their lessons then there wouldn't be an opening, or at least an easy one, for companies to market their products under the guise of education.

        • by sycodon ( 149926 )

          We put people on the moon with men who grew up going to one room schools, using pencils and slide rules.

          Those schools were funded by local property taxes and controlled by local school boards. There wasn't even an "Ejucation Departmemt".

          The Austin ISD just received approval for a one BILLION dollar bond. They are going to spend 40 million dollars on an elementary school.

          I'm sorry, there is NO lack of funding in education.

          • by plopez ( 54068 )

            Ummm no. Most of them were solidly middle class and went to suburban schools. There was the occasional exception but most of them were born during or shortly before WWII, average age in the mid 20's. The pilots went to Academy's the engineers and managers went to 4 year schools.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by be951 ( 772934 )

        Not only because it's an obvious shill for their particular technology

        Like Google providing materials and lesson plans based on Scratch, "a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. It is available for free at http://scratch.mit.edu/ [mit.edu]"? Those monsters!

        in some instances politically charged

        Yeah, the example they give of changing the color of a letter in the logo. Obviously racist, right?

        Damn big businesses, offering free educational resources to teachers and schools. What kind of world are we creating when we expose kids to STEM concepts at a young age? Oh, the humanities!

      • by Flexagon ( 740643 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @02:05PM (#55514919)

        When our kids were in school, decades ago, our battles along these lines were many. There was McDonald's handing out arithmetic worksheets asking the students to add up the costs of Big Macs and fries, decorated with the company's cartoon characters. There were even charities that lobbied for sales or other fund raising activities, for themselves, during school instruction hours. So it's not simply big business (unless one also puts some charities in that same bucket). All of these activities had the strong support of the school district's leadership and it took a lot of effort to get these stopped or limited. Eventually, the primary supporter was voted out of office. Some district leaders continue to think of these programs as "free" instructional material or other supposed benefits. But it's all really designed to sell product or reduce instruction time, and should continue to be fought.

        At the same time, we supported other fund raising activities, for the school itself, when they were held outside of instruction hours. That might be the annual Walk-A-Thon type event held on a weekend or a bake sale after school. And we involved our kids in our own charitable giving. But absolutely none of this on school time.

        In the case of Google's offer, this might be a fine example to use to explain the concepts of copyright, fair use, and even open source to the targets of this unacceptable activity.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • on the Engineering Quadrangle, Google had students queued up to get a donut along with a chance to win a Google Donut or whatever they call their clone of the Amazon Echo. They were totally slow because you had to give over your personal information to even get the kind of donut you could eat, and they had this Disney-ride line-control labyrinth filled with students by 8:30 AM. Sure wish I had my camera to photograph Google treating a large mob of Engineering students like cattle in a feedlot.

          What did

      • Public schools are a prison system.

        Students are forced to attend and labor under duress. There is no indictment or jury. If they fail to attend, they or their parents can be penalized or even arrested.

        Taxation is theft
        War is murder
        The draft is slavery
        Public schools are prisons

      • Troy: (on TV) Now turn to the next problem. If you have three Pepsis and drink one, how much more refreshed are you? You, the redhead in the Chicago school system?
        Girl: Pepsi?
        Troy: Partial credit!

        https://www.simpsonsarchive.co... [simpsonsarchive.com]

      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Re "Not only because it's an obvious shill for their particular technology, but it is often poorly thought out and in some instances politically charged."
        It has to be the lack of computers, teachers, books, calculators, robot kits, ebooks, laptops, desktop computers, new funding, nutrition.
        Add more computers, quality teachers and a find funds to design new buildings.

        Just keep on over funding the parts of the nation that cant educate their students and in a few decades the students test as well as the
      • Unfortunately, the current trend of public education seems to be to reduce funding and support privatization and/or charter schools. This leaves very few options on the table. Corporations and religious organizations are filling that void. If you don't want big business and religion interfering in the education process, elect politicians that think education is a good use of your tax dollars.
  • by Moof123 ( 1292134 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @12:29PM (#55514261)

    You are welcome to speak your mind in America*.

    *Must comply with HR rules of your company, must not offend anyone, infringe on any business interests, or otherwise cause incitement of the public.

    • The Constitution only guarantees that the government cannot silence you.

      It does not guarantee you an absolute right to say whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want.

      So, if you're on my payroll and property, you follow my rules, or GTFO. When it's your payroll and property, you get to make the rules.

      Now shut up and get off my lawn (but feel free to speak up again once you reach the public street).

    • Yes?

      I mean the first amendment is solely to stop the government putting you in gaol for speaking. The purpose is so you can speak truth to power and power can't suppress you. The general motivation is that you should be able to speak to effect a change.

      As with everything it's more complex, but that's the basics.

      Now, by design and intention nothing in the concept of free speech protects you from the social consequences of your speech. The why is interesting. If you were protected and there were no consequenc

    • Every six year old I know has a attorney and a parent with an IQ of at least 160! And crayons.
    • Fake-Progressive Capitalists sure do love imposing dictatorial codes of conduct on people without their consent.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    "While it is okay to use the Google logo for your personal Doodle, it is not okay [emphasis Google's] to use it anyplace else or outside this activity."

    What we should be teaching children is the appropriate response to this:
    "You want a logo design? Pay me."

    • Please respect your Google Overlord, You are only a cog in the new plutocracy. You need re-education. Please use the search term "I am fucked, I am fucked. Heal me. Heal me." and your sins will be absolved, citizen.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Fuck you Google.

    If you want to make people revolve around your every move then they get to do shit with your stuff you don't get to control.

    If you don't like them using your logo for other things ... DON'T FUCKING MAKE IT THE CENTER OF AN EXPERIMENT ABOUT MODIFYING IMAGES WITH SOFTWARE YOU SELFISH FUCKS.

    Use a logo developed to be public domain specifically for this purpose.

    Anything else just shows your selfishness. My children will literally NEVER be allowed to participate in ANY Google summer of code bull

  • by evolutionary ( 933064 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @12:37PM (#55514317)
    It' is truly inappropriate for Google to come in with education agenda, legal and social agenda. That is for teachers and parents to decide. Not corporations. That just leads to all sorts of abuse. Microsoft and Apple have been pushing their products through schools and the results are future people who no nothing but the products pushed in the school. Not what I call an education. Oscar Wilde would have a field day with this. (see his statement about British education in "The Importance of being Earnest").
    • It's still up to the teachers or schools to implement the lesson or not, Google isn't forcing anybody to do this it's just providing resources for those that choose to use them.

      And this isn't new at all, for example look up Pepsi's use of the US's attempt at adopting the metric system to push using 2 liter bottles of soda as teaching aids ("follow the liter" campaign)

      • But google (like MS and Apple before them) is exerting pressure as the article indicates. I think most of us agree that the potential of conflict of interest of any private company, especially a large corporation, is far to great to be allowing them to set agenda/criteria in our school system at the primary level before children have had a chance to form independent idea.s
  • by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @12:53PM (#55514443)

    Ultimately, this appears to be a contract. Children cannot agree to contracts, and the school can't enter them into a contract without parental consent. So, kids, do whatever you want with your Google doodles, they are yours.

          If nothing else, copyright applies.

    • Ultimately, this appears to be a contract. Children cannot agree to contracts, and the school can't enter them into a contract without parental consent. So, kids, do whatever you want with your Google doodles, they are yours.

      If nothing else, copyright applies.

      IANAL, but I don't let that stop me.

      I don't think this is a contract. Google isn't giving them something (permission to use the activity?) in exchange for agreement not to violate Google's trademarks. Google is giving them permission to use Google's trademark in a limited way. There's no exchange of value here, just a unidirectional, limited grant. Kids who, say, make an incredibly-attractive and artistic doodle and then sell thousands of copies of it haven't violated any agreement with Google, they've vi

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • "There's no exchange of value here"

          You underestimate the lawyers' ancient and finely crafted skill of rhetoric.

          No, I don't. Remember that there would be lawyers on both sides, and the argument that this was a limited, one-way grant, not a contract, looks like a very powerful one. There's also no need for a contract in this case, nor any language that implies one.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        They are partnering with MIT's Scratch on this. Anything published on Scratch is copyleft: "By publishing your project on the Scratch website, you agree to license it under a Creative Commons Share Alike license. If you don’t want others to view and remix your creations, don’t share them on the Scratch website."

  • by forkfail ( 228161 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @01:24PM (#55514663)

    "I notice that you have a printout of your child's Google Doodle (tm) on your refrigerator.

    Please be aware that you are in violation of the Universal EULA. As such, until such time as you remove the offending item, all Google Services, including but not limited to gmail, your autonomous vehicle permissions, electricity, and access to Amazon will be revoked.

    Please also be aware that until such time as you complete the mandatory three day course "Google Loves Me: Why I should Love Google", you will be ineligible to receive your daily Google Credits.

    Remember, we at Google want what is best for you and for the children you entrust to us."

  • by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @01:48PM (#55514795)
    ...by introducing them to the boring and tedious world of copyright and trademarks.

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