This is just wrong.

[Gigano]

That certainly is a strange mix of education, entertainment, and advertisement. Advertising should always be identifiable to the target audience as such, and here it seems to blend in with the editorial content of the magazine (even termed a "supplement" to the magazine), presented in an educational setting no less.

Not cool.

 

[manaman]

OP: That right there is an advertising supplement for "TIME For Kids" Magazine. Specifically that magazine is designed for children to read, and published by TIME, inc. The supplement is one big ad, in a for profit magazine. I really doubt the teacher assigned it as official homework, if at all. I also really doubt the school pays for enough subscriptions of a class room to have a supplement book for each kid.

I think it far more likely your brother picked it up from one of the couple of copies of the magazine they get, and you figured it would be neat to tack on that story.

Do you live in Bellevue, Seattle or Redmond? I was there last week and it scared the shit out of me how much Microsoft nearly literally owns the entire area.

The Nintendo campus right across the street is close to the same size as the Microsoft campus in Redmond.

The NOA warehouse in North Bend could cover both of those campuses.

Microsoft hardly has a presence in Seattle.

I do contract work for NOA that takes me up in that area at least once a month. Unless they are rolling up signs as I roll into town you are exaggerating quite a bit.

 

[gbemery]

That is weird and rather dumbfounding. I mean homework is suppose to be an extension of the classroom work and keep the mind ticking. How the heck is a small q&a on that going to help I mean he's in fourth grade not first. No wonder why the U.S. has been and still is slipping in the education ratings.

Just another random note about the thing: "Train your furry friend" from the fold over in the corner of the cover takes on a whole new meaning when you know about the fetish.

.../cold shiver

 

[legion431]

Just another sign of how bad the education systems have gotten.

 

[Adam Galli]

I have mixed thoughts on this. half of me thinks its good because kinect encourages kids to get more active but the other half of me says bill gates needs more money by getting the books to kids and having them start begging for a kinect.

 

[Sun Flash]

I don't know if the Time For Kids type homework is usual in America, but I'd be more worried you're brother' homework is reading a magazine and doing puzzles you'd find on the back of cereal boxes.

So yeah, it's wrong.

 

[Danish rage]

Well. In 89 i was 9 years old. I lived in a crappy part of town and went to a school with a shitload of Arabs. I remember this clearly because my dad went abeshit about it.

At some point it was time to learn about seasons, spring, fall, summer, winter, you know.
And what do they do, present me for a sheet of paper on the subject in arab. IM FUCKING DANISH!

Point is, we don´t pay our teatchers enough or respect the work they do, and we get shitty teatchers in return.

I will completely ignore the underlying tone of Microsoft hate.

 

[Ramin 123]

That's a shitty teacher, to put it mildly. They were pushing Mario Paint at my school when it came out, to help creativity and make games "useful".

How about buying paintbrushes, *****?

And what's wrong with teaching using a cheap digital publishing program? There is an insane market for that kind of thing these days.

Yes but they should be learning things not looking at a fucking advertisement masked as homework. I mean come on...Microsoft teaching my kid (not that I'll have any as I wish not to curse the world with such a thing)is just ludicrous.

 

[MonocleClaire]

What the fuck? What if the kid doesn't have a Kinect?

 

[Daverson]

Doesn't beat the kid who got suspended for wearing a "Pepsi" shirt on his schools "Coca-Cola Day" =p

You Americans, you're bizarre education system amuses me. The only lies we were taught in Primary School (I believe you may call this "Grade school", which also seems odd, as surely all schools give grades?) were about that Jesus fellow. (though, we did once have a substitute who taught us that "0.9 + 0.1 = 0.10"...)

 

[superbatranger]

From an educational standpoint, what good would any of this do?

 

[Weaver]

OP: That right there is an advertising supplement for "TIME For Kids" Magazine. Specifically that magazine is designed for children to read, and published by TIME, inc. It is one big ad, in a for profit magazine. I really doubt the teacher assigned it as official homework, if at all. I also really doubt the school pays for enough subscriptions or a class room to have a supplement book for each kid.

I think it far more likely you brother picked it up from one of the couple of copies of the magazine they get, and you figured it would be neat to tack on that story.

Do you live in Bellevue, Seattle or Redmond? I was there last week and it scared the shit out of me how much Microsoft nearly literally owns the entire area.

The Nintendo campus right across the street is close to the same size as the Microsoft campus in Redmond.

The NOA warehouse in North Bend could cover both of those campuses.

Microsoft hardly has a presence in Seattle.

I do contract work for NOA that takes me up in that area at least once a month. Unless they are rolling up signs as I roll into town you are exaggerating quite a bit.

NoA doesn't even compared to Microsoft in size. Their three main buildings (with a fourth in planning) host just over 1000 employees. Microsoft has 127 buildings in redmond which hold about 45,000 employees, they have their own transportation system for microsoft employees, have half the rooms in three hotels in redmond/bellevue on constant reserve along with several rooms in restaurants in the area.

When windows phone 7 launched they closed down the streets and had a god damn parade, and I'm not even close to kidding.

Spoiler

I used to live in Waterloo Ontario, where RIM is based. There were RIM buildings everywhere, but the city would never let them close down the streets to have a parade for a phone launch.

 

[Ashcrexl]

the advertisement is fine, we're living in a capitalistic society after all, so microsoft is in the clear. but the teacher is at fault here. there doesnt seem to be any educational value in this "homework" assignment at all. that's the issue i have. plus the puzzles are insultingly easy for any 9-10 year old.

 

[JaffaFrost]

Well, I'm not surprised, Microsoft are just money making machines..
I guess it's wrong, but you kinda get used to it

 

[manaman]

snip

Spoiler

I used to live in Waterloo Ontario, where RIM is based. There were RIM buildings everywhere, but the city would never let them close down the streets to have a parade for a phone launch.

I have no idea the size of their other facilities in the area. I only know that the couple of buildings across the road from the NOA campus compare in size to buildings on the NOA side.

That's not much of a parade, but if you want to pretend that is a major road they are marching down go right on ahead. It looks more like a road through their campus, which in all likely hood they own, and the city only has an easement to if it is a thru street.

Yeah, I looked it up, they marched around the campus.

 

[Wolfenbarg]

That's a shitty teacher, to put it mildly. They were pushing Mario Paint at my school when it came out, to help creativity and make games "useful".

How about buying paintbrushes, *****?

And what's wrong with teaching using a cheap digital publishing program? There is an insane market for that kind of thing these days.

Yes but they should be learning things not looking at a fucking advertisement masked as homework. I mean come on...Microsoft teaching my kid (not that I'll have any as I wish not to curse the world with such a thing)is just ludicrous.

I was responding to his criticism of using Mario Paint, I didn't make any comment on the Kinect homework because without actually seeing it, I can't tell if the homework is literally reading an advertisement or if it's commentary on it.

 

[Kurokami]

Why's homework wrong?

It's a way to take what little social life kids have left away. School is already a full-time job, and then they're being forced to fritter away the rest of their time on busywork

If homework takes you so long I'm surprised you're passing the tests. Either way, some people don't have it as easy as you claim it to be for you and need to do homework.

PS: I don't do homework either, but I'm smart enough to know it wasn't invented as some kind of payback by educators, especially when THEY have to mark it. If anyone's to be pittied for homework, it's the teachers, not the students.