Comments on: Listening to Bill Gates on Improving Education

By: Ross

Ross — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:58:26 +0000

Isegoria, I agree with your comment. The key word is self. The second key word is us. What we do and how we manage education as adults is quite a bit different than what I'd want sprayed on pre- and elementary schoolers. What I mean to say is that while the InterTubes are really almost a miracle and I am thankful every time I use it, I also still recall a time where actual research, thought, growth, creativity, etc. all happened successfully without it. I would have a hard time, as an adult, trading away the Instant Answer-O-Meter that is the InterTubes. At the same time, I would never raise a kid to value clicking for data over experimenting, observing, wool-gathering, hypthesizing, and discussing in person.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 15:27:07 +0000

Certainly classroom IT projects have been appallingly bad up to this point, but most of us here have been using the Net for self-education to an amazing degree.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 15:19:34 +0000

All Gates really needed to know was that getting the Goliath of the mature mainframe market to hand over the nascent microcomputer software market was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

By: Ross

Ross — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:55:34 +0000

With apologies for not reading past the first paragraph. You should probably not waste a further second on an ignorant comment, but, here goes: Is someone still saying the solution to education is more IT? A WATSON for every budding Sherlock?

We are truly in the End Times. Ray Kurzweil, I surrender: Take me. I am ready for assimilation into The Singularity.

(Whispering: Maybe, just maybe, the problem is not how quickly we acquire and exchange data, but how well and deeply we develop and share wisdom? And, last time I checked, “there’s not an App for that.” Put that in your Funk & Wagnalls.)

By: Joseph Fouche

Joseph Fouche — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 21:58:59 +0000

As a veteran of the IT industry, I’ve never seen any sign that Bill Gates knows anything about software either.