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Gates' Future of Education Straight Out of '60s
theodp writes "Bill Gates really should have talked more with ex-Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie. While Khan Academy's new self-paced exercises, coach management options, and game mechanics (merit badges/points) prompted Gates to gush to the high-rollers at Salman Khan's TED Talk that they 'just got a glimpse of the future of education,' Ozzie's seen this movie before, having written similarly-featured PLATO courseware as a student at Illinois. In the '70s. On plasma terminals. With touch screens. Fifty years ago last Friday, 27-year-old EE PhD whiz kid Don Bitzer and partner Peter Braunfeld demonstrated the nascent PLATO system to assembled dignitaries at the 'President's Faculty Conference on Improving Our Educational Aims in the Sixties.' Hey, everything old is new again! Gates is hardly the only tech luminary who don't-know-much-about-PLATO-history — CS Prof Daniel Sleator felt compelled to school the Web's founders on PLATO in '94."
Just because something existed in the 70's doesn't necessarily mean people should have known about it or that it had any impact on future developments.
The wheel of time turns, moving from one age to the next. History falls to myth, myth to legend, legend to half remembered tales spoken around the fire, and eventually, long after even that is forgotten, that age comes again.
PLATO was a pretty big and influential system. Education was its primary task, but the educational software paled compared to the games. I think Jetfight was Bruce Artwick's first flight sim (someone will wikicorrect me, no doubt), and it was multiplayer from the start. The first online, single-instance multiplayer graphical FRPG (Aka MMORPG, although probably would be more correctly called a protoroguelike) was Moria, and it featured the joys of permadeath.
The fact that it didn't really catch on as the answer to technology in education should tell us something about those who keep going back to this model for learning.
You seem to have a rather limited understanding of what "education" consists of.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
PLATO terminals were cool, but they cost about one human teacher annual salary at the time, and needed a mainframe costing 100 human teacher years behind them, plus telecom links that were obscenely expensive by current standards. They were barely economically feasible only if you assumed large cost drops from volume production.
Comparing PLATO to modern internet distance learning is like comparing the Wright flyer to a modern jet aircraft.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
For those who really care -- Plato (emulated) is still online.
Cyber1
Mister Wright, OP is quoting Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time. Objection denied.
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
Actually education is there for the taking. There are those who seek out knowledge.
That's right, it's all about getting the teachers no matter how bad they are more of the hard working tax payers money.
It isn't your money. When you buy a pack of gum, is it still your money? No. The money belongs to the person who sold you the gum. When you live in a society, the money you pay for the privilege is no longer your money. You exchanged the money for your citizenship rights. If you don't like the bargain, shop around and see if you can do any better. If not, that's not our problem.
Teachers make crap money. Government workers make crap money. Instead of coming after the little guy who is just trying to get by, why not go after the people who are really eating your lunch, the corporate CEOs? Here's a little joke for you. A Wall Street CEO, a Teahadist, and a teacher sit down to enjoy a plate of a dozen cookies. The CEO takes eleven cookies. When the Teahadist looks at him, aghast, the CEO says, "Hey! Watch out for that teacher. He wants part of YOUR cookie!"
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
self-paced study courses have a major problem. They need a specific type of student. The student must be exactly smart enough to easily learn the material, yet dumb enough not to play the system to "get it over with."
Self-paced study material can be a major frustration for students who need a little more help (perhaps to have a concept presented differently) or who need more practice. If a student does not grasp something quickly enough, a rapid demoralization occurs and learning stops.
When smarter students becomes bored, they too become frustrated and learn ways to play the courseware. That rapidly supplants learning the material.
Self-paced learning is absolutely not a solution to a major need in education.It can't replace stand-up training. BG should spend some time and get himself an education degree and then spend a few years teaching before making grand pronouncements. He has no qualifications to speak on this subject.
Bill, you don't understand education. You didn't take the time to understand children, teenagers, sociology, social psychology, pedagogy, performance/theater, linguistics, or any other field necessary to comprehend what a teacher is and just spend your time and money looking for a silver bullet cure to any ailments.
First, Bill tried to give away millions to students to pay for their college education. Of course, it came in the form of competitive scholarships so those who were already destined to receive a bunch of money (because of a strong educational history and innate brilliance) simply got more. This made no change.
Then came the funding of techno-super schools. But they were neither in areas in need of improvement nor were the schools any cheaper (more expensive, obviously) to run. Another failure.
Bill, if you want to make a change, do this:
Create a system for the development of teachers. Not super-teachers or techno-teachers-- just teachers. At the moment there is no hub for potential teachers to go to that catalogs all the credential or master's programs. There's no easier step-by-step guide for the process in California. Everyone just quotes a vague order of things.
Also, if you don't want to help the creation of teachers (and hell, give grants to pay for their wages!), then try just funding the modest renovation of crap-hole schools and class rooms in low-income neighborhoods.
If you want to make a change, help the poor. It's that easy.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Apple stopped being the computer of choice for schools in the early 90s. I attribute their decline to Wozniak's departure. Jobs has the marketing know-how, but Woz was the innovator. The last time Apple was the pioneer in their field was when the Apple II series was in its heyday. Everything they've done since then, someone else did first. Apple just did a better job at marketing.
"The fact that it didn't really catch on as the answer to technology in education should tell us something about those who keep going back to this model for learning."
This comment is, quite frankly, complete bullshit. It's like saying, "It was raining, so I used an umbrella, but then I was swept away by the tsunami. So what good are umbrellas?" I particularly liked the sweeping (and meaningless) reference to "technology in education." What the hell does that mean?
It is not an opinion that Khan Academy works, it is a demonstrable fact. And even though there are surface similarities between what was presented on a PLATO screen and what KA looks like, they couldn't be more different.
PLATO IV was approximately 1,000 plasma panel terminals connected to the biggest, baddest, MFing CPU any of us had ever seen. But if you couldn't get a seat in front of one of those terminals, PLATO didn't exist for you. We estimated that the average "student contact hour" of took 200 hours of design, programming and pedagogical work.
KA is millions upon millions of home computers (all of which are more powerful than the PLATO IV CPU) connected via the net to a Django-driven website that is literally changing and improving on a daily basis -- changes that are driven by teacher requests and student experiences. KA students aren't watching badly-done, rear-projected slides and listening to poorly recorded audio coming from of a Rube Goldberg, random-access audio device, they are choosing from amongst over 2,200 videos that are amazingly effective and available 24/7. Although almost all of the course presentations are currently done by Salman, that's beginning to change as they get translations into other languages, and new course material on subjects that he is not an expert in.
So don't compare PLATO to KA. It's as wrong-headed as trying to compare KRONOS to Linux 2.6.32.33-rc1. The KA feedback loop -- from developers > students/teachers > developers > and back again -- is as tight as any open source project I've ever seen. PLATO IV was the loftiest of closed cathedrals, whereas Khan Academy is a bazaar that is growing exponentially right before our eyes.
(And, yes, I do know what the hell I'm talking about because I've lived through all of this stuff. 10 of my 38 years in computing have been associated with CAI / CBT / WBT, starting with PLATO IV in 1973.)
Anyone who doesn't see the value of teacher-student interaction as part of the educational process has apparently hit a glass ceiling in his own.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Ah, what bullshit. You say, "Do they make more then what their responsibilities are worth? Arguably, yes, way more.," but that is simply untrue, if you compare their salaries and benefits to those of folks in the private sector doing the same thing. What's more, the CEOs always argue in regards to their pay, if you want the best, you need to pay the most. So why does that "pay for excellence" standard not apply to public sector workers
If 'the money' is owned by 'the people' then it is not YOUR money, which is my point. It is 'the people's' money. You do not have inalienable citizenship rights, try not paying your taxes and see how far that argument gets you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Let's face it - Gates was lucky. IBM let him sell his copy of DOS
Gates was selling microcomputer BASIC to the Fortune 500 as far back as July 1976.
FORTRAN and COBOL in 1977. In 1979 8080 BASIC takes an ICP Million Dollar Award - and PC software sales are now officially big business.
In the late seventies, CP/M was the standard OS for business applications. Microsoft's first hardware product was the Z-80 Softcard for the Apple II and the Apple III.
Gates promised to deliver a serviceable 16 bit CP/M clone for the 8086 in time for the scheduled launch of the new IBM - along with a full suite of programming languages for the new micro.
In exchange for a non-exclusive license, PC-DOS could be sold for a pinch-penny $50 retail list. These were the words IBM wanted to hear, and they weren't coming from Digital Research.
The teaching style used in the referenced episode was one where the teacher provided little direct instruction. What instruction was given was turned into a game, and most of the time the students were left to learn on their own, given access to books and science materials to peruse/experiment with at their leisure. The idea being, I guess, that smart kids are self-motivating and will learn on their own without being forced to sit still and do rote exercises.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
You don't know any security guards that make that? Maybe that's because "security guard" is not the private sector equivalent: "bodyguard" is a better analogy, as the levels of danger are more equivalent. Most professional bodyguards make more than $54k per year, and they do have better pensions. Police can retire from the force after a given number of years, but still face a penalty for early retirement before the age of 65, just like anyone else. Do you really think $54k is a lot of money? That's barely middle class. Shouldn't police officers be able to afford a home and college for their kids?
The rich want us to fight each other to the death over the scraps they cast off, and you seem only too happy to side with them. Stop looking greedily at the meager compensation public sector workers make, if you want to blame someone, blame the ultra-wealthy ruling elites. They stole your pay and pension, and now they want you to blame someone who still has theirs. Well, if you want what the public sector has, stand up to the greedy bosses and UNIONIZE!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
That is why I wrote: http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html ... So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process."
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"Luckily for Billy, foresight and technical expertise account for very little, while marketing and image mean everything, and THAT, at least, he is very good at."
Being born a multi-millionaire and dumpster diving for OS listings may have helped too...
http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1316287&cid=28837221
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1316287&cid=28837517
That said, Bill Gates still has been something special beyond that. I don't think those were enough. I just hope someday Bill Gates takes some time off the time pressure of financially obesity and studies stuff like Howard Zinn's writings, John Taylor Gatto's, or John Holt's or thinks hard about the future implications of technological abunance on the economy and education.
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
One thing LotR had: it impresses me when a book doesn't have to (or doesn't try to) use sex to make it more interesting. WFR was good as it was written (and would have been even without the innuendo and many explicit sexual parts -- I'm not saying it was relying on that). But it still bugs me -- through any book like that, I can't help but feeling the author is using a guaranteed method of hooking people in, especially at the start of a series. Other books have sex in them to make a statement about it or in passing or illustrate a relationship or whatever -- but it was used heavily as a plot device in WFR.
If people like it, for that other reasons -- that's fine, I have no problem with that. I'm just too aware of the possibility to enjoy it as much as I would otherwise. Didn't continue the Sword of Truth series. But like I said, I agree that it was a well written book and it had a good story.
Tolkien's work was more innocent -- just very dark. Like a spooky bedtime/fireside story. Good stuff.
Though maybe Tolkien just didn't have the chance to use the technique Goodkind used -- nobody wants to hear about hobbit sex, and if Aragorn got more than a kiss from Arwen before he was king, he'd be a Shelob Kabob after Elrond was through with him
So wrong!
And even more wrong: getting me to talk about fantasy sex in a thread about Bill Gates (or as I'll call him, Darken Bill).
Ahem -- now, to bring this all together and get 8% back on topic:
One OS to rule them all,
one OS to find them,
one OS to bring them all
and--STOP: 0x00000024 (0x00190201, 0xf24a3988, 0xf24a37c4, 0x803d38cf)
Good points, and thanks for the kid words about the article.
I feel lack of universal health coverage, for example, is one thing holding back more entrepreneurship in the USA. I've known several people who said they can not change jobs or try something different over health insurance worries.
But, that is in some sense by design; from "Conceptual Guerilla": ,,,"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/16
"When you cut right through it, right-wing ideology is just âoedime-store economicsâ â" intended to dress their ideology up and make it look respectable. You don't really need to know much about economics to understand it. They certainly donâ(TM)t. It all gets down to two simple words.
"Cheap labor" Thatâ(TM)s their whole philosophy in a nutshell -- which gives you a short and pithy "catch phrase" that describes them perfectly. You've heard of "big-government liberals". Well they're "cheap-labor conservatives"
Once you understand the general concept, you will frequently find yourself in debate over specific issues, like healthcare, social security privatization, public school vouchers, the "war on drugs" and of course the war in Iraq. What better way to put your conservative opponent on the defensive than by exposing the true motivation for his position -- "cheap labor". Can you really find the "cheap labo"â angle in every conservative policy initiative, and every conservative position on any particular issue?
Yes, you can. Here is a catalogue of some of the major issues on the national agenda. In every single one of them, the conservative position advances the cause of "cheap labor". I defy any conservative reading this to show me one single conservative position, belief, principle or policy that has any tendency to boost the earning power of labor.
Of course, the ultimate in "cheap labor" is "no labor" -- replacing labor by a machine, a computer, better design, cheap energy, or volunteers, or something else. Technology is making that all possible, and even easier. For example, cloud computing makes it easier to get rid of system administrators.
So, in general, the bargaining power of most labor is eroding, because productivity is rising but demand is limited (Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Reduce, Reuse, Recycle)..
I'm not saying the bargaining power of all labor is eroding, just most labor. Some people are still in demand, generally those with certain combinations of rarer skills combined with social connections. But all that contributes to an increasing rich/poor divide. More and more people are finding that a highly automated industrial system just does not need them. And that is bad news in the absence of some sort of social safety net, or better, some sort of social security as a human right as a citizen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms
You used the word "competitive", but the fact is, cooperation is more what we need.
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
Why should US citizens have to be "competitive" with wage slavery or full automation because of an income-through-jobs link?
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
People saw this was going to happen even in the 1960s, but sadly the Democrats ended up pushing for full employment rather than social equity as a right to access the fruits of the industrial commons:
And the Republicans became the party of technological progress in some ways (but co
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.