[ggreer]

Have you seen Batman (the Chris Nolan movie)? It's pretty frickin' awesome. You've got incredible special effects, great script, multiple takes, amazing actors, and great sound and it's very engaging. ... If instead of having movies- say we're going to have that script performed by the local town troupe. So in every small town in America (if movies didn't exist), they would have to then recreate The Dark Knight. You know, with home-sewn costumes and jumping across the stage and not getting their lines quite right, and not really looking like the people in the movie, and no special effects or anything. That would suck! It would be terrible. That's education.

-- Elon Musk (chatting with Sal Khan)[1]

I think there's a ton of improvement to be had in the education space. People have used technology to make many forms of entertainment more compelling, but education is pretty similar to half a century ago: classrooms, teachers, lectures, etc. A lot of the stagnation is due to bureaucratic and legislative inertia, which isn't such a big problem in countries lacking widespread public schooling.

With regards to cost and bandwidth issues: Remember, Gates's predictions/goals are for the next 15 years. Technology is only going to get cheaper and faster. In 2000, iPods didn't exist. In 2030, even low-end tablets will put current hardware to shame.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDwzmJpI4io#t=2280

[marak830]

In fact in Japan atm I use a starboard (basicly a large projector with touch capabilities), in my classroom. If things like this became more common, I'm sure education could be shaken up a lot.

It is an excellent medium to teach a class withe.

[motoboi]

I watched some classes on MIT OpenCourseWare and was blown by the fact that they use chalk boards (!). I mean, one of the best universities in the world use the same tools as mine: a teacher, chairs and a chalk board. Don't that make us think about how important is the culture, the environment of those famous institutions. It's not about tools, it's all about people.