High school teacher finances school supplies by selling ads on tests | Hacker News Reader

High school teacher finances school supplies by selling ads on tests

usatoday.com

17 pointsmhb11 comments

Sponsored by The Answer to Number 4a is Concave Up.

Google still isn't doing paper - quite a niche. Maybe all paper printed should be funded by ads - eg FedEx/Kinko's paper with a nice add watermark.

It's kind of like ads on toilet paper - best read before use.

It's not that I don't admire the creativity, but couldn't this easily spire out of control? In fact, wasn't this one of the seven signs of the apocalypse?

Now that's strange. Check out http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/12/juice-feasting-post... and go down to "Incredibly Vivid Dreams and a New Ad Network Idea" or, to quote,

"In this particular dream, I was taking an exam about the computer gaming industry, so next to one of the essay questions, I saw an ad/logo for IGN Entertainment. I found it amusing at the time to see an ad on my exam, but I was happy that the school got money for it. At least it’s better than trying to raise funds by selling the students out to junk food and soda pushers."

Some Personal Development guy that claims his creativity increased while he was drinking only fruit juice for a month had this exact idea.

Weird.

We have billions to spend to fix problems greedy bankers caused, but teachers have to still dig into their own pockets to buy supplies. It's a truly sad and disappointing situation.

I support the idea of private schooling, but sometimes I wonder if this is what would happen if it became hyper-competitive.

It sounds like he's making up a shortfall of less than $200. If he teaches three classes of twenty students each, that's about $3 per student. Do you really think the average parent would prefer to save $3 per year, in exchange for ads on tests?

I was basing my comment on the scenario where privating schooling was "hyper-competitive", for example if it replaced public schools. So that would make a few assumptions:

1) Advertising could be done on a wider scale and more targeted (not just one class) making it more profitable

2) Once a well established system and relationships are made with advertisers they would make much more money per ad

3) In order for the school to remain competitive, they would need more resources to provide a better service, giving them an incentive to maximize revenue.

Based on that scenario it doesn't seem that unreasonable.

I say it's an acceptable cost if it results in schools' main product, education, sucking less.

We get always get so worked up everytime we see someone playing with a new media to advertise in.

Teens are hammered with advertising left and right all their life from every direction, I hardly think a tiny ad for a local dentist is going to drive them to the edge.

When kids in school start coming home with tattoos advertising local businesses, I'll start to worry.

Usually, at a test, a kid will be as focused as he/she will ever get. It is specially cruel to show adds to a kid in such situations because maximum attention is required for someone doing a test...

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