Bill Gates at TED 09: How do you make a teacher great?

The theme at TED this year is "The Great Unveiling," and it was an unveiling of a sorts for Bill Gates when he gave an impassioned, upbeat talk to a packed hall in Long Beach Tuesday morning. But Bill was not at TED to talk about technology or Microsoft. The rebooted version of Bill Gates is all about changing the world through his own style of philanthropy. Bill is presenting with visuals much better than in years past (I elaborate on that briefly with photos here), but that's not why I point to this talk. I point to this talk below for the content. Bill talked first about eradicating Malaria in developing countries and then spent the second half of his talk on education in America.

 
In his talk Bill recommends a new book called Work Hard. Be Nice.: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America. He likes the book so much he said he's sending one to every TED member. Later in an on-stage interview with Chris Anderson (that's what the sofa was for), Bill stated again how he thought the need to transform education was really America's greatest challenge. I wish you could see the interview with Chris, it really was the best part of his talk (TED will post the interview separately later). Bill was funny but also very serious about his commitment to spend the rest of life — Bill Gates 2.0 if you will — trying to change the world through his foundation.


Above: An engaging interview with Chris Anderson followed the presentation (Chris was getting email questions off the computer). TED will post a video of this interview in future.

There have been some amazing presentations this week. I can't wait for them to be posted so all can see them. (And a big H/T to TED for getting this talk up in about 24 hours.) I'm trying to send comments when I can during the day on Twitter. Here (and here on TED's blog) you can follow updates almost live.

Comments

[Richard]

It was a very important point made by Bill during the talk - it's great to see someone with so much energy and passion looking to improve education.

It's a problem in every country, not just America - but actually the overriding goal and what we owe to our kids - is to make sure that every child reaches their full potential.

Matt Hern has some interesting points to make on the subject too.
http://www.mightymatthern.com/

[Gabriele Barni]

amazing =)
The best Bill Keynote ever! , and the liberation of the mosquitos rotfl !!

[Samuli]

Quite different from the earlier presentations by Bill Gates yu have posted.

[Jan Schultink]

Bill (2.0) has found his mission. I am impressed.

[Patrick Ng]

I, too, was impressed by Bill Gates. I think he did a very good presentation. I also like the fact that he kept saying that he's an optimistist. When faced with difficult situations, most of the time, the optimists will succeed whereas the pessimists will fail. This is because the optimists will more likely try hard to find solutions to the problems.

[natinjaa]

Mr Gates is the typical executive dropout as depicted in McLuhan’s “From Take Today, The Executive As Dropout” (1972): as a college dropout, he “dropped in” an executive role and now that he has “dropped out” once again, he could do a good “dubbing job” on the environments he has created.

As someone deeply exposed to electric environments, he wants to energise education by bringing TV techniques (camera, totally-involved teachers, audience-rating) inside the classroom, unaware that much of the learning is already done outside the classroom through TV by a multibillion-dollar service that exceeds by a large margin the budget allocated to education.

[JYB]

Good old KIPP and TFA. White colonialism at its best.

[David]

What this talk reveals is the importance of passion with meaning. It is one thing to speak passionately about new software that will earn you billions of dollars, and that has its place. But, it does not compare to someone speaking from their heart about topics i.e. malaria and teachers, that don't really benefit the speaker directly. It just comes across more credible, and that helps Bill a lot.

[Lisa Fields]

Garr,

The minute I saw this presentation I thought "I bet Garr has done some consulting work with Mr. Gates."

The simple graphics worked but what simply amazed me was his passion. I had to chuckle because several times he almost seemed a little like Steve Jobs.

If you have seen 2.0 on YouTube you know how much our education system must change so I'm thrilled he will continue his efforts. Thanks for this post.
Cheers,

Lisa Fields

[Phemey Pon]

Hi Garr, I enjoyed your blog very much for almost 2 years now. I bought your book from Amazon once it was available. Yet, it is a pity that your book is still not available in Hong Kong bookstores.

[Nick Morgan]

Hi, Garr --

Thanks for the thoughtful post on the Bill Gates talk. I blogged on the speech for its qualities as a speech, and I took Mr. Gates to task for releasing mosquitoes into the audience because it shows a lack of respect for that audience. But I agree that the two topics he covered -- malaria and education -- are both incredibly important and I am glad he's doing something about them. His slides were not quite up to your standards, but not bad, either.:-)

[Mike Heard]

Ironic that Chris Anderson is holding his Apple laptop prominently as he discusses issues of the day with Bill

[dylan]

Overall I was impressed with Gates's speech and his improved skills. But releasing the mosquitoes seemed lame at best and irresponsible at worst. Mosquitoes can potentially carry at least a couple dozen different diseases (not just malaria) and a mosquito bite can cause anaphylaxis in an allergic person.

[Patrick]

Off Topic
Food for thought
http://www.imageandnarrative.be/affiche_contemporaine/scott.htm

[Melissa]

As a former teacher, I was very interested to see what Mr. Gates had to say. I think he had a lot of great ideas and there is a lot of things that could be done to improve teachers. The KIPP schools he talked about have a huge parent/student buy in component that really helps those teachers have the time to be great. Teachers looking back at video of what they've done well or what they can improve on, and then working with colleagues is a fine idea but when is this happening? My biggest frustration with teaching was that I did not have the time to do what I wanted to do, what I knew was best for students. I had no time to develop dynamic lessons or reflect upon what went well. The days and weeks are jam packed. I generally had a half hour a day of non-contact time with students in which I had to plan for the other six hours, let alone complete the grading papers, record keeping, cleaning, secretarial tasks, collaboration, etc. that goes along with teaching on a daily basis. I'm getting stressed just thinking about it.

[Giorgio]

Hi,
just a funny thing: have you noticed this still frame from Bill Gates' TED speech?
http://www.getoutof.it/en/2009/02/19/from-ted-bill-gates-is-trying-to-change-the-world-introducing-the-mac/

[Kaine]

KAYO MARBILUS MYSPACE BLOGS myspace.com/kayomarbilus William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955)[2] is an American business magnate, philanthropist, author, and chairman[3] of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. He is ranked consistently one of the world's wealthiest people[4] and the wealthiest overall as of 2009.[1] During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8 percent of the common stock.[5] He has also authored or co-authored several books.
Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Although he is admired by many, a number of industry insiders criticize his business tactics, which they consider anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts.[6][7] In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.
Bill Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January, 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect. In June, 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates' last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as non-executive chairman.