Code.org Documentary Serving Multiple Agendas?
theodp writes "'Someday, and that day may never come,' Don Corleone says famously in The Godfather, 'I'll call upon you to do a service for me.' Back in 2010, filmmaker Lesley Chilcott produced Waiting for 'Superman', a controversial documentary that analyzed the failures of the American public education system, and presented charter schools as a glimmer of hope, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed KIPP Los Angeles Prep. Gates himself was a 'Superman' cast member, lamenting how U.S. public schools are producing 'American Idiots' of no use to high tech firms like Microsoft, forcing them to 'go half-way around the world to recruit the engineers and programmers they needed.' So some found it strange that when Chilcott teamed up with Gates again three years later to make Code.org's documentary short What Most Schools Don't Teach, kids from KIPP Empower Academy were called upon to demonstrate that U.S. schoolchildren are still clueless about what computer programmers do. In a ...
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Gamification Can Work — Just Don’t Hire A Game Designer
Editor’s note: Rajat Paharia is the founder of Bunchball, a provider of online gamification solutions. Follow him on Twitter @rajatrocks. Gartner recently issued a press release that made the following provocative assertion: “Gamification is currently being driven by novelty and hype. Gartner predicts that by 2014, 80 percent of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives primarily because of poor design.” While the rest of the release discusses the various ways that gamification can effectively be used to drive behavior change, skill development, and innovation, the only thing that sticks in most readers’ minds is, “80 percent of gamification will fail.” This couldn’t be further from the truth. First off, there is still a misconception about what gamification is, and the prefix “game” probably doesn’t help. Gamification is the process of taking something that already exists – that has some core, intrinsic value – and integrating game mechanics ...
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Three Startups Defending Democracy In America: Votizen, Memeorandum, and NationBuilder
The USA was founded by entrepreneurs who said "England has become bloated with bureaucracy. Let's disrupt it by starting our own agile, more innovative nation." But on the country's 236th birthday, we find some democracy's machinery needs a tune up. Political news, campaigns, and voting itself require an update for the 21st century. Considering our roots, its only fitting that entrepreneurs would be the ones to rise to the occasion and use technology to make this great nation greater. Here a look at five bold startups putting the power of democracy back in the hands of the ordinary person.
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