Since Bill Gates was so kind enough to reply to my tweet asking about his plans for TED this year, I thought he deserved free promotion on my blog. And for the record, replying to people’s tweets makes you cooler than Steve Jobs.
Last year at TED Bill spoke about malaria and education. He makes an interesting point in how there are some problems the market cannot fix, and it takes intelligent people with the resources and will to fix them. Regarding education, Bill observes that a top quartile teacher will:
- Increase student marks by 10 percentile points over the course of the year
- Your teaching quality does not change after three years of teaching, your past performance is your strongest indication of your teaching ability
- A masters degree has no effect on your teaching ability
- On average the slightly better teachers leave the system
- In a classroom, everyone needs to be involved
- In a normal school, teachers aren’t told how well they are doing. Union agreements limit the amount a teacher is evaluated
So this year, he plans on talking about energy and climate issues. By reading through his website I suspect that his talk will provide perspective into how these two issues will effect poorer countries.
I think about energy in terms of how it can help the poorest people. If you can have cheap energy where people live, then you can have fertilizer, transportation, and clean water, along with the ability to assume that there’s electricity for a medical clinic. Among other things, that means you can keep vaccines refrigerated.
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