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Melinda Gates: Facebook Engineers Have Solved One of Education's Biggest Problem
theodp writes: Asked by the NY Times if Silicon Valley is saving the world or just making money, Melinda Gates replied, "I can say without a doubt — because I've seen it — that some of them [SV companies] are innovating in ways that make life better for billions of people." As an example, BillG's better half suggests that a handful of Facebook engineers have solved one of education's biggest problems with their 20% time project at billionaire-backed Summit Public Schools, a small charter school operator. Gates writes, "One of the biggest problems in American education is that teachers have to teach 30 students with different learning styles at the same time. Developers at Facebook, however, have built an online system that gives teachers the information and tools they need to design individualized lessons. The result is that teachers can spend their time doing what they're best at: inspiring kids." Some people — like the late Roger Ebert — might not be quite as impressed as Melinda to see Silicon Valley trying to reinvent the 1960's personalized-learning-wheel in 2015!
Facebook Engineers Have Solved One of Education's Biggest Problem
Is that problem the bad use of English?
I'd rather spend money ( if I had a billion dollars) on wikivarsity or wikibooks projects . We need quality open content in wiki form which is accessible to all .
Sounds like more work for the teachers, and my guess is that would be without extra pay. Even with the aid of technology, individual lessons means more time required on the teachers part. How about just reduce the number of students per teacher?
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
> "If you have three Pepsis and drink one, how much more refreshed are you? You, the redhead in the Chicago school system?"
> "Pepsi?"
> "Partial credit!"
If only there was a way to get kids with similar learning styles into the same classes.... some sort of test they could give kids, the same test even to all the kids, standardized to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and pickup on their learning styles and then group them into smaller organizations, a class or something so that a teacher that excels at one style of teaching can educate kids that excel at that style of learning....
To bad that's impossible, or it'd be a great idea.
One of the biggest problems in American education is that teachers have to teach 30 students with different learning styles at the same time.
At some point that is pretty much an irreducible problem. You have finite (and too often shrinking) resources to spend on each pupil and teaching isn't something that generally scales very well, especially with young people and even more especially when you want to customize it per pupil. Furthermore it's not as if each of the 30 students "learning styles" have no overlap or that a non-optimized teaching method cannot still be effective. I think that it is great that people are working hard to try to improve education but I think the notion that we're going to somehow leverage some online system to make magical improvements is a bit naive. None of that is unique to the American education system - any teacher anywhere would have the same problems.
Developers at Facebook, however, have built an online system that gives teachers the information and tools they need to design individualized lessons.
Great they built an online system. They're hardly the first. Why should we believe this system will be any better than the innumerable past attempts? I read the article and it provides no real insight into what is different nor any data regarding how effective it is.
The result is that teachers can spend their time doing what they're best at: inspiring kids.
I am pretty involved in my local school (I have a part time staff position there) and work closely with many teachers throughout the school year. The notion that what most teachers do best is "inspiring kids" is nonsense, and as far as I can tell meaningless too. Some do "inspire" but it certainly isn't "what they're best at" for most of them. Furthermore you can inspire people all you want but that isn't the same thing as teaching them. Effective teaching requires more than getting students excited about a topic. And most teachers I've ever had weren't especially good at "inspiring kids". Many teachers have a pretty negative and cynical attitude unfortunately and more than a few don't exactly have a passion for teaching much less inspiring. Maybe this tool is great but my guess is that it really probably doesn't improve things much and likely only will work well in fairly specific circumstances.
I deal with kids who have FAR bigger issues than worrying about tailoring a lesson plan. Getting food on the table, dealing with a disfunctional or abusive home life, parents who are simply not involved, etc. That's not to say tailored lesson plans aren't an important problem but it's no where near the top of the heap of serious problems facing our schools.
I'm not really understanding. What does this Facebook solotion do that couldn't be done on a piece of paper? The problem is the work involved in developing each lesson, not in the tracking of each lesson once it is developed. Does this Facebook plan eliminate the work involved in coming up with separate plans?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Maybe, if instead of skipping out on billions of dollars in taxes, Microsoft paid them, we could put enought teachers in the schools to cut the class sizes to more like the 18-20 they should be handling.