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.'"
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.