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Is the 'Hour of Code' the New 30-Minute Saturday Morning Cartoon Commercial?
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Past corporate-sponsored Hour of Code tutorials for the nation's schoolchildren have blurred the lines between coding lessons and product infomercials. So too is the case again with this year's newly-announced Hour of Code 2024 flagship tutorials, which includ...
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Past corporate-sponsored Hour of Code tutorials for the nation's schoolchildren have blurred the lines between coding lessons and product infomercials. The press release announcing the tutorials from tech-backed nonprofit Code.org, which organizes the Hour of Code and counts Microsoft and Amazon as$30+ million donors, boasts of its "decade of partnership with [Microsoft] Minecraft this year, reaching more than 300 million sessions of Minecraft Hour of Code since 2015!" Interestingly, The Transformers(Paramount Pictures, which released Transformers One in the U.S., is a $25,000+ Code.org donor) is cited as one of the OG's of children's Saturday morning cartoon advertising (aka 30-minute commercials) that prompted the Children's Television Act (CTA) of 1990, an act of Congress that ordered the FCC to put in place regulations to protect children from advertising.
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