Bill Gates Says Tablets Aren't Much Help In Education 575
An anonymous reader writes "In a detailed interview on the future of education, Bill Gates was surprisingly down on tablets in education — considering that Microsoft just released Surface. He said low-cost PCs are the thing for students, and he dismissed the idea that simply giving gadgets to students will bring change. Quoting: 'Just giving people devices has a really horrible track record. You really have to change the curriculum and the teacher. And it's never going to work on a device where you don't have a keyboard-type input. Students aren't there just to read things. They're actually supposed to be able to write and communicate. And so it's going to be more in the PC realm—it's going to be a low-cost PC that lets them be highly interactive.'"
Re:Considering the source... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. His prognostications have been pretty much a joke. People should go back and read "The Road Ahead" and see how good that was.
Forget the PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Pencil. Paper. Calculator. The keyboard gets in the way of doing anything useful, especially if you're trying to do things involving symbols (like math).
Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
I've wondered the same thing as I've seen ads that pretty much every major school district in my area are touting iPads for every student next year. I love new shiny tech, but I feel like 'get of my lawn' curmudgeon being skeptical on the benefits of outfitting every kid with a free-to-use tablet. It's especially frustrating when in the same article about the local district offering iPads to everyone (via a technology-specific millage) that same district is still 500k in the hole after cutting $1 million by way of faculty layoffs.
I haven't looked, but is there research showing that giving every student an iPad improves something?
It makes sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates has been at the forefront of preventing innovation in computing and holding on to old ways of doing things for decades. It stands to reason the he wouldn't be able to understand that computing is possible without a keyboard.
That said, he is right that the equipment and the curriculum must work together. You can't just buy a fancy new toy and expect it to change much. But in the case of tablets, they could easily replace textbooks and printed materials with more interactive alternatives, and of course there'd be no benefit in having a keyboard if that's what you're trying to accomplish.
He's both right and wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
'Just giving people devices has a really horrible track record. You really have to change the curriculum and the teacher.
That's right, I've seen this go horribly wrong before.
And it's never going to work on a device where you don't have a keyboard-type input.
I'm going to disagree here though. It worked for pencil/paper for decades, no keyboard input there!
Re:Considering the source... (Score:1, Insightful)
Why is anyone listening, in terms of education, to the opinion of a guy whose primary talent was taking over and copying other tech businesses? Since when did he know what direction education is going? What, because he wrote an early version of DOS he knows that tablets won't be helpful in classrooms? How does that logically follow?
Why does it matter who he is and what he has done, if the arguments he makes for his position are sound?
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:4, Insightful)
I completely agree with his assessment
I'm with you. Although, in 50 years, Bill Gates will be remembered for his work as a philanthropist, not as a software tycoon. And in that light, I feel pretty good about Bill Gates these days.
Re:you know (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I think he's right.
Bottom line, when they break schools aren't going to be able to afford to replace them. They'll be out of classrooms in less than 10 years.
Re:Exactly (Score:2, Insightful)
> In the "real world" a company that wasted money frivolously would die out
And yet this never seems to happen. Large things just tend to be inefficient by their nature, private or public sector.
He's right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Within very specific environments computers and the like are indeed beneficial. But for education in general all these devices do is distract. Kids want toys, teachers mistakenly believe it will ease the burden of teaching and administrators are easily suckered by anything they think will make them look progressive.
Even in college, in a course which required computer use I had to be vigilant about my students dicking around on instead of paying attention. The temptation to partake in other activities is far too strong. And the question is if, even when they're used for their intended purpose, do they actually enhance learning over a printed book and a good teacher? Do they actually aid in the retention of knowledge? I think these questions need to be answered first. But I suspect no one wants them answered because it will reveal all this as the gimmick it is.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really creepy to me: One man starts a cancer foundation, donates to charities, and, at least publicly, seems to be a decent human being, and is generally reviled. Another man is kind of an utter dick, makes abusive business deals, and after years of being a multi-millionaire without contributing anything to society, dies of cancer, and he gets worshiped like some kind of god.
Bill agrees with Steve (Score:3, Insightful)
Access to free (text-) books is reason enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Just having access to books when you need it is reason enough to have tablets or netbooks in schools. Instead of talking about Adam Smith, you can just read his books. Instead of handing out 20-30 thousand page books to all the pupils in the class, all you need is have them download a 1-2MB file. Fully searchable. And that's just one example.
A single tablet can fit all books you'll ever need in school instantly accessible at any time.
Even if tablets do absolutely nothing in the way of improving education in any other way, that's reason enough.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Insightful)
No he didn't (Score:5, Insightful)
Q. Tablet computers are big these days. The Surface tablet was just released by Microsoft last week, and iPads are all over campuses, but it doesn't sound like your approach has been to give devices to students and hope things change that way. What do you think needs to happen for factors like tablets to really make a difference? Or is that not even part of the equation?
A. Just giving people devices has a really horrible track record. You really have to change the curriculum and the teacher. And it's never going to work on a device where you don't have a keyboard-type input. Students aren't there just to read things. They're actually supposed to be able to write and communicate. And so it's going to be more in the PC realm—it's going to be a low-cost PC that lets them be highly interactive.
And he's RIGHT. We've seen this time and time again: some school gets some tech grant and goes on a tech spending spree on crap that in the end do nothing to aid in education. When I was in school, we had initiatives like smart boards, which were expensive and broke so much, teachers ended up using them as expensive whiteboards. Then we had laptop carts, where you trucked around this 10 ton cart to classrooms where none of the laptops were charged all the way and they never worked. And when they did work, they added nothing that a trip to the computer lab would have done.
So just giving students tablets isn't going to work. They'll be fun little novel gadgets, but students need to do real work which includes writing, typing, and other things you cannot do with your fingers. I used a tablet PC throughout college, and it was the best technology investment I made. It was one of those convertible tablets that switched from keyboard mode to laptop mode, and a had a stylus for writing notes. Classmates were constantly begging me for copies of my notes, since I was able to annotate book excerpts and capture chalboard derivations easier than they were able to with traditional PnP. Then the iPad came out and everyone said it was a godsend. I bought one in the hopes of replacing my tablet PC, but I was sorely disappointed at its capabilities. From a student's perspective, it was nothing more than a toy compared to my tablet PC, and I think that's what Bill Gates is getting at.
The submitter seems to think that Bill's words contradict Microsoft's efforts with the Surface, but the Surface is everything I wanted the iPad to be. It can run serious note taking software like One Note. It can *truly* multi task applications. It has digital pen input. It has a slim attachable keyboard. And when I'm at a desk I can connect it to a monitor and keyboard and use Office, Matlab, etc. as many students need to.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Insightful)
New tech has to prove itself.
No one else should cut it any slack just because you are getting all hot and bothered about your personal brand fetish becoming the new monopoly and replacing the old one.
He happens to be right on this one (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you want to students to create content or consume content? That's the bottom line, tablets are great for consuming content but suck in a not good way for creating anything more than a brief email. Personally I'd rather have students that can create things than consume things.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Being a locked down walled garden appliance kind of limits their usefulness. Note how you are trying to segregate them from PCs when that's what they really are.
Your kind of ignorance is what you get when you don't really educate students about technology. They don't realize how much bullshit you're spewing right now. They don't understand what's going on.
This is just a PC with different IO devices and some artificial crippling.
That limits who can contribute in general and who you in particular you can benefit from.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>We need to learn how to use them to teach with
No you don't.
In the 1920s the newest technology was the shortwave radio which allowed worldwide communication. Did teachers suddenly needs radios in every classroom to be teachers? No. In the 1950s the newest technology was the TV. Did teachers suddenly needs TVs to be teachers? No. Now it's the tablet. (And the answer is still no.)
>>>you are a fucking luddite if you think that
Do you speak like that in front of your students? And no not a luddite. I just don't see how I am supposed to enter my engineering equations into a tablet. Or how students are supposed to do it either.
Right and not so convincing... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am an education professional with a graduate degree in Education Technology. Based on my review of the literature, and my own research, Bill Gates is absolutely correct in saying:
Just giving people devices has a really horrible track record. You really have to change the curriculum and the teacher.
This part, however, is 100% opinion, and lacks the data to back his assertion:
And it's never going to work on a device where you don't have a keyboard-type input.
He's applying old paradigms from his comfort zone to modern learning. "Never" is a long time, Bill.
Re:Bill, Are You That Much Out of Touch? (Score:5, Insightful)
10 WAYS THE IPAD WILL FOREVER CHANGE EDUCATION
Every single one of those points, except the point that the iPad has limited multitasking capabilities (and that's somehow a good thing in the classroom), applies to laptops.
SD Unified Purchases 26,000 iPads For District Students:
At 30 kids a classroom, they could have afforded to give 866 teachers a much needed $17k raise with the money they spent on this technology push that will end up abandoned in 3 years. Better yet they could hire new teachers. Watch as those iPads become outdated and can't run the latest OS with the latest and greatest educational apps in 3 years time. Oh, and that's another $260,000 in a couple years to replace the batteries as they go. How often do you have to replace the batteries on a textbook?
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:1, Insightful)
and after years of being a multi-millionaire without contributing anything to society
- wow. Just wow.
Without contributing anything to society. I mean, I don't own any Apple products, but this is not even about Steve Jobs, it's about the notion that a person who builds a successful business doesn't contribute anything to society.
In my, NOT so humble opinion, the person who builds a successful business contributes more to society than most charities and than any government. AFAIC the person who builds a successful business contributes more than 1000 times his fair share before he even pays a single cent in taxes.
The person who builds a successful business (especially if the industry is mostly unregulated, so it's the freest market available) by definition provides products and services that the people want.
The business provides products and services that the market desires at prices that are acceptable, because the market buys them.
Secondary to that (really secondary, it's not important at all, but it does exist) the business hires people, who now have jobs. These people unfortunately pay taxes, so gov't obviously gets way more than it deserves by this very fact.
OTOH a successful business is often something other people can invest in and make money for themselves, thus ensuring their own well being, which is again, something that society should desire - people who don't need to be supported, that can support themselves.
By definition the person who builds a successful business somehow is involved in some form of production (even if the business is an equity fund, whose entire job is to buy and tear down businesses, as long as there is profit at the end of this, it means that resources have been allocated more efficiently for purposes that are more useful to the market).
The products and services are often time and labour saving devices (or maybe they provide entertainment and leisure) and as such the products maybe can be used to free up more labour from being occupied in various jobs (yes, firing people is a very very good thing as long as the resources again, are allocate more efficiently, now these people do not need to do something that can be done automatically or maybe done differently altogether, as long as the market approves with profits, this means there is more efficient distribution of resources).
A person who builds his own business and does NOT do charity for the sake of charity but instead keeps doing what he is good at doing, is doing far more good in the economy and thus society, because he can use his own productivity (money) in a much more efficient way than any charity.
If charity is about saving some people, well, it should be up to individuals to do this if they want to, it must never be done by any government, because then it's not a charity, but a faceless entitlement system and wealth redistribution, which is immoral and should be made illegal (it is unconstitutional in USA at least anyway).
Charity is fine if it's done voluntarily, otherwise it's theft. A person who does business well, should be devoting most of his resources keeping at doing that business, not wasting resources on unrelated things (this includes taxes), that's how the society gets served the best.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Insightful)
We arent defending the 'tablet'. We are pointing out that CHEAP mobile devices are going to be EVERYWHERE. We need to learn how to use them to teach with, not force a desktop paradigm because its familiar.
So instead of pushing a desktop paradigm because it's familiar, we should push a tablet paradigm because it's new and even though people haven't figured out how to most effectively use tablets, they better figure out how to use them because they are going to be EVERYWHERE whether they are better than the alternative or not?
If you cant see how incredibly powerful that combo can be when applied correctly then you are missing the entire point. Dismissing tablets as toys shows your serious lack of vision.
My biggest problem with a tablet is not its display or CPU capabilities, especially with a stable network connection to reach cloud resources. My problem is that I just don't find a touch screen to be that usable for entering large amounts of data. Keeping notes in a one hour meeting is tolerable, but typing any significant amount of data (or code) is much harder on a tablet (plus there's losing half the screen real estate to the on screen keyboard)
And while I could get a bluetooth keyboard and turn the tablet into a laptop, I prefer to just use a laptop in the first place. My asus zenbook isn't a whole lot bigger than a tablet, but I find it to be much more usable. Maybe this will change with Windows 8 when my tablet OS and laptop OS are the same, so I can switch seamlessly between them and leave my laptop on my desk, and take the tablet when I'm mobile but still have the same UI experience. Or maybe the Motorola Atrix style philosophy will win out and my tablet will be my only computer, I just plug it into a docking station with full size monitor and keyboard when I'm at my desk.
Given the number of obvious auto-correct mistakes from coworkers that email me from their tablet, I think they have the same problems with typing on a tablet as I do.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once docked its really not a tablet anymore is it? Plus those docks (and BT keyboards) are an overpriced added expense that I've only seen on high end tablets. We are talking about supplies for millions of students at all grade levels. Do you really think its a good idea to have young kids walking class to class with such expensive equipment?
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill also thought the Internet was just a passing fad.
Tablets will become standard items in classrooms. Just like PCs and whiteboards.
How they will be integrated is still up for debate. Especially in earlier schooling tablets are still in the gadget phase.
Re:Forget the PC (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up. It really sucks to take any technical notes on an iPad. Hell, it sucks for taking notes period - whether thats using an onscreen keyboard, a drawing app and a stylus, or whatever. A laptop is better, but is far from adequate.
The best lecturers I've had (admittedly this was last century, before tablets were commonplace but still totally impractical for notes) gave the class partial notes for the class. Nobody had to worry about writing the boiler plate stuff - instead they could concentrate on the topic and start to understand it. The lecturer would then ask someone in the lecture what the blanks should be - and we all filled in the important bits (so we got to write it down to help reinforce it, but also got a decent amount of time to THINK rather than writing as fast as we could, missing the important bits, and spending hours trying to catch up. I learnt a LOT in that style of lecture.
However, I do wish that we had permission to record the audio in lectures, and that tech such as livescribe pen existed back then! (on top of the boilerplate notes)
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Gill Bates, founder of Bike-rosoft makes a particular type of bicycle that has a thriving market for accessories; it's so thriving, it's practically an industry all to it's self. Bates gets big, and he has to do some kind of aggressive things to keep his hold on the bicycle market. His main competitors are a steel mill that makes bicycle parts you have to assemble yourself, and another company that makes very expensive but very fancy bicycles from a single piece of steel, engineered such that you can't actually replace any of the few parts.
Now, Gill passes on the torch, and starts to work on other stuff, but he sees that there are some in Africa who could really benefit from bicycles. He also worked in bicycles for years. He stared at his bicycles for years. He believed in his bicycles. Right or wrong, he still believes in his bicycles. They were every bit as much a part of him as anything could be. To a certain extent, they define him.
My question is which bicycle would you expect Mr. Bates to fly over to Africa? Why?
T9 != equation (Score:5, Insightful)
T9 is a dictionary-based input acceleration method.
It's only good for quickly typing common words and phrases (and given all the example of mis-corrected/mis-typed message, it is even bad at that).
It's not designed at all to input complex unusual inputs.
And usually, activities in a school tend to be on the morte complex side than the simple "Sorry mom, I'm going to be late for supper, I'll be first going to the library with a friend" sentences for which T9 is designed.
Usually, the more functionnality is directly available at the push of a button (a hardware on, which can be found blindly through tactile feed-back), the faster you can command a device.
That's why no matter what fancy ribbon with icon is the latest trend, it won't beat the speed of someone knowing and using proper short-cuts.
The same way, no matter how fast your 15yo can use T9, she won't be able to type in complex formulas or academic texts, simply because her typing method requires a lot of button pushing for unusual words, whereas I have direct access to any symbol I might need to type.
The only equivalent would be a docked tablet with a full fledged keyboard. But then the advantages when compared to a netbook start to diminish.
I'm Impressed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you fucking kidding me? Do you not realize how ridiculous you made your own argument sound? Let me summarize/paraphrase what you just said: "I can use my tablet the same as a PC, so long as I have several peripherals attached to it that render the fact that it is a tablet, and not a PC, absolutely moot."
So you have to have:
- Your Tablet
- External Monitor
- Apple TV
- Bluetooth Keyboard
All to have the same functionality as a laptop.
Way to be a tool bag. Yeah, tablets are a great invention. But as of right now, they are VERY much more for consumption than they are for production. The differences between Tablets and PCs is similar to that of a fork and a spoon: there are several situations where frankly, you could get away with using either or, but at the end of the day they serve two entirely different, albeit related, purposes.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you think that someone who extracts a short-term profit from buying and killing a business is acting in the interest of the market's long-term profit?
- it does NOT matter what the purpose is, as long as there is no government involvement, if the outcome of the business is a profit (which means that for example a company is bought and torn apart and sold off in pieces and this makes more money than it took to buy it), then more efficiency is created than existed while the business was operational.
This money that is extracted as profit is the reward that the fund gets for doing the job right and it's the money the fund can use for further investments, all of this is productive, even things people don't understand or appreciate, because superficially it looks like some form of destruction.
Do you know what happens to a corpse in nature? It gets eaten, it's taken apart and it's used by the remaining living creatures more efficiently, same exact principle.
If someone's labor is no longer needed, how do you expect him to feed himself?
- the same thing people have been doing when their particular buggy whip business was replaced with something more efficient - do something else.
We WANT all jobs that exist today to disappear, that's the entire purpose of everything that we actually do - destroy jobs while creating productivity that was impossible previously.
It used to be that over 90% of all people in existence on this planet had to be searching for food, gathering, farming, hunting, fishing, whatever. Today it's 5%. What are the remaining 95% doing? Did they die out? No, the population since then has increased a number of times, they are still doing something, it's just that they are doing something else, which is what we always want.
We always want to get rid of ALL existing jobs, so that all the things that are done with those jobs can be done without those jobs existing while people can start doing something else completely and we can't even predict what it is they will do, but it sure will be better if that happens.
Business is likewise fine if it's done voluntarily, otherwise it's theft.
- what does that mean?
. And in a lot of cases, such as state-enforced monopolies on last-mile utilities and some state-enforced monopolies on the spread of information, I do consider the exclusivity to be tantamount to theft.
- again, there shouldn't be any government in any business.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:4, Insightful)
I myself believe that. Bill Gates post Microsoft has different interests and priorities. If you know anything about Gates as a person, you know that he's a serious poker player. He's serious about every game he plays, board games included. He won the PC game and the software game, so there's less incentive to keep playing now and instead be an elder statesman /end Microsoft apologist rant
The new Microsoft tablet does look amazing. It's the first tablet I can justify buying. I'll be able to use that USB port for the actual USB devices I own, unlike with Android. Regarding Microsoft's inability to make a good tablet: it's not really their fault. Microsoft designed a good operating system and even provided OEMs with good hardware designs that take advantage of the software, but as I've been told in tech press circles, the OEMs are stupid and short-sighted -- HP, the whole lot of them, can't think beyond tower computers and laptops unless they're pinned down. Surface is different because Microsoft is making the software AND the hardware too. Honestly, it's going to be a crying shame when Microsoft under-markets this device and kills it off.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're definitely better and cheaper than carrying around a backpack full of books. A basic textbook can cost anywhere from $30 to $150 per class, not even talking about the "specialized" books. An e-book doesn't necessarily have to cost anything (distribution, transportation and replication cost is free/minimal) but usually ranges up to $30 in the worst cases (Pearson and the likes).