Selasa, 12 Juni 2012

Bill Gates spends $1.1 million fitting students with mood bracelets to see if their teachers are boring

Bill Gates spends $1.1 million fitting students with mood bracelets to see if their teachers are boring

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 07:21 EST, 12 June 2012 | UPDATED: 09:59 EST, 12 June 2012

Microsoft supremo Bill Gates wants to fit school students with mood bracelets to measure how interested they are in their lessons.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is spending $1.1 million (£700,000) testing galvanic skin response bracelets to see if they can measure whether students find their teachers engaging.

The move is part of the billionaire’s mission to evaluate and improve the quality of teachers, which has already included controversial initiatives such as fitting classrooms with video cameras.

Watch out teachers: The bracelets are being tested to see if they can pick up when students are bored in classes

Watch out teachers: The bracelets are being tested to see if they can pick up when students are bored in classes

The bracelets measure how well the skin conducts electricity, which varies with its moisture level. 

Effective? The bracelets measure how well the skin conducts electricity, which can help assess emotions as is varies when people sweat

Effective? The bracelets measure how well the skin conducts electricity, which can help assess emotions as is varies when people sweat

Sweat glands are controlled by the nervous system so skin conductance can be used as an indication of emotional response.

Some US teachers and commentators have been less than impressed with the plan.

‘Why would anybody spent money on this when some school systems can’t afford to pay their electric bills?’ Education blogger Valerie Strauss wrote in the Washington Post.

‘The obsession with measurement in data and school reform has reached nutty new heights.'

Teacher Anthony Cody, writing in Education Week, commented: ‘The wonderful thing about having human beings as teachers is that we are naturally empathetic. We do not need galvanic skin sensors to detect when our students are drowsy or disinterested -- we can look around the room in an instant and know!’

Others have pointed out limitations with the bracelets, including that they are not able to tell whether a student was responding to their teacher or something a friend whispers in their ear.

Big spender: Bill Gates has already given grants worth more then $1.1 million testing the bracelets

Big spender: Bill Gates has already given grants worth more then $1.1 million testing the bracelets

The bracelets are also so far unable to distinguish whether a heightened response is due to excitement or anxiety, and whether a drop is response is due to relaxation or boredom.

The amount Bill Gates has spent on evaluating the bracelets is already more than $1.1 million.

Clemson University has been given almost $500,000 (£320,000) to run a pilot study ‘which will determine the feasibility and utility of using such devices regularly in schools with students and teachers.’

The National Center on Time and Learning was given more than $620,000 ($400,000) to assess the effectiveness of the bracelets by comparing them with MRI scans, and work out a scale that would pinpoint how engaged a student was in lessons.

Here's what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards.

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The bracelet would be an excellent idea if the bracelet could tell if students thought that Windows 8 for the desktop was very difficult and frustrating to use.

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What is this illum***in**ati creep up to? I would advise pupils tand parents to robustly refuse to wear his 'monitoring' device. Spying on teachers is becoming manifest and sinister.

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easy....when they are wearing the wrist bands just let them get on with texting on their i phones and just sit back and wait to be promoted.

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Actually life is not exciting all the time and neither is education. you have to put up the boring bits inorder to get the exciting part or the part that you are interested in. If children dont learn this skill they are going to find it very hard to cope with life and a job.

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Perhaps he should have an audience wear the devices while they listen to him speak. The man is a lucky geek. He needs advice in how to truly be charitable. I suppose that $1.1 is a small price to pay for his own silly entertainment.......

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The problem these hippy-type successes have is that they think everyone should be like them in order to lead a productive life. The thing Branson, Gates and all the other highly successful mavericks forget is that they are the exception; the majority of us have to work hard at something mundane in order to achieve a small degree of success. The majority can't come up with some 'out there' idea and make a living, most of us have to plod on at something useful but boring. The future is about ideas cliche only applies to less than 1% of the population and for every Bill Gates alternative-life- style-hippy-type who makes a million, there are a million hippies who end up making burgers for a living

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God forbid that teenagers should find something boring. In the utopian brave new world, everything must be stimulating at all times!

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Pure evil in every sense! Gates is using children as guinea pigs for some cheap experiment for his latest 'craze' (yet to be unveiled). Awful man! Coming to a school near you real soon folks!

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Lost a lot of respect for this man and his wife. This sounds more like an intrusion of privacy. Fact is, sometimes we ALL get bored. Bet even Bill can be boring at meetings from time to time. But life isn't just about having fun, Bill. It's about doing our job, our work, or whatever we need to do, even if we don't want to. Mr. Gates could spend his money in a much better way if he really wants to help education in America.

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Bill Gates is a hippy. He dropped out of Harvard, which brags of the expertise of its teachers. He bores me.

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