Sylvia Carr reported that Bill Gates described his syllabus for education at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in Scotland.
Lectures will be distributed for free over the Internet, students will hold discussions at a distance in chat rooms, and testing and accreditation will happen online for people anywhere in the world … Technology allows for more specialization and improvement in education.
He believes people select great universities or schools for access to professors’ lectures, the ability to discuss issues with other students and the need to attend classes to gain a degree–will all be changed by technology.
The role of the teacher will continue as fundamental to learning, but more effort must be put into training teachers in IT, and more tools must be created for them–for example, software that could help them create a curriculum from online sources.
I attend Western Governor’s University. It is a distance ed program using Oracle’s clunky portal interface. Although I’m a web and database programmer (in Oracle no less), I’m pretty surprised by the lack of knowledge and technical understanding of how to use technology, even as simple as email, attachments, and discussion threads. This is in the teacher license program….