I believe, but I'm not for certain, that developing a plan includes also coming up with new and helpful ways to do community service, not just a "here, 50 hour requirement, go have fun." That's something the Bush admin would do, I sure hope an Obama admin won't.
I also don't think its necessarily the best thing to do... perhaps he should give incentives to school districts that implement such a system but make the school districts responsible for it.
That's something the Bush admin would do, I sure hope an Obama admin won't.
I think you're doomed to be repeatedly disappointed over the coming years as we all remember that government incompetence isn't some weird temporary anomaly, it's just the way things are.
From my position, I see two root causes why this is the problem and they could be fixed (its what my venture is working on doing). The problem with laptops most notably is the fact that they have this screen. The screen more or less creates a barrier between the person and speaker. This is not a good thing, especially not in a classroom and its also disrepsectful to the speaker. The second is laptops that are not being used for education but rather, as the article writer suggested, for Instant Messaging or other various purposes. If, theoretically, the laptop was one that was specifically designed and built for use in the classroom by students on a day-to-day basis, the problems addressed in this article would not be an issue. However, because they aren't, many times students don't have adequate tools on their laptops, the tools that are there are time consuming and hard to switch between for doing multiple things at one time, and they aren't focused on anything educationally enriching.
[promo]That's exactly what my venture, EDunuity, is working to address.[/promo]
How you determine what tools the students need in the first place? I've used laptops heavily for almost all my classes for the past few years now (obviously I can't take a laptop to a ceramics class, for example) and the tools I use depends on the class.
For most classes I can get away with using textmate, voodoopad and word (yuck). However, for classes with lots of diagrams I can't easily reproduce on the computer, I'll take out the tablet and use it with voodoopad specifically. Another person using a laptop in my class just brings a digital camera and takes pictures. There was one class I had where someone else wanted to take notes with me, so we used google docs in class. But I don't do that in a CS class, where I usually just bring out my IDE of choice and start hacking away and occasionally take notes.
Well, the determination was made partly on what I and my co-founder have both experienced (being we're both students, freshmen in college), and additional talking we've done with both teachers and students in various types of classes. We've also done a fair amount of reading from studies about the usage of laptops/tablets in the classroom and read opinion articles like these to observe the issues.
In your case, you're one of the students who has already made that digital jump over and has all the gear you need. You, being the geek that I'll assume you are (-don't take that as an insult, I am too...), got these tools and self taught them and are self disciplined in their usage. However, most students and most schools don't have this.
While my venture is specifically interested in K12, we are interested in college too. For most classes (a ceramics class could be an exception), you have your basic necessities and then some additional tools you could be using. That's what we're focused on in our works, is creating the basics in a way that can be easily and seamlessly used in classes so that every student has access to the tools and resources they need, and with a certain degree of personalization to fit the different needs of different people.
Being bost companies have denied it already and the circumstances around it all (not to mention the fact that Microsoft and Yahoo reaching a deal from supposedly dead talks in less than 24 hours at ~$19 a share? c'mon!) lead me to believe this truly is a rumor...
but would Jerry really be missed? I mean he did make nearly everyone at Yahoo soil themselves when he sends them an e-mail that 10% of them are fired but nobody knows who, and then tells them, more or less, "have a happy weekend" smile and wink.
Very nice collection of resources for anyone, professional or amateur. This could be especially helpful when learning a new programming language or just using one that you haven't in a while.
Something I've also found helpful (when doing web scripting), is Dreamweaver's built-in syntax database that really helps speed things up as you type.
I found Dreamweaver's intellisense-clone a bit annoying to be honest. I'd rather it didn't put characters after my cursor, but allow me to select from a list like in VS.
Good Article.... I completely agree with Fred's positions and beliefs in this article. I especially agree on points 1,4, and 5. In government especially, and as President of the United States, its critical that you surround yourself with intelligent people. The President is not the sole authority and there is no way one person could handle all that. It's important that you surround yourself with "the best in the business." In all fairness, it works much the same in business. As a founder/owner and CEO, its important to surround yourself at that level with qualified people to manage the technology, to manage capital, etc.
I think the title is slightly misleading but whats actually said in the article is very much true. In any early stage company, how well they fit together with not only you but the rest of the team members is just as important as what they know.
More surprising is how many investors I've talked to end up telling me that if I'm looking for people to help accomplish some of these more complex tasks that I should just outsource to India or just find a person who does know how and pay them for it. In reality, that's likely not going to solve anything and has a high potential to create more problems on down the road (not to mention if that person doesn't stay forever).
Article makes a good point. Microsoft is a colossal monster that, while not as fierce as it once was back in the age of the browser wars, still no beast to be taken lightly.
I'm reminded of pg's article about "Microsoft is Dead" (http://paulgraham.com/microsoft.html). While pg makes many good points and it is undoubtedly true that Microsoft isn't something that companies cower in fear of anymore, they are still alive and still moving forward at impressive speed. The beast may be dead, but the animal still lives. I don't believe Microsoft will be going away anytime soon. Maybe in my lifetime they'll eventually truly become a dwarf company and eventually burn out (I'm 18), but that happening soon I just can't believe is likely.
