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.'"
i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I completely agree with his assessment
iBooks ad (Score:4, Interesting)
Preface: I am an apple fanboy ... but ...
iBook for text books has the best damn demo I've ever seen as to why exactly tablets would make freaking AWESOME textbook replacements.
http://www.apple.com/education/ [apple.com]
The current flash on that page displays a demo of someone using a textbook. THAT is HOW text books SHOULD BE DONE. It doesn't have to be iBooks or an iPad, but that general concept is freaking awesome and just goes to show how Billy and the Gates foundation in general aren't about helping the world so much as finding another way to rip it off.
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
I work education IT, and every leadership conference in the last few years have centred around iPads and mobile computing. There are always multiple sessions about how they allow for innovative learning, classroom-less experiences, interactive learning, and a bunch of fancy buzzwords.
Aside from very few cases - autistic kids playing an iPad game show improvement in certain situations is a common example, I haven't seen anything I'd consider an improvement, especially anything that's iPad specific. We've seen many examples of student presentations made with the iPad camera, but they're exactly the same caliber as a regular presentation, or one recorded off any old recording device. They're new and shiny, so people want them. That's generally it.
Worst case, and in general, kids use the new stuff to fuck around. Give a class iPads and laptops, and I'll show you a class of kids watching youtube. At least with the iPad their not playing flash games all day.
We recently had one principal ask how we can support a class set of iPads. We asked what he wanted to use them for, and nobody could give us an answer. There were buzzwords - mobile learning, hands-on learning, etc., but nothing concrete on how they would help the children's education.
Finally I think very few teachers have the skillset required to utilize the new technology in any meaningful way. They don't fit properly with the tried and tested pen and paper methods, and teachers aren't either technologically capable, administratively capable, have the professional development available, or otherwise have the support of their educational system for any meaningful changes. Either they lack the skills, or they lack the support, or iPads just don't fit in an education system.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I completely agree with his assessment
While I've watched computers go from useless technology, foisted on schools, to useful technology, sought by schools, I can only imagine his brilliant assessment is forged with the same insights that failed to foresee the internet when he was writing The Road Ahead. Bill's strength was always taking what someone else had invented and bundling it into his operating system and driving them out of business -- not because he needed to, but because he felt he needed to.
Some day kids and teachers will be using these in education, while PCs will be relics of the past. He really needs to shut it.
One thing people don't get about tablets (Score:5, Interesting)
More importantly the work in UX design that companies like Apple, Palm and Google have been doing has allowed users who are not entirely comfortable with the desktop paradign to stop thinking of these devices less as computers and more as standard household items, like TVs or VCRs.
Re:Forget the PC (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Forget the PC (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Web apps? LOL...
How's that sand-boxed browser working for you? Do you have all the hardware acceleration you need? Can you churn out simd code using the NEON registers of the ARM chip? Got access to the camera, GPS & accelerometer? Are you getting all the multithreaded performance you desire?
No, you're not constrained AT ALL...
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Being a locked down walled garden appliance kind of limits their usefulness.
The iPad is only a locked down walled garden to geeks. To a non-technical person, the iPad opens up much more possibility than is walled off. It would be hard for a teacher to find a useful application that's available on "open" Android, but not on "closed" iPad.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:4, Interesting)
>>>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.)
This was in large part because we tried to just drop the new technology into the classroom with no concept of how to use it to improve education. We kept the same education processes so of course the new technology didn't make a significant difference.
What old Billy-boy is missing is that Tablets [and even PCs still I think] have the *POTENTIAL* to significantly improve education; not by simply dropping them in classrooms, but by completely changing the way education is done. All this technology has the capability to be a major force multiplier for teachers. This requires the radical steps of:
a) Researching and developing curriculum based on the capabilities of the available technologies - something that can't be done overnight. This will take time.
b) Training the teachers and educators on this new curriculum AND the new technology. Unfortunately, far too many current teachers have ZERO tech skills. Seriously, my mother, step-dad and ex-wife are all teachers. My ex is the only one with any tech skills, and nobody else at their schools can even figure out an iPad. This will involve tech skills being part of future teacher certification and training.
c) Most importantly - the financial and political backing of these changes, and the willpower to see it through. Nothing here is a quick fix, and unfortunately educational administrators tend to try new educational 'trends' and drop them at an alarming rate if they don't make insane improvements immediately. Then a decade or two later, the exact same 'trend' comes along with a new name and it happens all over. They are like a serial dieter, they want a quick-fix pill that works instantly and that just isn't going to happen.
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.
This is where the research and development come into play, both on a technological and curriculum basis. PCs/Tablets are obviously not the answer to every possible educational situation. Just because you can come up with one example of a situation which may be difficult to do on a tablet doesn't mean that tablets and other technological innovations can't make a significantly positive impact on education as a whole.
Over time, I hope that touch-screen capabilities improve to the point where you can [with or without a stylus] write as quickly and efficiently on the tablet as you can on a piece of paper with pen and pencil. Until then, paper can still be used for classes which require it, and tablets/PCs can be used for classes which don't.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Since the dawn of tablets I have been saying it and I will continue to say it until it happens: The feature that will sell me a tablet is a robust calculation program capable of efficiently inputting regular letters, numbers, exponents, math symbols, and and the greek alphabet seamlessly. Right now on a PC and on a table inputting something as simple as pi*r^2 is a giant fucking pain in the ass. Because tablets suck at handwriting recognition they are harder to work with than PC's so I continue to use the lesser of two evils. Integrals, and function notation on a table? You might as well just forget it.
Now this is kind of a niche thing because in engineering I focus on math but I'm sure it probably permeates the entire realm of STEM curriculums which is currently becoming the new focus of American education systems. As far as other curriculum areas are concerned I can see maybe issuing textbooks on an E-Reader as a long-term green solution as it will save trees but really I don't see it adding any utility that can markedly improve the educational experience.
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:5, Interesting)
and ignore the HUGE amount of use-cases tablets excel at.
I still haven't found any application to which current tablets are better suited than pre-tablet alternatives.
I'm in no way ignoring the supposed "HUGE" number of use-cases to which tablets are the current better suited than alternatives, I just don't know what they are!
Re:i don't really like bill gates that much but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Every student needs a tablet. You can get one at Wal-Mart for 79 cents along with some pens and pencils. You can get them with "multiple subjects" meaning different sections for different classes. You don't need anything else, if it's a computer class or a class requiring them, are they not supplied already? If you need to do research are there not libraries that have rooms of them now?
If you give kids tablets they will just be on Facebook instead of paying attention to the teachers. If you are unfortunate to be in a school plagued with any variation of our neolithic industries known as sports, you will have knuckle dragging idiot jocks goofing off on them worse than they do now. Even if you write the curriculum for the tablets, there will still be chowder brains that tangent off to something else with them. The last thing this pussy boy, punk assed generation needs is more coddling and more gadgets to amuse them.
We used to teach with tablets, they were chalkboard tablets, it was back when paper was precious. We gave them all the paper they could use, and they became damn dumber than the chalk tablet kids. Now that computers are here, they are borderline retarded. Let's not push them over the edge to full retard with e-tablets.
We should be providing cellphone jammers to teachers. Kids texting constantly instead of paying attention, do you think that shit is helpful to education? Technology doesn't fix stupid, it only enhances it, just like it enhances intelligence.
What is wrong with education is not going to be fixed with some magic bullet from technology. One could speak volumes about what is wrong with it and it doesn't have one damn thing to do with what toys we give them to play with. Let me sum up the problem in one term: Idiocracy.