> An anonymous reader writes "Bill Gates attended the Techonomy conference
> earlier this week, and had quite a bold statement to make about the future
> of education. He believes the Web is where people will be learning within a
> few years, not colleges and university. During his chat, he said, 'Five
> years from now on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures
^^^^^^^^
> in the world. It will be better than any single university.'"
Free online textbooks are one thing, but the exams that are required to get
a diploma certainly won't be for free. At least in Europe, employers want
to see a diploma, instead of just hoping that a newly hired employee is
sufficiently educated.
Also, it's ironic that the college drop-out Bill Gates wants to lecture
people about the future of education. He owes his success not to his
education and not even to the quality (or lack thereof) of "his" software
(not even his own from the start), but to the cunning and influence of his
daddy, the big lawyer who out-conned even IBM's legal advisors. This
Predator game has nothing to do with education, which is supposed to be
about increasing Producers' abilities.
---
MG wrote:
> Actually Ed, telementoring is fairly well established [...] (I do a fair
> amount of various kinds of mentoring online and it seems to work
For free?
(If so, it is funded by taxpayers -- an obsolete model in the era of
privatization and downsizing, also of public education.)
---
REH wrote:
> You might all look at this article on technology in today's NYTimes:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html?hp
Quoting from that article:
| Echoing other researchers, Mr. Strayer says that understanding how
| attention works could help in the treatment of a host of maladies, like
| attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia and depression. And he says
| that on a day-to-day basis, too much digital stimulation can "take
| people who would be functioning O.K. and put them in a range where
| they're not psychologically healthy."
...
| The believers are Mr. Strayer and Paul Atchley, 40, a professor at the
| University of Kansas who studies teenagers' compulsive use of cellphones.
| They argue that heavy technology use can inhibit deep thought and cause
| anxiety, and that getting out into nature can help. They take pains in
| their own lives to regularly log off.
These clowns choose to ignore the effects of wireless electromagnetic
radiation on these maladies. (Well they have to, or bye-bye to their
grants.) Hint: It has very little to do with "technology use" as such.
But these "researchers" certainly got a great pretext for taking a
vacation in the wilderness at the taxpayers' expense.
Chris
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