Listen to Bill’s answer at 5:40.
When Bill speaks, people listen. Cultural icons influence our society in a variety of ways. When Bill Gates says that the best education will be available on the web in five years, it brings the issue to the public.
Why I feel this is significant is because it leads to several questions for educational practitioners. The important one is not necessarily if his prophecy is true, but what it means for our education systems. Do we have a responsibility to lead this change? What will our role be? And the questions of accreditation?
This is a very interesting post. I like what Bill Gates has to say about his view of the future of education, especially how that material could be mostly free. This would allow schools in places that don’t have so much money to offer a comparable education to students with lower incomes and thus (as many people assert) will have a better chance to change their financial situation.
As for your questions I think that we as educators should lead this change and especially those of us who are educating ourselves about Educational Technology. I don’t know though what to do about accreditation though. I thought of that and didn’t come up with an idea.