PBS is airing a special TED Talks Education program on May 7th. It’s an interesting line-up of speakers, and I thought I’d list a few of them along with previous posts in this blog that readers might find helpful:
Bill Gates will be speaking about, among other things, his big new $5 billion initiative to videotape teachers. You might find these posts useful:
Videotaping teachers the right way (not the Gates way)
The Best Posts & Articles About Videotaping Teachers In The Classroom
Many of my previous posts about Gates, along with his MET Project.
Professor Angela Duckworth will be speaking about “grit.” Check out her work at The Best Resources For Learning About The Importance Of “Grit.”
Geoffrey Canada from the Harlem Children’s Zone. You can find a link to my many posts — both positive and critical — here.
Sir Ken Robinson. Check out a previous post and video titled “You Cannot Make A Plant Grow — You Can Provide The Conditions For Growth.”
You might also be interested in The Best Teacher Resources For “TED Talks” (& Similar Presentations).
Having Bill Gates talk about education is like having Ted Bundy talk
about women’s rights, the prognosticators only revealing the core of
their evil. Education for Bill Gates is like his company, not meant to
empower creative individuals but to build monoliths of bureaucratic
automatons.
Curiously, the evidence to both of these malicious individuals arises from the same educational institution, the University of Washington, most notably its School of Law – where the politico Bundy was given free reign and the local lobbyist/bond underwriter firm of Gates Sr made, tellingly, one of its first pre-Foundation forays into ‘public relations’. That’s a subject I’ve written on, a story also picked up by the more mainstream Rick Anderson, in the Seattle Weekly.
http://www.motleytools.com/blog/1997/02/leveraging_the_law_through_the.html
In general the Microsoft Corporation has engaged in employment practices
that make second class citizens of many, many individuals – illegal
corporate immigrants, if you will. This can be seen from the beginning
in the 1990’s class action ‘perma-temp’ lawsuits against both Microsoft
and the local County Government.
http://www.bs-s.com/cases/c-microsoft-vizcaino.html
http://www.bs-s.com/cases/c-kingcounty-clark.html
Most recently, Chief Counsel Brad Smith – emerging as the visible civic
leader for the Corporation on a number of topics – has generated press
in his support for the single employer H1-B visa program – while,
curiously doing so very little to actually support the training of IT
engineers at local educational institutions.
The fact is the company was not built by smart people, it was build by Lawyers stealing smart people away from other companies – just like they now want to
steal away America from its owners for the benefit of their Enterprise
level corporate ‘clients’.The details, and FAILINGS of this
‘legal’ management style can be seen in a number of ways – here’s one
I’ve written up based on the comments of one Jack Abramoff – himself
known for a bit of untoward influence on higher education:
http://www.motleytools.com/blog/2012/09/microsoft_and_the_law_firm_pre.html