a sigh for my university--response to bill gates' vision

Compared with what Bill Gates lays out in his The Road Ahead, the actual situation and conditions in my own university turn out to share similarities in the following way:

1. Like Bill Gates says, my university also has access to the network which enables provides teachers with easier access to some useful websites to get better communication channels with other teachers.

2. A certain portion of classrooms are equipped with computers in which the students are provided with a system for "self-assisted learning of language". Through this system, the students are able to study English according to their own achievement without being physically supervised by the teachers.

3. In my university, the classrooms used for listening or the language labs have white boards instead of the traditional boards, but the white boards are not advanced enough to be the digital ones, just the plain white boards.

4. The classrooms used for listening or the language labs are usually called the Multimedia Classrooms in my university, because they are equipped with computer, DVD player, the projector, OHP and other facilities the like.It seems that the facilities and conditions of our university are close to what Bill Gates describes for the future ideal classrooms based around the notion of the "Information Highway".

However, when we look further into the practical use of htese facilities, it is very easy to find that there is still a long way between where we have gone and where Bill Gates has assumed that we shall have gone. The differences are obvious:

1. although our campus has access to internet, it is confined to being used in the administrative offices. The classrooms are not able to be connected with internet. So it is impossible for the students to have access to the internet or for the teachers to demonstrate some online information to the students even if they are in need of doing that. The best for teachers to do is to put the webpage on the slide and show it to the students, and all the things on the slides are static, losing the motion and vividness the materials should have. So more often than not, the teachers will feel that using the so-called "networks" or "digital technology" is simply and deliberately putting what we can do with traditional paper work onto the computer or projectors. Of course, we must admit that using computers or projectors to demonstrate information saves much time for teacher, but the facilities are not best made use of. To some extent, it is a waste of resources.

2. It is impossible to build up any communication between parents and teachers through information highway, because of the reason mentioned above and also because not all parents are able to use computer and internet. If there is such a need, the teachers will contact the students' parents through telephone or correspondence.

3. What Bill Gates advocates and wishes for the future ideal multimedia classroom is based on the pretext of the easy availability of proficient electronic or technological technicians because the facilities like computer or internet configuration are ver likely to encounter technological problems which may not be solved by language teachers. However, our university is not able to afford such a big number of full-time proficient staff to maintain the computers or internet. So the teachers are very likely to have problems with computer or be attacked by viruses. There is no technological security.

The above-mentioned are the chief problems that our university has in the dealing with language teaching and learning. When I am studying @NIE now, I can observe the gap in a more obvious way. Our university does have a long way to go if we wish not to lag too much behind prestige universities.