The future, by Bill Gates

This video is from Bill Gates 1995 book, "The Road Ahead" - a classroom scene set in the future, where apparently, students produce meaningless work but have cool technology.

Tags: Classroom, Future, of, the

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Permalink Reply by Connie Weber on May 1, 2007 at 6:03am

Sylvia,
I'm going to use this video in class as a discussion point. Wow... the glitz, the effects, the apparently polished work--all devoid of meaning or any real research. The student is only involved at the surface of things, if that.
Thanks for sharing this. It'll be illuminating to show this in class and get the kids' take on it.
Connie

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Permalink Reply by Sylvia Martinez on May 1, 2007 at 9:53am

OH! you reminded me - I completely forgot to mention the absolutely fabulous website where I originally stumbled across this - while looking for something else, of course. By the time I found the Google video embed code, it slipped my mind.

If you like this - search the education category for more gems...

http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/

I would love to show this one - http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/04/1999-ad-1967.html
to kids and ask them to make their own, or comment on how wrong they got the future (the gadgets are right, but the social stuff is so wrong). The woman pushes buttons so that her husband and son can have instant meals.

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Permalink Reply by Tina Bulleigh on May 1, 2007 at 8:38am

The tech projects are only as meaningless as the tone the teacher sets. If the project is based around core standards or essential questions, then the result should match what was being asked of the student. If the assignment isn't addressing or meeting a certain standard, than the students will flounder and so will the project (a.k.a. meaningless). I have seen some meaningless projects pretechnology and post technology. Most of the post-technology projects that were weak were ones that the teacher was just test driving a new medium (powerpoint, podcasting, blogging), which I think needs to be allowed to allow teachers a chance to dip their toes into uncharted waters. But once they are wading, they need to revisit the core values and standards they want there students to achieve and make that the center of their cool projects.