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."

Comments

The truth

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

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.

KnownAbout != Importance

[DingerX]

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.

Three orders of magnitude cost differential

[alispguru]

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.

Obligatory Link

[oldfogie]

For those who really care -- Plato (emulated) is still online.

Cyber1

Re:Free youtube videos = more accessible

[clutch110]

Actually education is there for the taking. There are those who seek out knowledge.

Slef-paced education is not a panacea

[TrentTheThief]

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.

Re:Slef-paced education is not a panacea

[keytoe]

When smarter students becomes bored, they too become frustrated and learn ways to play the courseware. That rapidly supplants learning the material.

So, the smarter student becoming bored due to learning the material rapidly which causes them to no longer learn the material?

When I was in 3rd grade, my teacher thought I was slow because I wasn't doing the material provided. It was recommended I undergo psychiatric testing. Testing concluded that I was bored out of my skull and just wasn't interested in doing 5 pages worth of division problems every night after grasping the concept after a day.

The next year, my parents put me in a small private school that provided self-paced learning. It was the single best academic experience of my life, and I gobbled up the curriculum through the 7th grade level - in all subjects. At no point did I ever become bored with the material as it was always new and interesting to me.

Regrettably, my parents couldn't afford to keep that up, so it was back to public schools for 5th grade. My parents tried to get me into the accelerated classes, but my teacher was convinced I should instead be in with the remedial. He insisted I be IQ tested. I did much better than he expected and got in.

I took honors classes my first year in high school, then decided to 'take it easy' my sophomore year with regular courses. I did abysmally for a semester and ended up having to do summer school to make up for a failed term of history. I immediately recognized the pattern and switched back to honors programs at the semester.

From this experience I learned a few things:

1. - If I'm not challenged, my interest drops like a stone.
2. - Bored smart students are indistinguishable from remedial students to a teacher with 30+ students in the class.
3. - Modern public schools are doing nothing to encourage bright young minds.
4. - And more philosophically, that the world is full of shitty, mundane things you just have to do even if they're pointless and inane. Public school is actually really good at teaching this, but in this aspect I was a terrible student.

Oh, stop it, Bill!

[eepok]

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.

Re:Solidarity with workers, not Wall Street parasi

[spun]

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!