It's the hot new thing in tech, and it's where all the jobs are. Students who don't learn to use it fall behind. And to help them catch...

What happened

It's the hot new thing in tech, and it's where all the jobs are. Students who don't learn to use it fall behind.

And to help them catch up in time, its creators are graciously providing the resources and curriculum for learning it, often pro bono. That's the narrative AI companies are pitching schools on right now, but according to New York Times education technology reporter Natasha Singer, it's also how the tech industry has built its influence in classrooms for the past 15 years.

In a new book, Coding Kids, Singer details how tech companies took a central role in promoting computers and coding skills in education, promising computer sci … It’s the hot new thing in tech, and it’s where all the jobs are.

The important details

In a new book, Coding Kids, Singer details how tech companies took a central role in promoting computers and coding skills in education, promising computer science skills were the ticket to high-paying jobs. But by the time many of those students entered the workforce, new technologies had thrown that promise into question.

Meanwhile, the companies got schools to help them create a new class of would-be workers, and trained students on using their products and software, making them likely future customers. Now, the AI industry is pitching itself to schools with similar force.

“I worry we have collective amnesia,” Singer told me on a recent episode of The Vergecast.

Context and impact

“Have we learned any lessons from these past tech cycles in schools that are going to inform the rollout of AI, make sure that it benefits education, and put in the safeguards now — not a decade from now?” Fortunately, in some ways, she believes the answer is yes. Singer’s book recounts how more than a decade ago, the country’s largest tech companies embedded themselves directly into school curricula through courses for Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles classes.

Apple and Microsoft each created their own curricula, featuring their own tools like Apple’s Swift or Microsoft’s Minecraft. “What’s striking about this is you can imagine that parents would not want, say, Pfizer AP Biology, or Northrop Grumman AP Physics, or ExxonMobil Environmental Science AP,” Singer says.

She found that those in the medical field would likely understand why — medical students who are trained by a company on how to implant their proprietary device, one expert told her as an example, rarely choose to try another.

What comes next

Google has also made itself a dominant force in education through its distribution of low-cost laptops called Chromebooks. Singer tracked their ubiquitous adoption across schools through the 2010s, which she says was accelerated even further during the school shutdowns of the covid-19 pandemic.

Google also introduced its Classroom app to help teachers communicate things like assignments and grades. By the time generative AI took off, Singer writes, Google was already a key platform provider for many schools, and well-positioned to promote it. [Media: https://youtu.be/jjww1yqk7hw] Even when companies weren’t directly involved in education, they backed nonprofit groups like Code.org.

Code.org kicked off its viral education campaign with a splashy celebrity-laden video that included tech moguls like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and then-Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, urging kids to learn to code.

Key signals

• And to help them catch up in time, its creators are graciously providing the resources and curriculum for learning it, often pro bono.
• Apple and Microsoft each created their own curricula, featuring their own tools like Apple’s Swift or Microsoft’s Minecraft.
• One group of academics engaged in a more traditional, methodological approach to testing and rolling out their own computer science curriculum.

What to watch

Watch early user feedback, platform support, pricing, and whether competitors answer with similar features.