bigthboy

I understand that, I know we're not going to abolish government incompetence, but lessen the degree is something realistic to shoot for.

I bet they called George Lucas and asked him...

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.

Thanks for the advice and good luck, again, to all those venturing out there in a couple of weeks.

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.

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]

I wonder who got the better end of THAT deal...

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.

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).