Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Yeah. His prognostications have been pretty much a joke. People should go back and read "The Road Ahead" and see how good that was.
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?
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.
Yeah, I mean, for my distaste of MS, I really find very little Gates says or does that I actually argue with.
It's really creepy to me: One man starts a cancer foundation, donates to charities, and, at least publicly, seems to be a decent human being, and is generally reviled. Another man is kind of an utter dick, makes abusive business deals, and after years of being a multi-millionaire without contributing anything to society, dies of cancer, and he gets worshiped like some kind of god.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
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.
We arent defending the 'tablet'. We are pointing out that CHEAP mobile devices are going to be EVERYWHERE. We need to learn how to use them to teach with, not force a desktop paradigm because its familiar. Tablets are not toys, you are a fucking luddite if you think that. Its a portable screen with a big battery, light local processing and huge hooks into 'big iron'. If you cant see how incredibly powerful that combo can be when applied correctly then you are missing the entire point. Dismissing tablets as toys shows your serious lack of vision.
Good-bye
New tech has to prove itself.
No one else should cut it any slack just because you are getting all hot and bothered about your personal brand fetish becoming the new monopoly and replacing the old one.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I agree that new tech has to prove itself, however, comment like 'they are toys' are not helpful at all to the discussion and ignore the HUGE amount of use-cases tablets excel at.
Good-bye
10 WAYS THE IPAD WILL FOREVER CHANGE EDUCATION
Every single one of those points, except the point that the iPad has limited multitasking capabilities (and that's somehow a good thing in the classroom), applies to laptops.
SD Unified Purchases 26,000 iPads For District Students:
At 30 kids a classroom, they could have afforded to give 866 teachers a much needed $17k raise with the money they spent on this technology push that will end up abandoned in 3 years. Better yet they could hire new teachers. Watch as those iPads become outdated and can't run the latest OS with the latest and greatest educational apps in 3 years time. Oh, and that's another $260,000 in a couple years to replace the batteries as they go. How often do you have to replace the batteries on a textbook?
Input speed. Entering text on a tablet is just painful. The reduced precision from the use of squishy fat fingers also makes fine graphical work difficult. They are great for web browsing, video watching, reading... consuming content. But actually creating anything more than a sentence long is impractical.
I get the impression you read Atlas Shrugged a few too many times.
Once docked its really not a tablet anymore is it? Plus those docks (and BT keyboards) are an overpriced added expense that I've only seen on high end tablets. We are talking about supplies for millions of students at all grade levels. Do you really think its a good idea to have young kids walking class to class with such expensive equipment?
Bill also thought the Internet was just a passing fad.
Tablets will become standard items in classrooms. Just like PCs and whiteboards.
How they will be integrated is still up for debate. Especially in earlier schooling tablets are still in the gadget phase.
Are you fucking kidding me? Do you not realize how ridiculous you made your own argument sound? Let me summarize/paraphrase what you just said: "I can use my tablet the same as a PC, so long as I have several peripherals attached to it that render the fact that it is a tablet, and not a PC, absolutely moot."
So you have to have:
- Your Tablet
- External Monitor
- Apple TV
- Bluetooth Keyboard
All to have the same functionality as a laptop.
Way to be a tool bag. Yeah, tablets are a great invention. But as of right now, they are VERY much more for consumption than they are for production. The differences between Tablets and PCs is similar to that of a fork and a spoon: there are several situations where frankly, you could get away with using either or, but at the end of the day they serve two entirely different, albeit related, purposes.