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ОглавлениеДля бесплатного чтения доступна только часть главы! Для чтения полной версии необходимо приобрести книгуPART II. TRANSLATION SKILLSText 1. Bill GatesBill Gates developed the Basic programming language for the MITS Altair PC while a student at Harvard University in the early 1970s. He formed Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975 and dropped out of Harvard, developing software for PCs, which were just emerging. He has written two best seller business books. He also founded Corbis, a company developing a digital archive of art and photography from collections around the world. He has invested in Teledesic, a company that plans to launch satellites to provide a world-wide broadband telecommunications service. He and his wife have endowed a foundation with $17 bn to support initiatives in health and learning. Bill Gates is an icon for our times, which, alas, is not particularly a compliment to either Bill Gates or our times. Despite his position as the richest man in the world and one of the most powerful, the icon is not 'most popular man in the world'. Rightly or wrongly Microsoft, which he co-founded in 1975, has become the industry bogeyman, and, while it has not helped itself with some of its own actions, there has been a mountain of ill informed, snide and simply silly comments aimed at it. The company now has more than 32,000 staff in 60 countries and had a turnover of $19.75 bn (£12.3 bn) last year. Microsoft's image has not been helped by the recent US Department of Justice monopoly trial, from which hardly anyone emerged with any credit but naturally no one was watching anyone except Bill Gates and Microsoft. Love him or loathe him, Bill Gates himself is a phenomenon and face to face more than a little intimidating. In interviews he is charming, with a ready smile unless you upset him, and then watch out. He has never been rude to me and I have not heard of him being rude with other interviewers, beyond brusque non-co-operation, but he has at least once run his public relations people ragged by speaking his mind in choice Anglo Saxon. There can be little doubt that he is not all cuddly and nerdy. He also has no-go areas staked out that a little common sense makes easy to avoid. Anyone watching the BBC's Jeremy Paxman interview saw how Bill Gates handles questions like, 'What's your favourite Bill Gates joke?' He just stares at the interviewer, who briskly moves on. About as close to home you can get is a hint about his life style. 'I don't get in that early: my first meeting's usually at 8.30 am,' he says. 'I try to get home by 7 pm or so, so I can get a couple of hours with my daughter. Most nights I'll get in a couple more hours of e-mail until 11 or 12.' So to become the richest man in the world you work long hours, with a couple of hours off with your children: he married in 1994. He laughs politely when it is jokingly suggested that his wife must love his business and then he goes quiet waiting for the next question. With the launch of the Windows 2000 operating system in February Bill Gates and Microsoft are in the news again and his working day has got more intense. Windows 2000 is an interesting product for Microsoft, and its gestation has caused its fair share of headaches. Originally it was meant to combine Windows 95,98 and NT, but that proved impossible and Microsoft was forced to delay the combination and reposition Windows 2000 to start just below where NT4 might start and extend upwards to replace the rest of NT. There are three Windows 2000 products: Professional, a replacement for Windows 95 and Windows 98 on the high end business desk-top; Server; and Advanced Server, for Web, file and mail servers. There has been little noise made by the replacement upgrade for Windows 98: Millennium. Perhaps this was not to confuse the Windows 2000 story, which seems to be the important one. And as one would imagine, Bill Gates is up-beat about the new operating system and at the off claims a victory for it from the number of people who have got involved in its beta testing despite the fact that Microsoft owns up to more than 50,000 bugs in the released software. 'There's a huge number of people who have been willing to take this product and put it into production before the launch,' he says. 'That's never happened before anywhere near this level with a software product. It shows the confidence and the kind of relationship we've built with these customers.' He already claims that more than 20,000 .com sites are running Windows 2000, and one gets the feeling that perhaps a bit more than previous launches this particular operating system launch is important. With the spectre of Linux in the background Microsoft needs to make sure that Windows 2000 works for it, lest people lose confidence in the brand. Microsoft's brand confidence has not been helped by the company's founder stepping down from chief executive. He has handed the job to long-time friend and bullish business colleague Steve Ballmer. Bill Gates supposedly took on Steve Ballmer a friend from their Harvard University days to 'hire the smartest people around'. 'He came in when we had about 30 people and the number of companies that wanted to do business with us was overwhelming and we didn't know when to say yes, when to say no,' Bill Gates says. It fell to Steve Ballmer to organise the then five-year-old, postfledgling company. 'I thought Steve could really help us get straightened out,' Bill Gates says. 'Well, he came in and said, "I need to hire 100 more people,' and I thought I couldn't afford 100 more people, because I was very conservative financially. 'I told Steve, 'OK, go ahead, but let's see if we can grow the company.' He did a great job on that and the company grew so much that I never had to tell him to stop.' They never looked back. Steve Ballmer was promoted from sales and support vice-president to company president in late 1998: 'I asked Steve to step up and take over all the business management for me, so I could re-allocate my time, still getting out to customers but spending the rest of the time with the engineers.' This highlights his view of staying with the products. He has not written live software code for years but he is still very involved in the products. This was reflected in the latest installment of management musical chairs: early this year he stepped down as chief executive and gave the job to Steve Ballmer. Bill Gates has stayed as chairman and also made himself chief software architect. Steve Ballmer is taking over the management of the company. At the time Bill Gates said, 'I'm returning to what I love most: focusing on technologies for the future. This was a personal decision, one I have discussed with Steve and our board of directors for some time.' While that may well be true there has been strong speculation that the monopoly case brought by the US Department of Justice played a part in that move, although Steve Ballmer has denied this. Bill Gates is surprisingly sanguine when talking about the Department of Justice case, which could end up with Microsoft broken into different companies. But then he appears sanguine about most things he talks about. 'The case is ongoing, the US court system is not a fast process, and I can guarantee that no matter what happens it'll be many years before anything comes to a final conclusion,' he says. We get a hint of how he works when he adds, 'In the meantime it's key to understand there's nothing holding us back in terms of improving the system, hiring great people and moving ahead, because the opportunities and the competition are as intense as they've ever been.' The man cannot be deflected from selling you Microsoft he never sells himself and he knows the company line to a fault. You can sit with him for an hour and still not know if you have seen him at all, although that does not matter really, because it is what he and Microsoft do that is important. Chris Long Text 2. Hello, Mr. ChipSchool teachers are having to rise to the challenge of IT, which could change the whole nature of teaching and learning, says Christina Preston. Teachers are overwhelmed with advice on how to do their job from government officials, inspectors, parents and journalists. Teaching, it seems, is a job that everyone knows how to do better than a teacher. Opportunities to meet to exchange good practice have decreased in the UK since head teachers were given the power to direct staff professional development. Heads cannot afford the costs of covering a teacher absent for sustained in-service training. Teachers themselves worry about the disruption to their classes when they are absent. Many teachers, with families, cannot commit to evening or weekend courses. As a result many centres specifically for professional development in IT have closed. Universities and the surviving independent and local education IT centres have problems running even restricted professional development courses. All this is happening as the government is seeking to increase and improve the use of IT in schools. Professional teaching bodies aim to alleviate teachers' isolation. The BCS Schools Committee plays a part by supporting working groups of teachers and teacher educators that produce papers on current topics. These now include schools of the future, the Internet and early years, and the internationally recognised BCS Glossary of Computing Terms. But many more teacher groups could be using networks for professional development. The impressive government strategy to connect all schools and libraries through the National Grid for Learning can provide a strategy for the teaching profession to change its image and alleviate isolation. The National Grid for Learning document boasts that £l bn is being invested in hardware and in raising the competence of teachers and librarians 'to develop IT confidence in school-leavers and make Britain a world leader in digital learning'. But are networks a threat or a challenge for teachers? Will they join the National Grid for Learning with zest? After all, a teacher's authority is challenged by the vast repository of information on the Internet. Do established, traditional teachers who see themselves as experts and authorities want to be formal learners again? At a recent conference organised by the British Education Research Association and professional development organisation MirandaNet teachers agreed that IT provided exciting learning opportunities. They liked demonstrations of remote on-line teaching modules, measured and tested electronically. Peter O'Hagan from Stoke education authority said access to appropriate content would counter poor local resources, helping teachers themselves to provide content and to structure learning. 'A system like Oracle's open On-line Learning Application allows teachers to develop complete learning packages, linking assessment and reporting opportunities to their own Web-enabled content and other materials they use,' he said. 'The pace of learning is therefore determined more by what pupils can do than by their age. The teachers monitor progress using the tools the technology provides.' Teachers bring important skills to these learning opportunities: a detailed interpretation of learning styles, differentiation techniques and experience in the use of forums to consolidate learning and stimulate discussion. A software evaluation consultant, Anne Sparrowhawk, counselled teachers to be confident in their knowledge about learning, focusing on the really useful aspects of the new packages and deciding which areas of learning could be improved and which should continue in traditional ways. 'Learning is not just about the transmission of information any more, but about how the learner turns information into knowledge and applies wisdom to the process,' she said. The conference delegates did not see teaching as merely the authoritarian transmission of knowledge. John Cuthell said that from experience of the intranet at his school, Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, on-line learning was more effective for teachers than children. 'On-line instruction requires the skills of a good primary school teacher,' he said. 'The pedagogical and social requirements promote the features necessary to maintain a learning environment in a classroom where individuals move at different speeds. 'This is, perhaps, the shift for people learning to teach on-line: that content becomes less important than process for the teacher or instructor or trainer. Learning to teach on-line is essentially experiential, and those learning how to do so need to experience the potential sufferings of the students.' The delegates decided that teaching and learning on-line involved refining traditional classroom roles as well as identifying new skills. These roles were described as those of instructor, content-provider, learning manager, facilitator, cheer leader, moderator, creator, inventor, learner, researcher, entertainment officer, verifier and validator. In the IT context teachers saw themselves as lion-tamer, pretending control in classrooms with unpredictable computers and needing to come to terms with constantly asking their pupils for assistance with the 'lions'. John Meadows from South Bank University said teachers wanted their own computers on-line at home so they could teach themselves the skills. They wanted guidance on how IT should change their role. They valued on-line peer tutoring. They wanted to read about other teachers' experiences and debate strategies. But time is essential for professional development. Squeezing teachers' learning into the school day and edging the rest of the family off the home computer is not a trivial matter. Motivation is also a key factor. The teachers were tempted by the potential opportunity to debate with other teachers; to maintain independent critical reviews of publications, services and tools; to publish their own work; and to fly intellectually beyond the classroom walls. They also wanted confidentiality. They disliked the National Grid's registration form that asks for age, nationality and other personal details. To avoid the Big Brother syndrome one idea which has developed from the teaching community is TeacherNetUR, a service designed to provide continuing professional development, just as regional teachers' centres, where they still exist, provide support for teachers. TeacherNetUR has been helped by Oracle in developing technology to match searches more closely to an individual's needs. Внимание! Авторские права на книгу "Компьютеры и информационные технологии. Учебное пособие" (Сухомлинова С.И.) охраняются законодательством! |
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