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Bill Gates Says Tablets Aren't Much Help In Education
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 completely agree with his assessment
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?
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
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).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
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?
So, Bill is a fan of the Raspberry Pi?
(LOL Captcha was Beagle)
Take a modified tablet, give it a holographic keyboard and mouse, and suddenly it's a TC (Tablet + PC).
FWIW, my hunch is he's right. Tablets as they are today are not a machine that I can get any serious work done on.
Fisherman's agree.
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.
you dont have to like gates to see what he is saying is not wrong, at least in the short term. a tablet can only do so much, people are always talking about how it is a complementary device. Now gates says as much, and I will bet a lot on /. will be talking shit about how hes wrong. Tablets are great at replacing 40 pounts of textbooks however, as a tablet (with not easy input) is still slightly better than a textbook (no input), low cost desktops (or laptops) are better for students overall.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
'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!
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Oh, really? Last I heard, nobody had actually been able to use one for even 15 seconds. Why, even MS executives on stage were not able to demo one for 15 seconds without it locking up.
Seriously though dumbass, learn the difference between "pre-announce" and "release".
A lot of folks will disagree with what Bill thinks.
10 WAYS THE IPAD WILL FOREVER CHANGE EDUCATION
http://www.onlinecolleges.net/2010/06/21/10-ways-the-ipad-will-forever-change-education/
SD Unified Purchases 26,000 iPads For District Students:
http://www.10news.com/news/31225263/detail.html
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
it's going to be a low-cost PC that lets them be highly interactive.'
A low cost personal computer that encourages tinkering? That sounds awfully familiar.
Shame that the hardware is the easiest part of the solution. Gates is correct there too, curriculum and competent teachers are going to be the biggest obstacle.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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/
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.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
"Time to get the hell out of Dodge Monkey boy Balmer, take your stupid me-too ideas with you and stop running my company into the ground.
Love Bill"
This doesn't sound down on Surface at all. This reads like a shameless plug FOR Surface.
Inexpensive, interactive, "more in the PC realm", and with "keyboard type" input? I feel like I recently watched someone not shut up about those features for a solid half hour, BUT WHERE?
I would say that a kindle like device would be a good idea simply to replace textbooks etc.
the idea would be to save money not improve education. The books are expensive and the tablets might work out to be cheaper over all.
Think about it this way. The students might get a kindle when they enter high school and it would be theirs. They'd keep it year after year. And at the end of everything they could keep it still. I don't know what the depreciation is on kindles but four years in the hands of a high school student is going to beat the hell out of it. And they might actually take better care of it if it's theirs.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
just released Surface?
Could none of the half-wits who looked at this realize the difference between announcing vaporware (showing a couple of partly functional prototypes) releasing a
product.
That seems to be the mainstay of his argument, the lack of a keyboard.
So develop a bluetooth/IR/RF/(w/e) keyboard for the tablets.
Why is this impossible?
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.
Just continuing on what he started at Microsoft, nothing to see here.
It all depends on the teacher. When I was in junior high school in the early nineties, our Algebra teacher utilized a lab of Mac color classics. We learned algebra and graphing. We even used an early projector hooked up to a graphing calculator. In the early nineties this was cutting edge equipment. Tablets and 'computers' in general are the future. Pencils and paper are just technology, it just so happens that they have been around for 10,000 years and its only now that we are innovating.
What's interesting here is that Bill agrees with Steve Jobs on the tablet issue. Both Bill and Steve advocating against just dropping technology in to improve education. Steve was more direct, but Bill says the same thing, that it's the Teachers that matter, a good teacher can improve students with less technology far more effectively than a mediocre/poor teacher can with lots of technology.
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.
But I do agree with his assertion that you have to change the curriculum and the teacher. This centuries old model of "teacher standing at the front of the class lecturing" needs to change. I think that what we're seeing at Khan Academy is the way to go. Instead of sitting and listening to some windbag lecture in class and then have homework to do, Khan advocates doing the lecture portion at home and doing the exercises in class where the teacher and other students can help out. It's more collaborative and it allows the teacher to better gauge the progress of each student. Kids these days have generally a really short attention span - partly due to the sorts of gadgets that Gates points out. How can we expect kids to do homework if they are bored out of their minds in the classroom? People change and teaching methods should change as well. I don't know that tablets will replace PC's but they are better for some tasks.
Just giving people devices has a really horrible track record.
But changing the curriculum and the teacher has a really horrible track record too.
Given: Microsoft sucks at tablet.
Bill G - "You don't need tablets."
Ipads are great for education- No really, hear me out.
1. No dangly bits, no cords needed for operation (Charging is not operation)
2. Intuative interface (The bright side works, touch what you want to mess with)
3. OS locked down out of the box, impossible to break with normal operation. Trivial to reset/sanitize/restore to defaults (Hard reset is 1 button combo and a verification swipe or two)
4. Customizable experience/apps with enterprise tools (Are you an enterprise? No. That's why you have not seen the enterprise tools dummy)
It's a slab that just works. Touch, run your education software, leave it alone when you're done. Just remember to charge it every week or so.
Microsoft tablets might be right around the corner but they're not out yet. (No, laptops running winxp/vista/7 with at touchscreen/pen input screen are not "tablets" they're crappy devices that do neither tablet nor laptop well. Microsoft's been trying to sell them for a decade and they suck. Nobody buys them. Imagine the look on Bill's face when he saw the ipad's first month's sales numbers.)
Looking at BG's trackrecord in predicting the future, education will be a huuge market for tabs pretty soon. He always was not just wrong, but completely opposite to actual trends. M$ would be twice as big if not for BG 'vision'.
this means tables will be the next leap i education.
Anyways, using a tablet to replace text books needs to happen.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Tablets, like any technology, like anyTHING, is nothing more than a tool. Tools in and of themselves don't change things, it's how people (the students and more importantly the teachers in this case) USE the tools their handed. If teachers are able to change up their curriculum to use a tablet better, then tablets will be of help. As Gates says, "You have to change the curriculum and the teacher".
They are however beneficial to special needs students such as those with autism. Where tablets will not be of any help, is the general drudge of lectures for regular students. Laptops haven't exactly revolutionized learning either. When meaningful, compact, 3d displays are accessible I think they would improve learning.
The tech that would really change education, if used is correctly, is already available. It's called the internet, and a few people are already utilizing it to great effect. We don't need profs around the world reading lecture notes(usually worse than those available online) to students over and over again. We can all read by now.
The lectures should be available(the best lectures on the topic) in video format to the students ahead of time. Then they would get to discuss the lecture material with the professor, perhaps in small groups, to further their understanding. The current format does nothing for open communication, nobody likes asking questions in a room full of strangers and they're also hesitant to be drawn into a meaningful discussion with the constant worry of time constraints, and "covering the material". Then after the professor has to endure these drawn out events, which basically consist of the prof reading aloud, they no doubt feel less inclined to discuss the actual material during office hours. YMMV.
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.
He never said either of those things. Please leave /. and only return when you are ready to stop just repeating crap you've overheard at a party.
This coming from the man that famously proclaimed that BOTH the iPhone & iPad were doomed to fail because a user needs a stylus rather than a finger & a keyboard with super-tiny buttons. Poor guy, he's fallen so far behind the times that he doesn't realize that all tablets have full- size keyboards, on-screen. So the illiterate kiddies can do more than read, they can post death threats on Twitter. Of course a child is much better off with a cheap windows PC @ home. Where they should be do they can study & do their homework in complete isolation rather than with some other students discussing the work that they learned that day or maybe we can strap these low cost windows PC onto their kids so they can truly be portable. Rather than an evil iPad which makes the microsoft chairman of the board really pissed because he makes $0.00 from it
Cheers !
It's early tech, they're going to get thinner, lighter, they're going to accept touch and pen input,... couple that with the development on technologies like E-Ink and Foldable displays and in some 10 years they'll be ubiquitous, not just in education but pretty much everywhere.
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.
Just call it what it is: a fucking laptop.
hard work. That's how they beat an edumacation into me.
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.
He blasted the OLTP project, saying that poor people don't need cheap PCs.
I guess he is for whatever serves his interests at the moment.
Just to keep the kids from lugging around books.
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.
Yes the over all college needs to change and brake away from the one size fit's all idea.
as not only does the current model of higher education that keep many students from graduating on time it also some gives them skills they don't while turning them out with a skill gap on the skills needed to do the job.
Not only do some of the lecture class need to be a thing of the past also some the pure theory classes need to go as well or at least be cut down some or only be in places for a smaller set of class tracks.
My 17 year old son has never had a problem using his iPad to write circles around the PC users in his classes. Bill Gates is simply full or crap.
but it is not unlikely that they may be soon. As a replacement for TI graphing calculators at the same price?
All your database are belong to U.S.
Yeah he totally guessed wrong that people would want cheap computers (MS-DOS/Windows, broke the IBM monopoly). He totally guessed wrong people would want smart phones (WinCE, they are up to ver 7). He totally guessed wrong people would want tablets (Windows Tablet edition, windows with a decent touch screen interface). Apple *rarely* leads in the market. They usually come out with a product that is marginally better than the rest. They learned early if you lead you bleed (Apple III/Lisa/Newton).
Most of these items are not even *that* hard to guess will happen. It is just a matter of cost and how good it is.
I think you are taking a rather revisionist version of history and trying to bend it into some sort of 'bill gates is always wrong'.
If anything he was usually ahead of the time the hardware could make his vision cool...
The longer he's away from Microsoft, the more I like him.
Bill Gates is following on in the tradition of the Robber Barons of the Industrial Revolution - win big in the capitalist game, then spend the rest of his life making an actual lasting legacy that does real, actual good for folks outside the boardroom and the stock exchanges.
Of course, I'm referring to his charitable works, but I see that he's also gaining some perspective that isn't colored by the need to maximize profits.
The Digital Sorceress
No one will ever need more than 64KB of memory and the 'internet' is only for students.
Now we know that first Microsoft tablet will come with a keyboard.
Well some of the mistakes that college are makeing are.
Not having more a tech school / vol load
Pushing up the credit needed as at some places it may 5 years to get a BA/BS due to the number of credits needed.
Filler classes at full price as other classes.
Lot's hold overs from the past like
PE classes required
SWIM tests
Underwater basket weaving type classes
Do they enhance the learning ability of children?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
FTS: Bill Gates was surprisingly down on tablets in education — considering that Microsoft just released Surface.
This sentence is fail. The surface has a keyboard....
I hate to say it though. I agree with Gates. surprise
But thing about cars do you some with a engineering degree (where likely you never work on a car at all in class) or some who went to a tech / vocational school working on your car?
Do want some with a EE or some who did a vocational / apprenticeship doing electrical work? Some with a pure theory based degree may get hurt if they don't know what they are doing. Power lineman have apprenticeships and trading classes not college to do that job and if you don't know what you are doing there you can get killed.
Also it's been said that people with a CS degree don't have the right skills to do IT jobs.
Yet the IT tech schools do tech more of the needed skills a long with all of the NON degree classes offed at some community college.
Out side of the USA you have more apprenticeships systems and even in places like Canada with 3-year bachelor's degrees (same as 4 years with filler cutout)
We need a GED for at least the gen edu part of college.
more certificate systems IT needs more as it is fast moving, cover a big area. has lot's people who from time to time need to take on going education.
Now if we keep the college system as is what do you want masters or Doctorate to be come the new minimum?
also we have people who are not cut for college but can do tech schools / apprenticeships / community colleges where do they fit in? with push of college for all they may end up failing or with useless stuff like underwater basket weaving degrees.
http://www.creativeservices.com/compliance-corner/eeoc-guidance-on-whether-high-school-diploma-requirement-violates-adahttp://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/1/eeoc-high-school-diploma-might-violate-americans-w/?page=2
“Even in those situations where the high school diploma requirement can be justified, employers will still need to consider” whether a “reasonable accommodation” could be provided to allow a disabled person without a diploma to perform a given job.
Some the points apply at the high level of education. Even more so when there are lot's of tech schools and drop in / NON degree community colleges (I was in a class where teacher DID IT work and DID NOT HAVE A degree)
Traditional education is a poor fit for the tech fled next to the newer ideas and the newer ideas can be better fits for people with disabilities.
But with the tech fled even people without disabilities can get a better education useing some of the new ideas.
http://www.natlawreview.com/article/eeoc-takes-aim-high-school-diploma-requirements-employment-potentially-disparately-i
"Moreover, in the event a job applicant with a disability can establish that he or she did not complete high school because of that disability, an employer may need to make a “reasonable accommodation” exception to the requirement, even where the requirement is job-related and consistent with business necessity. An alternative skills or competencies test to measure the candidate’s qualification for the job, for instance, might have to be considered."
Replace high school with College and say alternative skills or competencies test can be tech school & community classes, doing the jobs hands on, taking online classes, ETC.
That is just some ideas from 1 side of the issues other areas to look at are the skills gap in college and the GAP from CS skills to IT skills.
The books
Academically Adrift
In the Basement of the Ivory Tower
Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality
show that The idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth and Too many people are going to college.
I think that tech could use more a plumbers or electrician like apprenticeship system and that can be a better fit for people not cut for traditional college.
... I wouldn't discount the value of the tablet "fun factor" Tablets in many ways are more human-centered, and depending on how well the UX is crafted often more enjoyable to use. When it comes to education, any little bit helps, IMO.
Yup, splunge for me too..
Kids that were born under the dactile input instead of mouse are just reaching Kindergarten. Prosessing speeds of tablets are just coming online with low power laptops. This technology is part of the technological evolution of education. What it is lacking seriously behind is the training of teachers and software that takes full advantage of the multimedia capabilities of tablets. I was hoping that MS Surface would be the next step. That is a very disappointing statement from Mr. Gates.
It's all about finding better ways
= not profitable for Microsoft because Apple owns tablet market
Table-ized A.I.
Odd. Thirty comments above, someone quoted Gates as saying, "No one will ever need more than 128KB of memory." It's funny how the details change on that quote, given that Gates never actually said it.
IMO, it's tough to argue with the man's statements here, because they're pretty general, and therefore easily defensible.
I mean, yes, you can never just throw devices at kids and expect they'll magically improve learning. (For that matter, you can't just throw money at schools and expect it will magically improve their ability to educate ... but that's another issue.)
When you look a little more in-depth at the situation at hand, though? You find a few details he glosses right over:
1. The standard PC has a pretty solid track record in aiding education because it has a full-size keyboard as the primary input device. Tablets, at best, have bluetooth keyboards paired up with them so you can type into the applications you've launched via their touchscreen first. When you need to navigate around in the apps, though, you're often having to take your hands off the keyboard and tap on things on the screen. In most settings, the tablets are used without ANY keyboard, save the virtual one drawn on their displays. That makes them less suited to heavy data entry ... a very common use for computers in educational settings. Bill G. acknowledges this ... but neglects the possibility that school would use a COMBINATION of computers and tablets, depending on what was being done. A tablet makes a pretty compelling content creation device if the user is creating artwork, or music -- and its portability itself might be a big benefit in some of those scenarios.
2. A device is only as good as its application software. Right now, the standard PC has a good 20+ year history of people developing educational software for it. Apple's iPad, a strong new contender in education, only has a couple years of development under its belt, so far, but the explosion in its popularity and promise of easy money selling one's apps via Apple's App Store caused a torrential outpouring of new apps in that brief time. So again, there's some really good stuff out there for an iPad in a school environment. Now Microsoft's new Surface tablet? Not so much .... Heck, even if it achieved the same popularity and sales numbers of the iPad, we'd need to wait at least a couple more years to build up a library of good software to run on it.
3. Part of the core problem with our educational system may lie in the structure we impose on the whole learning process. I certainly don't claim to know all the answers, but there have been enlightening TED Talks out there from people illustrating the amazing capability of children to learn without any formal instructor teaching material at all. Given the right motivation, kids wind up teaching each other in a "peer to peer" fashion, sharing the knowledge they discover individually with the rest of their group. Those experiments usually relied on some sort of device (Internet terminal, computer, tablet, whatever) as the motivator which imparted the knowledge. The current school system leaves a lot to be desired in its ability to allow individuals to learn at their own pace, or wander off the predefined "paths" to explore topics of interest in greater depth. So *maybe* it's as much a problem of these devices not integrating neatly with an educational structure designed WAY before their existence as anything else?
At college I was forced to buy a laptop for a "laptop mandatory" course. I bought the laptop and then went to class to find out the course that required it was accounting 101... and the teacher wanted us to do it all longhand with pencil and forms. Progressive indeed.
Back in the 1980s computers in schools were very new. Now I have a career in IT.
I think Bill Gates is more concerned about his bottom line than being a technology optimist, and thats very disappointing.
In my view the ideal role for a tablet would really be a combination of phone, item of convenience, and working tool.
As a phone: connect to a headset by wire or bluetooth. Integrated contact list and address book. Someone sends you a virtual business card? The next time they call, you will automatically see their details. Maybe have a pager-like LCD on an ear clip you can keep in a shirt pocket or something.
Item of convenience: GPS, entertainment, easily accessible browsing.
Working tool: attachable keyboard/docking station.
The only real issue is batteries and lugging a tablet around. Phones have tried to go there many times, so it's kind of converging from both directions.
Describe what you believe are filler classes, please.
9 year olds with back problems from lugging around textbooks is something I hope we can stop before we need the Gates Foundation to address! Perhaps a netbook or some other form factor could achieve a similar result, but tablets seem ideal for replacing textbooks. ..which could also be more dynamic and interactive
The ability for kids to have more current content in a more environmentally-friendly way would be less expensive to produce/ship/sell, and allow publishers to put more resources into content..
Every single way I look at it it seems far better for students in the classroom.
> "In a detailed interview on the future of education, Bill Gates was surprisingly down on tablets in education — considering that Microsoft just released Surface.
Right. And that's because Surface is not a tablet. It's a notebook with a detachable keyboard, which -- let's face it -- nobody is going to detach except for trivial tasks like playing a movie or music, because Windows doesn't work well on tablets.
> He said low-cost PCs are the thing for students, and he dismissed the idea that simply giving gadgets to students will bring change.
Riiiiight, because low cost PCs aren't gadgets... And tablets are.... Which, now that I think about it, in Bill's world, is correct. If you can only do casual things on a tablet, then tablets are gadgets, like an MP3 player or a dedicated movie appliance. You may be able to do real work on a tablet that runs an operating system other than Windows, but that doesn't count.
And yes, I am not giving Microsoft the slightest benefit of the doubt, and that is because this all seems very self-serving. If Microsoft was really serious about tablets, and not simply practicing embrace, extend, extinguish, they'd be all gung-ho about tablets in the classroom. They're not, because (I am convinced) they have no intention to offer a viable product in that market.
Microsoft *has* a touch-only interface that works well -- it used to be called Surface, now rebranded PixelSense, as their touchscreen-notebook has now been branded Surface. The problem is, to integrate PixelSense's arguably superior touch interface into Windows and make it work along side the conventional KVM interface, was apparently too hard.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Input speed can always be adapted to.
If my brain is thinking at 80 words per minute, but I can key things in at only 20, then text entry is the bottleneck keeping me from working at my full capability.
I would put money on the fact that my 15 year old daughter can T9 text on her phone faster than you can type.
I type at least 80 words per minute. Good luck entering text with T9 at more than 80 words per minute, including disambiguation of textonyms (such as home/gone/good or he/if) and punctuation.
Bill, you have never been a visionaire. There's a couple things you're good at, but predicting the future has never been one of them, and understanding people's needs, especially of people different from yourself, neither.
The solution isn't a cheap PC. It's pen and paper. Because these are a huge margin ahead of anything in the computing world in usability, flexibility and adaptability. You can draw, write, erase, all very quickly and easily. It'll still be a decade or two until you can do that equally well on a computer, tablet or PC.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I can produce documents with equal speed on a PC as I can with a 'docked' ipad
My mileage does vary regarding software stacks. Some of the documents that I produce include tables, charts, and graphs based on the output of programs that I wrote for the purpose of making the document. The walled garden approach of the iPad makes this impossible without using the iPad as a VNC terminal to run the software on a PC, which requires an expensive data plan if I'll be doing it during the bus commute. Yeah, I'm probably an outlier, but that's part of why I stick with a 10" laptop instead of an iPad.
They're actually supposed to be able to write and communicate.
Technically the only reason they're there is to pass standardized tests. Some of which DO have an essay portion.
But, mostly, a touch screen for multiple choice options A thru E is probably sufficient.
writing and communicating is bad, they might feel empowered which is not good training for proles, or they might criticize the educational complex which must be stamped out at all costs.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
art history
music
History of Rock and Roll
History of Sports
http://www.mlive.com/opinion/bay-city/index.ssf/2010/07/filler_college_courses_cost_pl.html
Why is it that as adults trying to further our education in a specific field we have to take a gym class in college? By taking these basic, no point, so-called filler classes we are paying way too much for nothing useful in our field of study. Is it really important for an accounting major to know how to fix certain chemicals in chemistry or learn where the term “Rock and Roll” comes from in a filler history class?
Sounds like you want a tech school degree or a certification, not an education.
I'm impressed with Bill Gates' statement with regards to tablets. He is actually correct - a tablet will neither magically make a struggling student excel nor make a poor teacher miraculously stellar. A tablet is simply a tool and when utilized by a teacher skilled in teaching to various learning styles helps augment said teacher. A tablet can help a motivated, organized student succeed at an even higher level. Our educational system needs to do a better job at motivating students and teaching teachers how to teach. Teacher education is critical yet the colleges and universities are churning out poor teachers. Furthermore, funding has been cut to schools and teacher's salaries making the career much less attractive resulting in a downward spiral.
Many states could self publish.
Or states could even pool their resources and collaborate on a Wikibook.
I think he's having trouble pivoting... Gates is stuck on his original plan.
The question isn't Tablets vs Desktop - it's more in curriculum and teachers. He got that right.
What's the real difference between tablets and desktops?
Attach a keyboard and a tablet can be used for editing papers and doing more intensive homework.
Hook up a cart with a battery and a desktop can be dragged around the room.
The problem is not the prediction, the problem is the artificial limits which cripple most tablets models.
Tablets are designed as consumption device only.
They do have limited creation input devices. (Artist need to purchase additionnal stylus with better/higher resolution writing capabilities. Other people need to dock the tablet to a keyboard).
Also, the most popular devices, Apple's iPads tend to be a locked down. For example, it could be beneficial to have the student hack around the device and try to experiment with some basic coding writing stuff. But script interpretation is explicitely forbiden by Apple's App policies. There's a lot to be learned by poking around a device. With an iPad that's simply not possible.
A raspberry pi would be a much better suited device. It's slightly less portable (it needs to be plugged into a monitor or a HDMI TV set) but it can be experimented on.
Yes tablets are cool devices. But there only so much that you can do on a device designed mainly for browsing web and watching youtube, specially when compared to netbooks, OLPC, Raspberry Pi, etc.
You can use them as supplement/replacement to textbooks (use a tablet to display kahn's academy in addition of a textbook) maybe as some glorified form of clicker (for electronic quizzes) but that much about it.
I mean smartphone were really nice when they started to appear, but that doesn't mean that they were necessary in a classroom. As upscaled equivalent tablets won't bring much more.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Well, he's right on the part that everyone says ("Just giving people devices has a really horrible track record. You really have to change the curriculum and the teacher.")
He's almost certainly wrong on the part that is specific to addressing tablets, where he makes the argument characterized in the headline ("And it's never going to work on a device where you don't have a keyboard-type input.") The thing he offers to support this claim is likely true ("Students aren't there just to read things. They're actually supposed to be able to write and communicate.") But, he overlooks the obvious fact that students have spent most of history able to "write and communicate" without a "keyboard-type input". And he's overlooking that the mechanisms they've used to do that without a "keyboard-type input" -- writing (as opposed to typing on a keyboard), drawing, and verbal and visual communication -- are directly supportable on "devices where you don't have a keyboard-type input", particularly, on those that have touch, audio, and video inputs, whether or not they have "a keyboard-type input."
and that is what jobs should want.
College for all leads to lots of debt and people who lack real work skills.
First off, that's an opinion piece. No thanks, so assume I did not RTFA.
Second off, if you took those classes as your general education requirements, that's less a mistake of the institution, and more of a mistake on your part. I finished two advanced degrees with only one BS class (because I felt I deserved it). I looked at the course book, found classes that were somewhat relevant, or at least sounded interesting, and took them.
Anyone who blames universities and colleges for forcing them to take bullshit classes are, in reality, people who just coasted through college. You don't have a prescribed degree track outside of basic writing, math, science and your core requirements. Everything else is in your hands to pick.
It's about self-efficacy and self-advocacy. You don't want to take the history of rock-and-roll for your humanities credit as an accounting major? That's fine, look for the history of economics, or the European history that deals with the precursors to the French revolution. Take a minute to make friends with a professor and set up an independent study to fill that requirement. Then you can study EXACTLY what you want to study.
In other words, stop blaming other people for your failures.
Sorry to bait you into this, but so many people piss and moan about these kinds of classes, and then sit there passively when their individual advising human asks them what classes they want to take. OR, they simply don't open the college handbook to see the fucking plethora of options available to them. Stop complaining about how mean the world is to you, and how the system uses you, and start thinking about ways to use the system.
You know, the input device missing from 99% of "tablets" these days.
That's because the technology of the screen has changed.
Stylus use resistive screen. They have a really fine resolution (and fast response), but only track 1 point at a time.
Modern tablet and smartphone (and trackpads, for that matter) use capacitive screens. They can track several fingers at the same time. But are really imprecise. Still they do all the cool gestures, and can be operated with a hand, so they seem nice during a demo, so that's the current preferred way. (Don't mind that you can't use them to draw precisely or take note with a stylus. Don't mind you can operated them in cold weather while wearing gloves).
You can't simply add a stylus to a modern tablet.
Either you use one of the capacitive stylus, but it just sucks from a precision point of view (its just a fat thing serving as a substitude for a finger).
Or you have to use a special technology to increase the precision: some artist's stylus for tablets add a infrared sensor. There are also special screen which feature a resistive detector in addition to the capacitive one for higher precision stylus work).
I had a Tablet PC all the way through college, and I used it for every class. Still have all of my notes, and still reference them in my PhD work, which is easy since they're completely digitized and search able.
Same here: used Palm PDA's with a stylus (for drawing and quick on the go graffiti input) and a foldable full sized keyboard (for fast note taking).
Can't do that with Pen and paper. Can't do that with iPad either.
Well with pen and paper that would be possible, I mean using a specal pen and special paper. But in that case it all boils again down to having a high resolution digitizing solution coupled with enough software.
With an iPad: well, you would need to replace the input method (buy an expensive stylus which use its own high resolution detector), buy more apps. Probably even jailbreak the device as better note-taking applications would probably violate the "don't duplicate function" policy of apple... Well at that point better just to use some less locked in device with better input capabilities.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
While tablets are definitely a cool gadget and sound like a draw to the school, in reality the switchover is to save money by killing paper books. They have worked the numbers out such that it appears cheaper for a school which buys new paper books to instead buy tablets per student (at edu pricing) and per-student licensing for the book content.
I don't know if these numbers take into account schools reselling those new books after a few years to schools with more budgetary constraints, and I suspect those poorer schools are going to be hurt hard by having their supply of second-hand books dry up. But this is not just about every kid getting a gadget.
Here in the Philippines where most government schools don't have glass in the windows, tablets won't happen any time soon. Their budgets are really lean, as in chalk and crayons, maybe. A low cost PC with might happen - I would love to see that.. Couple this with open courseware that is emerging like k12 math and science modules and students have an amazing resource at their disposal.
I'm on iOS developer and run only macs in my small business, but totally agree low cost PCs have their place. (don't necessarily need to run windows though ;)
This man needs to fix the largest disaster he ever created - Windows - first, before fixing anything else.
He said "Geez, get a real laptop" to the OLPC guys. OLPC is at the 3 million mark and doing things like making robots out of laptops (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nnc9Rn9GbY).
Read this: tablets teaching kids to read all by themselves. http://blog.laptop.org/2012/05/15/learning-to-read-with-one-tablet-per-child/
Mr. Gates needs to find another hobby to botch.
There has been a lot of talk about turning things around in schools. Meaning: Learn at new stuff at home at your own pace using digital media and make "homework" at school where there are peers and teachers to help out.
So, given that tablets are primarily for information consumption (As are all computers capable of) it stands to reason that students should have access to these things at home and not so much at school.
In a paradime where students practice in class, they require interaction with their peers and teacher rather then being isolated with earplugs in. They need collaborative hands on using whiteboards, paper and pencil. We are still at version 1.0 of the whiteboard pen so it is easy to manage and cheaper. Education cost is out of control already.
It seems to me schools are keen on tablets because they can feed then educational youtube videos at school thus taking a big load off themselves.
Bill Gates still has a large shareholding in Microsoft. Microsoft has no presence in tablets but still has monopoly control of the PC market. Bill Gates says schools should buy PCs not tablets. So yet again, Bill Gates outs himselft as a self serving disingenuous asshole.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Maybe. If you twist it just right. I mean, I can see how his claim that improving classroom education via computing devices is "never going to work on a devices without a keyboard-type input" might be "not wrong, at least in the short term" in the same way the statement "Humans will never land on the moon" would have been "not wrong, at least in the short term" if it had been made in 1965.
He will say that any product his company does not succeed with is not good for anything. It is MS-Marketing v0.1
We give kids too many options today. First, unless you have a goal, any device will prove to be be problematic. Second, kids have the attention span of a gnat. Might as well give them a gameboy and tell them to play Tetris in order to learn geometry. Third, kids need to be taught how to think critically. Fourth, kids have a capacity for learning...how much of that is going to be used learning new software or actually learning the fundamentals?
I create lots of charts (experimental) and I've found that just a whiteboard (awesome technology...like paper :)), and the camera on my phone makes a great tool for creating a quick visual and adding it to a document. The key is to find the best way to leverage technology that it enhances the capabilities of the students, not just shifts those capabilities into a narrowly focused corner of learning (software). It's too bad that education has gone from thinking to memorization to lookup to siri? I don't want to even do anything so I'm just going to ask a bank of computers to do it for me because I'm too lazy.
I agree in broad principle with your vision of an entrepreneurial utopia. But I don't think it'll work out in practice for two reasons. For one thing, incumbent owners of exclusive rights are powerful enough to manipulate voters into not letting it happen. But at least as importantly, it appears that not everybody has entrepreneurial aptitude. Some people have general learning disabilities, and others (like myself) have disabilities specific to the social skills that are vital to marketing a business.
You would rather carry a HUGE backpack full of overpriced text books than give students an ultra thin tablet?
It's ridiculous that kids are growing up with chronic back pain as a result of having to schlep around gigantic backpacks full of books. My high school actually banned carrying backpacks between classes, mostly because of overcrowding, which meant that they had to allow extra time between classes to access lockers (and ironically probably also exacerbated traffic in the halls). All this led to decreased instructional time in any given day, more disruption of class due to kids not having enough time to use the restroom between classes, probably more violence in the overcrowded halls, etc. So, for purely logistical reasons, tablets are a huge win.
How is this insightful? This comment has said nothing. It says: "Input on a tablet with a keyboard is as fast as input on a computer (with a keyboard). Input on a touchscreen computer is just as fast as input on a tablet (with a touchscreen)." Huh? I thought the whole definition of tablets was to not have a keyboard and just be a touchscreen. To have to "dock" a tablet to make it as useful as a computer implies that it's not as useful without "docking".
Unless this was meant to be funny, in which case somebody misplaced their sarcasm tag.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
BG's a drop-out, isn't he?
So code the app for that.
"At some point in recent American history, we started assuming that if people are rich enough, they must be experts in all things. That's why we trust Mark Zuckerberg to save Newark schools and Bill Gates to rid the world of malaria. Expertise is so 20th century". link
'Bill Gates has certainly proven that he can make a pile of money, but does founding Microsoft make him an expert or even an authority on education?', bowl_haircut
--
The Halo Effect
AccountKiller
Okay, so let's see Bill Gates didn't understand the internet so why would he understand tablets? Frankly the man has an ego the size of his checkbook and the common sense and experience of a three year old. A keyboard is a lousy input device unless you are talking about western european languages. Oh and doodles and graphs are more important in learning than "natural" language go look it up.
Hypothetical 1 learning about Shakespeare, teacher has kids act out scenes. New methodology? nope. Place for computer equipped with keyboard? nope. Tablet with stage design and script annotating software that Bill Gates can't conceive of potentially useful? You bettcha.
Hypothetical 2 Students collaborating on an outdoor physics lab? I have them measure angle versus distance of "Stomp Rockets". So not a new methodology. Place for keyboard? not really they are inconvenient I have them use graph paper and clip boards. Could a tablet help? actually it's no worse than graph paper and can help kids with disabilities.
Hypothetical 3 Students taking notes in history class. New Methodology? nope. Place for computer with keyboard? nope... just let's them pass notes more easily. Tablet potentially helpful? Not now because the ease of making diagrams versus the difficulty of entering "natural" language make it a wash. It also allows even more dumb note passing. (I was in high school once the notes I passed were dumb). But students can also now have all of Project Gutenberg on the tablet at home? so maybe the tablet helps outside of class.
Conclusion Bill Gates had a keyboard and because he fails to interact with the world at large he thinks everybody else only needs a keyboard. And while tablets are the greatest thing since sliced bread if you are a tech reporter they may or may not be useful in a classroom situation depending on how creative a teacher one may be.
education.
If you want to drop out of school and start your own companies then certainly listen to advice from Jobs and Gates. Though you probably won't be able to find the first piece of advice from Steve Jobs ( if he's being truthful ) helpful in the least... find a genius friend you can leach your success off of. If OTOH, you want to stay in school, be successful there and be a success afterwards, then you might want to follow the advice of people with degrees.
What I have seen is that every good student that I knew had ( including myself ) core curriculum books that were --- all marked up. Highlights, handwritten notes or both.
A tablet with a decent pen will make big inroads in education, even if only replacing the five notebooks a student has to carry.
If I were to give advice to any new college student on supplies, I would suggest they seriously look at the Galaxy Note 10.1 -- at this time the only tablet that meets that criteria.
a pc is a lot more versatile, if you don't have an particular equation you can copy it from a website sitting on the same screen as your calculator. a tablet is good when some one has gone to the trouble to write a program to do absolutely everything you need, but in the real world that's rarely the case and you have to hack a solution (sometimes it's a quick hack some more complex) which a closed source tablet, with few connections, practically single task at a time operation, hard to program for yourself, harder than average for data input and no legacy support is particularly crap for anything other than checking your mail while watching tv.
That brings the other guy back from the dead.
Nobody can foresee the future. Bill Gates is just adding his 2 cents. He has actually done more than 2 cents, though.
Tablets have a keyboard. It's not just their main input. The touch screen is.
While Mr Gates is probably right that for higher education, the keyboard-type input is critical, we believe his prediction to be wrong for K-12. Younger students have other needs. Exploring, discovering have there a much bigger role.
New types of applications focusing on the touch screen can improve interaction with the students. As an example, we've developed a new type of game, where young students learn to solve equations by using simple input (click, drag&drop). Look up DragonBox. Check that Wired GeekDad review for further information.
Of course, "simply drop[ping] in tablet computers or other gadgets and hope change happen" isn't a good strategy. But for K-12, given appropriate applications, change of curriculum and teacher role, touch screen devices will have their role.
Disclaimer: I am obviously member of WeWantToKnow, hence the AC post...
We have been looking at electronic textbooks at work, but it's a non-starter because each publisher is doing it their own way. They have their own rules for what you can and can not do, making it a nightmare to support. Can the book be printed? Is the book online-only or is it downloaded? Can it be accessed from more than one computer? When exactly does the license expire? Is the particular book available electronically? What if a student's computer crashes and they loose the e-book? What application is required to access the book and can it be accessed on device X? Can students attach notes to the e-book, like writing in the margins. Each publisher has different answers. It's too bad, because we estimated that the savings from going to e-books could finance a one-to-one program twice over.
Unless the publishers can settle on a consistent platform and consistent terms, e-textbooks will not work.
It might be because it's early in the morning here while you've been debating all night but it seems quite simple from my early morning clear mind. The main limitations about the tablet are the touch screen and the software. I hope I don't need to explain to slatdotters attaching a keyboard solves the first and making better software the latter. Bill Gates just needs some sleep... jetlag
Once upon a time, parents spent a good chunk of change on encyclopedias. I grew up with one in my room. and read most of it as a child.
What a childhood it would have been to have a tablet with access to wikipedia and Khan academy. Maybe I would have just home schooled and learned everything in the universe instead of wasting my childhood in public schools.
Waah waah waah, I don't have a keyboard, and no one is wiping my ass for me. Waah waah waah.
Now get offa my lawn, you ungrateful punks.
Rather puts the dampners on that.
In addition, he often (well, very often) put strings to his charity that helped Microsoft.
And, for all his charitable donations, if it hadn't been for the global slump, he'd still be much better off monetarily than he was when he made the claim of giving away all his money.
PS Jobs gets lots of stick for being an arsehole.
But how long will it be before any carriculum you'd want will be freely available?
Freely available books will also lower the cost of printed books - once the content itself is free, then low cost book printshops (probably in China) will be able to churn out quality copies of coursebooks for very low cost - a mass market paperback costs only $0.75 to print, a tablet costs hundreds of dollars to buy. For the cost of one tablet, you could have hundreds of paper books printed. The average student probably uses about 10 books a year? Let's say the printing cost is $10, or even $20, that still means you could have all the books re-printed every single year and it would still cost a tenth of the price of a single tablet. The economics vastly favors printed books over electronic book readers - ebook readers are not only more expensive initially, but also have a much higher replacement rate (breakage, battery wear, obsolescence). E-books are great for mobility, great for having content that can be updated etc. but paper wins for cheap text books that have to survive the student life and be reused year after year.
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).
This is why a tablet would be better in most STEM classes than a low cost PC. I tried using my laptop in a CS course for taking notes. But because it wasn't a simple coding class, but more of a mathematical/theoretical course, there was no way I could. Even now, it's hella hard to try typing up papers with any sort of mathematical representations(unless you type everything in LaTeX or try using a GUI equation editor).
You don't know what you are talking about. Tablets are horrible for STEM classes, or for most classes for that matter. Until tablets has the technology necessary to match the versatility and fluidity of good old pen and paper (which they don't, seriously they don't), this will never be true. Also, why were you trying to use a laptop for lecture taking (and CS lecture taking to boot)?
Even for a programming-oriented class, this is ridiculous. Pen and paper is the simplest solution. We are engineers and scientists. We would think we seek the simplest solutions that work. Apparently, we do not.
Mentioning the usage of an equation editor is laughable. They are good for developing documents, but to take notes on the fly in the middle of a lecture, get out of here with that claim. Be it LyX, Scientific Notepad of MS Equation editor, they all SUCK for note taking in the middle of a live lecture.
Typing equations in LaTeX during a lecture (if you are fluid enough), that is a viable alternative. But again, the student needs to be versatile in it, and the clicking of the keyboard is extremely disruptive to your peers. So it is not a solution for the general problem, either. It is certainly better than a tablet (at least with current and near future state of hand recognition tech.)
At the end of the day, go Russian: pen and paper. People suggesting that tablets are a good option for lecture taking (in particular STEM lecture taking), they are being snake oil salesmen, selling an overdesigned solution for a problem that does not exist.
And, the cost of the iPad and the keyboard are still about as much as a netbook.
How do you get an iPad and a keyboard for $350 without buying used?
Make content and tools that work everywhere.
The only thing that "work[s] everywhere" is a web app, but the iPad still didn't implement HTML Media Capture last time I checked.
Even if you are throwing in a 24" monitor in that price (which he likely would have on his desk regardless of using a tablet, using a laptop, or using a desktop) you're still not at $400...
But you go way over that when your work requires a very specialist program that nobody happens to be selling on the App Store. At that point, you have to buy a $649 Mac mini, a $99 per year certificate for the first year, a $99 renewal for the second year, etc.
I think it's odd that "devices don't work" when computers are devices too.
"Devices" in marketing-speak refers to computers that have been made not general-purpose by their manufacturers through cryptographic locks. By this definition, Android tablets and the Surface Pro are general-purpose computers, while iOS tablets and the entry-level Surface are "devices" not unlike a game console.
So how do you key things in at only 20 wpm and type at 80 wpm?
By using an input device that allows 80 wpm, not 20 wpm. By using a full keyboard instead of a 10-key keypad.
It just depends on how tablets are used. Tablets are fairly new on the scene, so we haven't really figured out how to use them to best effect yet.
If those products were that great, they would have survived the test of time. Clearly they didn't. Novell and Netscape didn't evolve so they died.
I also agree with Gates and would add that a handheld mobile phone has many of the capabilities of a tablet plus transportability . . . and of course, a telephone.
Reality check. Gates was brilliant (was, even before retiring what great ideas did he have?), able to reverse engineer and OS then hire enough lawyers so he could get rich off of Xerox and Apple's ideas. However he as been so so wrong about so many thing. Do some fact checking. Zune would seem obvious but he was way down on the internet, how much "wronger" can one be. If not for his anittrust actions forcing people to use IE MS would never have caught up. Fortunately for him he has so so much money he could overcome incredibly bad business choices. He's been pretty much idealess in his career, ripping off ideas of others then quashing them thru lawyers. What I always disliked the most about MS products is the arm twisting they do to force you to use them rather than entice people to use your product on account of its worth. Personally I'd choose an ipad with a dock so if I needed input I could. I don't see a room full of students clacking away on min laptops. In the future everything will powerpointed, already annotated so students won't have to be typing away. Shortsighted article.
I for one, hope Gates puts his Foundation's money where his mouth is and arranges to but a ton of Raspberry Pi's + peripherals to donate to disadvantaged schools....
communication is the key - authoring content is critical to our existence. whatever the solution, keep is simple stupid.
by the way - working for bill in the early years was refreshing -- by the end, the GMs, PMs, and PDMs were stupid and arrogant.
take MS back to stage one of the business life cycle, fire everyone, and have them rehire for the jobs that is needed, and you will see 50% return, and 50% available space for those who know what they are doing...
ps. HR has no problems with this approach. .. it is called temps -- A dashes and V dashes...
cut the fat and the pork Microsoft.. you just wrote down 6.2 billion... now write down 20 thousand employees too, and get back to 15 thousand or less .. the 20% that is required to run the company... not the 80% who ride the results of the 20%
amen..