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Bill and Melinda Gates: Textbooks Are Becoming Obsolete
Reader theodp writes: Thanks to software, Bill and Melinda Gates report in their 2019 Annual Letter, textbooks are becoming obsolete. Bill writes: "I read more than my share of textbooks. But it's a pretty limited way to learn something. Even the best text can't figure out which concepts you understand and which ones you need more help with. It certainly can't tell your teacher how well you grasped last night's assigned reading. But now, thanks to software, the standalone textbook is becoming a thing of the past" (if so, it'll be a 60-year overnight success!). The Gates are putting their money where their mouths are -- their education investments include look-Ma-no-textbooks Khan Academy and Code.org. Code.org, whose AP Computer Science Principles course for high schools "does not require or follow a textbook", boasted in its just-released Annual Report that 38% of all AP CS exam takers in 2018 came from "Code.org Computer Science Principles classrooms," adding that it had spent $24.2 million of its donors' money on curriculum and its Code Studio learning platform (30,300 hours of coursework), another $46.7 million to prepare 87,000 new K-12 CS teachers, $12.4 million on Marketing, and $6.9 million on Government Affairs. So, do we still need textbooks?
... textbooks are not obsolete. Not everyone on the planet can afford internet especially schools in places where internet is costly/sketchy and teachers need classrooms where kids can focus.
We've all had enough of your buggy, toy proprietary closed dinosaur software and "standards," and your great guru in the sky billionaire pronouncements.
Shove off, why don't you?
Whether it's textbooks, or other reliable resources, we need SOMETHING to offset the conceptual damage that stackexchange does to all kinds of technical learning.
Some textbooks are much better than others. The same is going to be true of software and digital resources. The vast majority of software that's out there for learning is not nearly as good as what you might want it to be. Does the format have some potential advantages? Absolutely. But it's easier to implement and distribute really bad digital resources than it is to distribute (at least printed) textbooks of any sort. And, it's easier to put together websites and videos of small bits of concept one at a time than it is to put together a whole coherent textbook -- whether good or bad, in either case.
Why is Bill Gates spending his billions on trying to improve life here on Earth? He should be building rockets to take us OFF Earth. We don't want to be stuck on this rock in a gravity well forever. What if an asteroid hits? We will all die. And why bother teaching people here on Earth anyway? We can just send the brightest of those on Earth to the stars. It is our destiny.
Bill and Melinda Gates are obsolete
Well, that explains Microsoft software.
Call it wetware. This is why people learn better from other people.
Bill and Melinda Gates are becoming obsolete.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Textbooks cost far too much for something the student will use briefly. Their prices are a burden to many students. Their weight and bulk are a burden to carry between classes.
I'm old and should be nostalgic for dead tree media. To hell with that. I can can download, convert and share ebooks for much less money. I can back them up effortlessly.
Tell me why I should prefer to make publishers rich for an inferior experience. Gates is right on this one.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
No, they aren't. In fact the use of all sorts of books is on the *rise*. He is just as big an aspie as any other valley retard. The biggest thing people fail to notice at present is that young people are generally even *less* technologically saavy than their forebears. I'm sure his bloated ego wishes he was correct - he simply isn't, and his logic is the kind that isn't. People really need to inderstand: Gates was never particularly bright or visionary; he was just in the right place at the right time (not unlike Zuckerberg) and willing to be more unethical than everyone else.
... you didn't spend any of your billions of bucks investing your goddam time getting a motherfucking PHD in the methodology of teaching.
You're telling us what we need to hear to do things your way.
What a dirt bag.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Thanks, I'll stay away from ebooks that phone home where I stopped, started, how long I stayed on a page, whether I re-read it, what time I read... and then sell to advertisers continuous analyses of me based on that.
Ive seen students of all ages work with computers in the classroom and they keep missusing it for other things then their education, im not saying automation wont work but what ive seen its current implementation is failing HARD!
textbooks are not the best way to learn. Especially, when you consider that most today are out of date and/or written by companies/professors/individuals with a monetary over accuracy outlook. ;) On a side note, I have always wondered in the past how advanced cultures can loose knowledge, maybe I have the answer ;)
;)
I buy few books these days and do internet searches for most things. It has gotten to the point where I recall the query, not the actual information the next time I need the info. So I ask myself what happens when the internet is down
In addition I find that I can pickup things I need to know using the internet. So maybe the concept of sitting in a classroom with a teacher in the room dispensing knowledge is also an obsolete way to learn.
If someone has the desire and an internet connection is our current public educational system obsolete. I don't think the government, academic establishment or the educational unions will respond well
Just my 2 cents
I wish he would spend his time and money fixing Windows. What we are stuck with now is abysmal. If he were to really put his brain and a billion dollars into making a really good OS, I bet he could do so. THAT would be a legacy to leave humanity.
If this is what Gates is claiming then why is the textbook industry, the largest sector in publishing, looking forward to continuing growth in selling textbooks? And why is the OpenTextbook movement rapidly gaining traction in both secondary & post-secondary education? And why are experts in online & distance education focusing on curriculum models centred around high quality textbooks? (e.g. reading on screens is more tiring & has lower learning outcomes & textbooks are more convenient, reliable, & effective for anytime, anywhere learning) Being a billionaire doesn't magically make anyone an expert at anything. Stick to what you know, Gates, and have the humility to listen to the experts.
Properly written textbooks are the greatest method yet devised for providing access to information. I've read textbooks from a hundred years ago and they're often just as good, or better, than something from a few years ago.
Obviously, that depends on what the topic is, biology textbooks that old are worthless.
The source of information should not be the sole source of assessing whether or not the reader has learned the material. A decent text book should have a set of questions and a set of answers. Obviously, for some subjects that's not easy to do because the answers are fuzzy, but in a great number of cases it's true.
Even in those cases, you should be applying the knowledge in some way and as a result you should know whether or not you could apply the knowledge.
Two years ago, during a Jan. 17, 2017 discussion with Charlie Rose, Bill Gates said he spends "15 percent" of his time managing Microsoft. I interpreted that to mean that Gates is still extremely involved and very influential. Did Gates want the mess that is Windows 10?
From the transcript at that Charlie Rose web page:
08:42
"Bill Gates: I'm there about 15 percent of the time. And I get to work just on the R and D part, brainstorming with people, thinking, OK, how are we going to take this artificial intelligence and make it understand, help you use your time better. It's a very exciting time in software. There's five companies that are, you know, in a really strong position. Microsoft is leading in some really cool stuff so --"
It seems obvious that Bill Gates still has a huge amount of overall influence on the management of Microsoft, even if he mostly focuses on other subjects.
Some of the many stories about Windows 10:
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." (Aug. 4, 2015)
Microsoft's Intolerable Windows 10 Aggression (May 27, 2016)
Microsoft is infesting Windows 10 with annoying ads (March 17, 2017)
Microsoft, stop sabotaging Windows 10. (March 21, 2017)
I guess we could all let our servants read to us.
Interactive computer instruction was implemented 60 years ago by the PLATO system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
See also "The Friendly Orange Glow"
https://www.amazon.com/Friendl...
For suitable topics and students, it works better than textbooks. Maths, for instance, or electronics. Subjects that lend themselves to many detailed, specific tests with mainly right/wrong answers.
One of the most strangely neglected areas of education and computing.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Let me say.. fuck all of you!
Text Books, the hard back, sometimes softback, big heavy books are a fucking racket.
Textbooks are definitely a dying form of learning.
Just some insights from a guy that carried his fair share of textbooks.
1. They are heavy
2. They can't be updated
3. They are typically quite biased
4. Did I mention they are a racket - so much money wasted to line the publishers pockets
5. They are a waste of resources
When every industry in the world is moving away from paper and toward digital media distribution why is it absurd to think Education shouldn't or worse, can't also benefit from a paperless curriculum.
This only reveals how ignorant someone that thinks they are in the know can be.
Do we think stone tablets written in cuneiform are obsolete? No, they are priceless artifacts from history and highly valuable. Books are much the same thing just with a lower shelf life.
While there are some things that could become obsolete, often times folks like Bill are only calling them obsolete because they do not fit into their control of the market schemes. They would rather you put your copy of 1984 on your kindle than carry it around on paperback so they can take from you when someone decides you should not have it. https://www.theguardian.com/te...
Ironic!
Tablets and E-readers suck for this. Flipping physically in a book back and forth from index to glossary to content is way easier and provides tactile reinforcement. Nothing in the digital realm compares.
If you need a refresher on, say, Mohr's circle, you grab a textbook and look it up in the index. If you've got an e-textbook, you just do a search on Mohr's circle. But good luck quickly finding the 10 minute segment of video describing Mohr's circle from a library of hundreds of lecture videos on structural engineering.
The difference is that you can easily create an index of photos or text because they're not time-dependent. You can reduce them in size (photos) or context (keywords) by just reducing their spatial dimensions. An index generated this way lets you rapidly search a huge library. Time is irrelevant to the process.
On the other hand, audio (and consequently video) is time-dependent. If you try to reduce it, it becomes frequency-shifted until it's unrecognizable, or too rapid for you to understand. If you try to use reduce it to short clips (preserving the playback speed for the clips), then someone has to go through and manually pick out the segments of audio/video to turn into clips. It cannot be done automatically.
This is why you take notes in class. It converts the time-dependent lecture, into a time-independent text record which you can rapidly scan and search to remind yourself of material presented in the lecture.
Yes, one can question physical textbooks. I avoid them also as much as possible but there are still various issues with electronic texts: 1. Loss of control: Even with free versions of books or videos or resources, they can disappear at any moment. How many electronic resources which were available 20 years ago are available still now? I myself have the habit of keeping copies of everything I see electronically which I like because it can be pulled at any moment. Books don't just disappear. You can still read them in 50 years if they are converted first into a industry independent format. 2. Long term backup: Having a private library however requires to have a good backup system, decentralized because one can not trust any service in the long run. I'm old enough to have seen many things come and go, terms of services change and it is only 25 years now, that we teach and distribute online (i had my first course websites for classes in 1994 and still have all these resources online, but how many things from 25 years ago are still there? The biggest shock for me was the pull of google video to youtube. It can well be that in 10 years, youtube is sold to an other company, or only available behind a paywall. Services like Kahn academy etc, we will have to see how long they are still free. 3. Privacy: Even in the ``free textbook movement", one has started to look for ways to mine the information like tracking students readings. Like in e-books, the information what a reader reads, how fast and possibly annotates is used or sold. I personally do try to avoid such resources, because it is as if somebody constantly looks you over the shoulder. How long did I read what? What do I read? When do I read? Where do I read? This information is all given away for free to the reader. I know that even well intended projects for free textbooks start having students to register (yes it is free), but all this information is kept somewhere and evaluated. Who is naive enough to believe that this information stays confined. We have seen massive data breaches recently. This by the way is the same also for online newspapers. I have concerns with being tracked all the time telling an anonymous entity what articles I read when and how and from where. 4. Screen and write technology: Electronic reading has become better with the emergence of tablets and good computer screens. It is still not there. Annotation with pen still beats annotation by electronic pens which can be sluggish and depends on industry controlled technology which changes still frequently. We will eventually get there, once the screen technology has the resolution, speed and comfort of paper. It is a matter of time only but it is not there. The tablets of today also run on operating systems where one has lost control. Even well intended systems start to bug you to log in. Sorry. I keep all my library in a gold old fashioned directory tree which I'm sure I can read also in 10 years, which I can print out if needed and annotate with an old fashioned pen if needed. 5. Proprietary formats: One of the biggest problems with electronic reading is proprietary formats. I don't know how many different reading systems (apps) i have tried and which were abandoned or then bought by a big company which then only allows to use the service while registered. The best systems for writing on a tablet or screen are all proprietary and could disappear any moment. It is essential for example to have wrist protection technology when writing and drawing on a tablet. The pens have become great already, but the apps continue to disappear and appear. There were apps I liked which do not exist any more. Come on. If I write something, I need it to be available not only the 3 years of the life span of the app, I need to be able to read and modify it in 20 years. I have still documents written in software written by companies which disappeared or were bought by others. If the document was exported as a PDF and put on my own machine, yes, I can still read it. Other things have disappeared once one does not pay any more for the service.
Here here...
The single greatest advance for humanity was the printing press. The ability to accumulate and deliver knowledge beyond a generation or two, and to many, changed everything. Skills could be taught. Knowledge developed, information shared, at a scale never before practical. And accurately.
Now while the media change, publishing is still publishing. eBooks are books, though we are well on the way to losing the greatest value of a printed book in the current paradigm - to be able to share it, physically and freely, with others. At the moment it isn't illegal to give a book I've purchased to someone else.
Textbooks, be they printed on paper or delivered as data, are textbooks. Perhaps the greatest danger of eBooks is that they are indeed editable in a moment, even while you were reading it, if the author or publisher cared to. And of course, bad actors could also do so, surreptitiously, but that's pretty criminal.
And we should have figured out by now that education is not benign. Some have purposes other than enlightenment. This is the price of freedom - sometimes you have to deal with what you disagree with or fear. There are much worse things.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The latest craze in community college education appears to be online classes whose "content" is provided by the book publishers. From several of these courses, it appears that the publishers are sending their books to the lowest bidder and having them come up with slides and test questions. Then, the community college just has to hire someone to oversee the class and ask questions from students. Of course, the book is required reading, and without the book, you are likely to fail the class.
Why?
The tests are primarily about regurgitating exact quotes from the book. The exam authors don't actually understand the material and only take random snippets from each chapter and ask about them. Therefore, an understanding of the concepts is not enough to pass the test - you must have basically memorized entire passages from the book. The exams and "lecture slides" are also riddled with errors, as is to be expected when you ask an unqualified person to write them.
Code.org are disgusting sexists who fine teachers who let boys study computers.
Anyone who supports actual Equality boycotts ANYTHING code.org touches.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/04/10/1235219/google-teach-girls-coding-get-2500-teach-boys-get-0
Here here...
Where? Where?
Would argue that writing was more important than the printing press by an order of magnitude. The world went from a technological advancement every few thousand years to several a century.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Just fuck off and die you evil entitled cunt.
If he spends a lot of time in R&D, that explains why nothing impressive has come out of Microsoft research, despite spending tons of money and hiring good people. He spends time working on Microsoft AI? The most notable thing to come out of Microsoft AI was Tay.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There is no single method of learning which is ideal for everyone, which shouldn't surprise anyone who has taught more than a single person longer than 5 minutes. Some people want face-to-face lectures. Some people want to read a book on their own and then ask questions. Others want to immediately start with hands on experiments. Etc.
Textbooks will always exist in one form or another, and paper books will always have certain advantages over ebooks or websites. These technologies are complementary, not competitive. The idea that any of this stuff will be "obsolete" is advanced by people who know nothing about learning, or are selling something.
Millions of kids all over the world still need text books. And textbooks have several major advantages over ipads.
1. No one can surreptitiously "update" your textbook so it says something new without you knowing it.
2. No one can take it away.
3. No need for internet, charging, distractions from browsing on your ipad.
Right there, buddy.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Writing, yes. But publishing, distribution.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
A good teacher is still going to have to figure out the order to introduce concepts, when to introduce. They will have to generate problems to solve. This is currently handled by textbook writers. So the same process has to be done, regardless of how or where it's taught.
If I never handed students a book and gave them printouts with homework on them, I've essentially written a textbook. If everything is online, same.
The physical textbook needs to go. But the work to produce textbooks will still remain.
Once we realize that we can store and provide the textbook in any fashion, printed and bound or online or lectures.
Textbooks are obsolete. With AI and fully digital learning, deliberate practise can probably be implemented in software at a level that exceeds the performance of most teachers. It would be comparable to have your own, personal elite teacher.
A textbook is mostly a way of conveying information in the form of texts and images.
still better then DRM loaded E-books with time outs in them. Unless they make the E-books about 60-70% less then real ones.
What's sad I always find myself having by default these days a deep distrust of everything computerized.
In principal what's there not to like about better textbooks in electronic format that would enable all kinds of cool shit such as lighter book bags, books that don't wear out, ability to annotate without the next person to use them suffering through scribbles and torn pages. Forms and interactivity in pages that make pages come alive in useful ways. Which way educational adventures.. possibilities are endless.
The problem is people are too stupid, undisciplined (scope creep), lazy and selfish to allow that to ever happen.
Computerization will be viewed as a means of teachers seeking to automate themselves out of their roles.
It means platform, software vendors, schools and publishers continuously spying on students even with microphones and cameras for all kinds of good sounding reasons.
It means controlling material and costs in ways not possible with printed books.
Never ending reliability issues... dropped, broken, network sucks, batteries and constant distractions from people doing other shit during class rather than what they are supposed to be. Mommy I can't do my homework without Internet!!
Despite all attempts to date there remains no meaningful evidence giving everyone computers instead of books actually leads to better outcomes for students. I have no doubt it actually can be done... yet I retain every doubt in the world it will happen anytime soon.
https://www.npr.org/sections/1...
Collective decision making by labour is the future.
Even though we are supposed to love the newest and latest kindle because of it's anti-reflective display and fantastic battery life, books are much more "Keep on task" friendly. I think this is much more useful in our attention deficit world.
Publishers have always been trying to squeeze money out of schools and students by issuing the latest and greatest textbooks, but do we really need to re-invent the math textbook? It seems like algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculous have not changed much and old textbooks reach their way to 3rd world countries and the friendly lookup portion of folks library. Also, who really needs the newest preface to the classic novels?
Text books don't require batteries.
Electronic books require batteries, cables and charging time.
Your talks are for that the people buys M$ Office.
There was a good discussion on the vlogbrothers youtube channel (video and comments): https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It really depends who are the target users of textbook. As a first time introduction to a topic, textbooks tend to be a little rough. But as collections of carefully curated piece of knowledge, they are valuable.
There is a need for a carefully written description of a concept and the various versions of it, with 200 exercises some of them with solutions. That is what a textbook is. Whether it is print or not is an orthogonal issue. OpenDSA ( https://opendsa-server.cs.vt.e... ) is a pretty good online textbook for data structures and algorithms for example.
Now, there is value to a printed copies of some books and there is value to electronic ones depending on you usage of them.
We can't replace all our textbook with 3 minute video discussion of the topic. Such videos do not get in enough details and can not be precise enough and can not provide with dozens of alternate versions. But they can be a pretty good introduction to a topic.
"Are becoming" is the crux of the post. I agree with the inevitability of the transition from bound paper textbooks to digital sources. And it's certainly possible that the textbook itself is becoming an anachronism. Nostalgia and stubborn memories aren't going to stop this evolution in teaching. It may turn out to be a top down process. And it will certainly need a degree of adaptability that's not always found in our schools. Just as the printing press (so fondly and persistently referenced) revolutionized the distribution of information, so has our current digital system. The growth of MOOC shows us another path toward teaching and student participation. I've taken over 25 online courses that have used links to sources rather than textbooks. Our world is changing rapidly. Our school system, not so much. My art history courses were taught by artists, curators, museum staff and professors. Each brought a perspective unknown in a physical classroom. In other courses, not only were original papers required reading but, when possible, interviews with the writers themselves. Although these courses are university and post-doc, the approach is valid in pre-university courses as well. The fora were robust and required and monitored. Although I long ago moved away from Microsoft, Mr. Gates' early memos and documents were required reading in one of my courses on internet media economics and law. He was thoughtful and rather prescient. It's entirely possible that he remains so today.
The racket is very clever here, especially at the college level.
Most of the first two years of college courses (e.g. English, calculus, physics, chemistry) is the same rehashed basic knowledge year after year. The publishers know this, and the only thing they do with new editions of their books is change the problems (and solutions) enough to prevent students from using old textbooks. Remember, however, that they also publish many textbooks for senior undergraduate courses that can be fairly dynamic.
If a college attempts to use CC/copyleft/whatever material for the same basic courses or create their own material, all the publishers will do is back-load the costs onto those more advanced textbooks, making them prohibitively expensive. In conjunction with state funding of a large number of colleges and the structure of the student loan system, students and institutions have little recourse.
This is also why companies like Pearson and McGraw-Hill want to go to online textbooks, temporary licensing for access, and similar schemes. It's all about extracting economic rents. This is happening increasingly in K-12 under the guise of improving the student learning experience, but it's really about artificially moving the target without adding value.
I'm generally a free-market person, but it's clear that this is an area the FTC should have investigated and clamped down on decades ago. Meanwhile, our taxes and loan amounts continue to skyrocket to the detriment of all of society.
Bill Gates would naturally say text books are becoming obsolete, hoping the sheeple would buy into the lie and buy into non-free software that requires M$ Windoze to read books. M$ is dying and they will do anything to remain relevant with subscription based software with eventually paying for windoze monthly whereas GNU/Linux is free and always will be.
BTW, captcha is perfect "Forgets" /. forgets that bill gates is the enemy of free software and now they are treating him like a saint.
--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I have two teenagers-- their textbooks are HUGE and unnecessary.
Why does a kid today need to carry around more than I did in the 80s?
When all you have is a hammer....
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Let me share a story: As a child, in Columbus Ohio, I had to walk one-mile each way between home and school, from 1946. I'd been admitted to First Grade at the age of 5, because my mother taught me to read, write and do simple math. That meant that I was always ahead of the class, so sat in back, so I wouldn't look so bored.
But, there was an upside: Every day, I could take a two-block detour and visit the local Public Library. So, every day, I'd leave two books I'd taken out the day before, and pick up two more to occupy myself in the back of the room the next school day. I read a lot of books, and learned a lot (and a lot more I've forgotten), as I worked my way through the Dewey Decimal system. And, one day, I carried Frederick Terman's "On Radio Engineering" to class...and was transfixed. There I was, at age 6, learning how my mom's radio worked! I went back home and tweaked the dials on the huge (vacuum tube) radio, finding out how the controls actually changed stations, and how tone controls could help me listen to far-away stations! It set me on a path of fascination with what became to be known as the field of "electronics." I worked in a TV Repair Shop at the age of 12, played with ZJ17 (GE) transistors at 15, went into the Air Force at age 19, and wrote a published article predicting the likelihood of the emergence of the "computer on a chip" some three months before Intel announced it.
Today, as I sit (age 78) in front of my computer, I never had the benefit of all those "electronic" substitutes for reading...to this very day, I look forward to reading my weekly edition of "New Scientist" (published in London), to stay abreast of information.
I don' need no STEENKIN' "video" from which to learn. What I did learn was how to DO IT MYSELF by soldering wires together, debugging the arrangement of electron flows until it worked, and then having the satisfaction of educating myself in the bargain.
There is joy in finding out, not having it explicitly explained. During my career, people have asked me, what 'College did you go to?' I have factually responded, "I've taught at several universities, I've been on faculty of a few...but I've never ATTENDED a College or University (save a few abortive attempts, lasting no more than a month before I became bored, relearning what I already knew.)
Having to read, at one's own pace; being able to go back a few pages to find that earlier illustration for guidance; having the freedom to pace myself to MY learning rate, are all benefits of books. I fear Television (which I still enjoy as entertainment) and Video in general is just a way to sell a product, not ENGAGE the participant in the learning experience.
Just one old woman's view...
But I agree. You can re-write history to what you like within months rather than having a paper trail that takes years to go out of print. How else can the man who claimed no one would need more than 640 Kilobytes of memory in their computers.
This man has NEVER innovated or created a single thing in his life. He store the operating system by trickery and got rich. Nothing this man has done is for the betterment of humanity, only his only self-esteem and ego.
they had to carry a large heavy backpack full of books. Some of the smaller children were damaging their backs with all of that weight. All of those books can be replaced with a tablet. It would be cheaper and much less burdensome.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. "We need to teach our kids how to program!" isn't a new idea Bill Gates came up with. The enthusiasts were saying that about the same time Bill was licensing 86-DOS (in ~1980). Let's make a list of what we absolutely must teach our kids: 1. how to plant a field 2. how to maintain sanitary living space 3. How to electrically wire your home 4. How to tune a automobile engine and change your oil 5. How a telephone works. 6. How to build a radio. 7. How to type (including changing ribbons and cleaning the type) and on and on. There is a basic set of facts that I think we should teach our children, all of them (who are able to understand or use the information). Computer Coding is not in that list. It's about as important as learning how to fly an airplane. What proportion of Americans could explain the principles behind flight? I'd bet less than 5% even know that the shape of the wings (lift surface(s)) is key. And yet, even though there is a shortage of pilots, no one is calling for Flight Classes in middle school. Odd.
“Textbooks are becoming obsolete,” says a dropout whose only claim to fame is being in the right place at the right time and having no scruples and not minding fucking everyone over to pocket more and more ill-gotten gains he never should have had his grimy paws on, from the pushing of a demonstrably inferior product using FUD and strong-arm tactics that should have triggered the use of the RICO ACT.
Fucker should be in jail, and Misrofuck should have been broken up, and required to open source all their code, so people could find all the probably deliberately planted bugs they've been using for decades, compromising their own customers’ safety and security, just for the sake of their own goddamned motherfucking bottom line. Never forget.
In sum, fuck Bill Gates, and fuck Microsoft.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
My daughter spent 3 years in a connected classroom. Children had to have their own devices and the bulk of learning was computer-centric. What actually happened was that kids played games and watched TV in class and then stressed as they did hours and hours of their actual work at home. Studies are consistently showing poor results from computers in the classroom. Kids need books not toys Bill.
Considering his own kids are/have been raised largely tech free.
https://calibre-ebook.com/
How can you be on Slashdot (supposedly News For Nerds) and not instantly know the solution to that problem?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Windows Is Becoming Obsolete
There's considerable profit in selling textbooks, including those integrated with computer learning. Follow the money and you'll have your answer.
The education business is not altruistic.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Time to fix capitalism, take back your money!
My 13 year old is in middle school. He does not have a locker. His backpack is so heavy it literally can cause injuries, and he doesn't even carry all of his books with him every day. Granted, he's taking one more class than is required (so an extra book), but it's still out of control due to greedy book publishers.
Some sort of dedicated device, tailored just to academic use, is sorely needed.
It probably should have:
* e-reader capability, perhaps with a download capability
* CBT capability, perhaps with a download capability
* A calendar function that eventually synchronizes with a server, but does not require network, so assignments get turned in on time.
* A notetaking function that eventually synchronizes with a server, but does not require network, so students can grep for a hard-to-find note.
* Wifi, probably not cellular data, to keep costs low
* Readability both in low high and bright light
Phones are banned at his school, because kids otherwise use them for entertainment during class. The device should not allow you to browse to arbitrary websites or run arbitrary applications. It should not work as a phone. It should not enable texting or e-mailing, except to contact a teacher or school and/or tech administrator. Students should be focused on studying when using this device, at home or in class. For entertainment, some other device should be used.
People who learned math and physics in a classroom with a chalk board landed men on the moon and returned them safeley to earth. No computers just a few side rules. Today's students can touch the older students with a ten foot pole.
Textbooks can reach places and people they do not know exists, like the people living in the streets or people living in places where electricity and internet is scarce or not available, it can reach people living in battlefields like pale***e or S***a.
These people maybe have good intentions but they have too much power (money and lobbying power, they got away with the education lobby) and they should not promote anything of that scale without first knowing a lot more about the world they are trying to "fix" and how their agendas can be better applied.
This culture of listening to people just because they're rich is deluded.
We have the scientific research that proves that rich people (in general) are rich not because they're super-humans, but because of a combination of talent, the right background and environment and sheer dumb luck. And that their talent in one region doesn't necessarily confer talent in other regions.
Bill Gates has been wrong about almost everything that's not related to making Microsoft an evil empire. He famously underestimated the Internet even in his book, which is choke full of more mistakes. His actions in Africa are lauded by some and called misguided by others, and pretty much everything else he's done outside MS has received mix results at best.
e-learning is something he's been trying to be a champion of for at least a decade, with no results to show for. Textbooks won't go away for one simple reason: They work.
When your nifty tech solution is as reliable as a paperback book, we can talk. When it can be lended, get any kind and colour of bookmarks, can get comments scribbled in the margins - in short, when you can duplicate the reliability and functionality with something digital instead of weak attempts at a somewhat imitation as we have now, then you can try to expand on it.
Or, invent something different and better. Cars don't duplicate horse-drawn carriage and yet they replaced them. Because they didn't try to be the same thing just better, they understood they are a different thing. Also, horse-drawn carriages still exist in some areas.
Textbooks aren't going away just because some tech-mogul wants to sell you something that will pump up his stocks.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Which explains Windows ME, Windows Vista, Windows 8, and the current piece of something called Windows 10.
Maybe engineers working at Microsoft *should* start reading textbooks. Maybe then their software would actually work!
Textbooks are not obsolete, their prices are. I worked in the textbook publishing world for many years; it's a racket. Now, most of the big textbook publishing companies have gone print *and* digital and also entered the "services" arena with "Learning Management Software". The biggest textbook publishing houses (most of the big ones are now private-equity-owned) are huge monoliths that can't adapt very quickly.
The "Open Textbook" movement has some promise in bringing down the cost of textbooks, but has been hindered by overall incompetence (mostly, by meddling academics and foundations who don't understand the vagaries of the textbook marketplace. One place "Open Text" seems to be doing a fairly decent job.
Most aren't aware that universities take a % of profit from the bookstore, and as a result haven't really come on board to cut costs as aggressively as they could have.
Khan Academy? WAY overrated. What are the outcomes? People learns (this is cognitive science) by following threads of interest, not being "lectured to", whether in person or in a video - although "in person" at least allows for "branching" if the student can as questions of the presenter/teacher.
Code Academy? Can Code Academy create a mechanical engineer? A surgeon? Sure, coding can be taught online; it's a very linear activity (not always, but mostly). It's a language. Not everything can be taught effectively online. Lso learning styles come into play. Some people love textbooks, but textbooks CAN be made a LOT cheaper. (Examples: open textbook repositories; Flat World Knowledge, etc.)
Learning is a multi-faceted activity that doesn't require one magical approach.
Eventually we will probably see ultra-cheap tablets that have incredible markup capabilities,with software that is *designed* never to be obsolete, so the student can refer back to notes, etc.
Me? If I'm pursing a professional degree, I want a physical textbook as *one* of a number of learning tools, and it will remain in my library for as long as I wish without it's "software" (grammar, graphics, paper, print, and ink), going obsolete.
One doesn't replace the other. For once thing, paper books do not require power for you to read them. They also have a much longer passive longevity - Leave it on a shelf, it'll last for decades and still be readable.
OTOH, ebooks can provide their own light which means kids don't need to hide under the covers with torches to read at night. However, like all e- things they can be easily deleted; by third parties or by accident depending on the platform.
ebooks are also better for searching for stuff, but only if you know what it is.
If you are searching for something and don't know what it is, a paper books is much better for flipping through and skimming, which I find near-unworkable on an an ebook.
Currently students spend THOUSANDS of dollars on textbooks. ... ...
Textbooks written YEARS or DECADES ago, and only mildly edited every year to justify "new" purchase pricing instead of feeding the used market.
Yet, more and more, we're seeing pushback from courses not using said golden geese.
What's NEXT to boost the profits.
Cut out the costs of the physically printing and/or shipping the book!
And will prices come DOWN on such electronic distribution?
What the fuck are YOU smoking? OF COURSE NOT!
On top of that, they can put them out in a proprietary format that "expires" the material after X-months/years. Meaning you'll essentially RENT your textbooks from now on...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Digital textbooks are a great opportuniyt to revise history instantly.
Oceania can save paper as it edits it's history on the fly.
I have a high school aged daughter and the school system has a schizophrenic approach to text books. In the science curriculum they mostly switched over to Power Point demonstrations of the knowledge they need to know. Where is the “knowledge” itself? Undefined. Just an outline of what you need to know. In a parent teacher conference I asked where they get the “knowledge,” what I got was a rambling explanation of a variety of source including the “OLD Science Curriculum book”, but the book is only available to use at the school because it isn’t distributed to the students anymore. The Power Point is derived from the old book, but can’t be bothered to give page numbers or chapters for what needs to be looked up. Basically they expect the kids to just Google everything and if all else fails use an old book in class and find the item by looking them up in the index.
Very little emphasis is placed on knowing basic science knowledge and facts, but rather HOW to do research. Keeping elaborate lab books and statistics, but again hardly any real emphasis on knowing the structure of science from the ground up. That’s just all stuff you Google when you need it. Oh and about the knowledge they did look up, it is all mostly ephemeral stuff like percentage of this and percentage of that or completely isolated factoids with out a reference to the whole framework they reside in.
Now the math curriculum where we are at is much better, stellar as a matter of fact. No complaints there (other than the very competitive nature). But SCIENCE is a mess from what I’ve seen.
Last note, I don’t care if a book is paper or electronic, but learning shouldn’t be constant steam of Google look-ups. Which isn’t to say Google doesn’t have a place if you are doing your own separate learning project, but give’m books for the core stuff!
Letter To Iran
Bill Gates likes having the control of information. He can't militarize countries and attack citizens is there's a paper trail.
Words and pictures. It's all words and pictures a book is just a delivery system. Computers are another.
It's beyond foolish to say "[insert kind of book] is dying"...it's still content.
Books are a persistent, non digital, non-powered storage medium for information.
Computers are another.
Yes, computers can show the user several pictures quickly such that it appears to be moving (video) but the existence of video doesn't negate the existence or render useless the data not contained in video format.
This is just micro$oft trying to enter a new market through charitable donations
Thank you Dave Raggett
I'm writing a two-pass assembler. I went to my textbooks for reminders on parsing arithmetic and logic expressions and for new knowledge (to me) on generating binary object code. billg, don't tell me books are obsolete. As others have noted, maybe you are.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Having three kids that have just made it past 8th grade, text books are significantly better than online books, interactive media and *cough* consumable workbooks.
The electronic based ones turn into a video game / texting / screen time alternative and the kids mind shift to entertainment with little or no retention of the material covered.
The consumable workbooks favor color, pictures and table instead of content with little or no room to work out multi-step math problems.
Textbooks with mostly text and a few pictures / graphics were easier for my kids to read, understand and retain content.
The crap of something new is needed in schools magic bullet is just that - crap.
Paper based text books, and not the comic book like ones, can last 20+ years it taken care of and are for largely unchanging subjects like math, literature, language, science up to the 8th grade.
For example, my kid's 8th grade math class had low C's, D's and F's for the first 12 weeks on average. Why, the electronic book gave the problem, and then did the solution combining several steps into each single step presented in the answer. The kids were confused and firstly, did not know how to write the problem as a set of equations, secondly did not know how to simplify each equation one step at a time and third did not know how to plug in the values from one equation to solve the other equations.
For simple problems like
(cost of goods purchased) + (cost of goods purchased) * (sales tax rate) = (total purchase price)
Once my kid learned how to write the basic equation with a variable for the unknown part, he could solve the rest of the equation.
The electronic book for brevity did not write down the equation in human readable terms, did not write down what is known one per line (e.g., sales tax rate = 10%) and did not solve it one step at a time.
End result, it confused the class and did not give them a recipe for finding any of the unknown parts give numbers for the known parts.
Stupid idea. Schools love the electronic books:
1. Automatically give out assignments
2. Automatically verify if a student does the assignment
3. Automatically grade the assignment
4. Give feedback to the teacher
Throw in a video tutorial of how to work the problems and you do not really need a teacher anymore
Lazy on the part of schools, lazy on the educational bureaucracy and much lazier on the educational industry
Every year there are hundreds to thousands of PhD dissertations in education each of which needs to have original research, new school superintendents hired and each of them needing to show something new, try something new to say they have done something to earn their degree or job paycheck.
Damn well would not want to fly a plane if the pilot only learned and trained on a computer simulator.
So Bill and Melinda, adding more technology to schools does not help - kids do not learn by video game substitute and youtube substitute.
Consider the 'sea of questions' strategy in China of repeatedly taking practice tests to learn just enough to do well on the college entrance exam. No lasting knowledge of the underlying subjects is needed only enough to make a good mark on the test.