Bill Gates recently predicted that online learning will make place-based colleges less significant, and five years from now, students will be able to find the best lectures in the world online. I applaud Mr. Gates. But what's taking us so long?

    As early as 1997, MIT(麻省理工) decided to post videos of all university lectures online. for free, for all people. But today, how many students have you met who mastered advanced mathematics or nuclear physics from an MIT online video? Unfortunately, the answer is not many. The problem is the poor quality of online education websites and the experience they provide to students. Those who go to the MIT website and watch courses online are surely very smart people, but it's not like playing a video game such as World of Warcraft. Only the most ardent students, those who are highly motivated, will devote themselves to studying these boring online videos.

    The real question is why we aren't spending more to develop better online education platforms. Where is the Avatar of education? Think about this. The market for Hollywood films per year is worth around 30 billion USD. Education in the world is a trillion-dollar-a-year market, hundreds of times bigger than Hollywood movies. Yet the most expensive digital learning system ever built cost well under 100 million dollars.

    Bill Gates' prediction is going to happen. There is no doubt about it. But it will only happen when we create high level educational content and experiences that engage and excite more than has ever been possible in the real world.

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    Proudly reading my words, I glanced around the room, only to find my classmates bearing big smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes. Confused, I glanced toward my stone­faced teacher. Having no choice, I slowly raised the report I had read carefully, hoping to hide myself. “What could be causing everyone to act this way？”

    Quickly, I flashed back to the day Miss Lancelot gave me the task. This was the first real task I received in my new school. It seemed simple: go on the Internet and find information about a man named George Washington. Since my idea of history came from an ancient teacher in my home country, I had never heard of that name before. As I searched the name of this fellow, it became evident that there were two people bearing the same name who looked completely different! One invented hundreds of uses for peanuts, while the other led some sort of army across America. I stared at the screen, wondering which one my teacher meant. I called my grandfather for a golden piece of advice: flip (掷) a coin. Heads—the commander, and tails—the peanuts guy. Ah! Tails，my report would be about the great man who invented peanut butter, George Washington Carver.

    Weeks later, standing before this unfriendly class, I was totally lost. Oh well, I lowered the paper and sat down at my desk, burning to find out what I had done wrong. As a classmate began his report, it all became clear，“My report is on George Washington, the man who started the American Revolution.” The whole world became quiet! How could I know that she meant that George Washington?

    Obviously, my grade was awful. Heartbroken but fearless, I decided to turn this around. I talked to Miss Lancelot, but she insisted: No re­dos; no new grade. I felt that the punishment was not fair, and I believed I deserved a second chance. Consequently, I threw myself heartily into my work for the rest of the school year. Ten months later, that chance unfolded as I found myself sitting in the headmaster's office with my grandfather, now having an entirely different conversation. I smiled and flashed back to the embarrassing moment at the beginning of the year as the headmaster informed me of my opinion to skip the sixth grade. Justice is sweet!

    “I never wanted to come on this stupid hiking trip!” Jeff's voice was panicked. His father stopped and turned to look at the boy.

    “This is hard on you, son. But you've got to come through with your courage.”

    “But I am scared!” Jeff shouted.

    “Please have enough love for your brother to think this through!” His father replied, “We just don't have the time to stop. And I don't know if I can make it without stopping every so often. While you're only ten, you're strong and fast. Do you remember the way back from here to the road, if you had to go alone?”

    Jeff flashed back to the painful scene of his seventeen-year-old brother Mark at their campsite. He'd been bitten by a snake during a rough hike. He needed medical attention right away. Worse still, their cell phone was dead.

    “Jeff? Could you make it to Flint without me? You can get help there.”

    Jeff nodded, said goodbye to his father and continued climbing over the rocks. The rocks and branches threatened his footing and speed, but stone by stone, he made his way up the valley.

    Jeff turned and made the final climbing-up toward the road. When he reached it, he rested himself, breathless. “Can't stop,” he thought. “Mark's in big trouble Keep going.” Just as he pulled himself upright, a truck sped by, heading for Flint " Hey!” he shouted excitedly, waving both arms. The truck stopped, "Jump in, boy! What's up? "The driver asked, Jeff got in and explained. Immediately the driver reached for his cell phone. “Help! Help! Better get the helicopter in there,” he seemed to be shouting into his hand. But Jeff wasn't sure about that because everything got unclear and then went black and quiet.

    Hours later, Jeff opened his eyes to find himself in a hospital, with his father nearby. His father told him that the helicopter airlifted Mark to the hospital and he would be fine in a few days. His father hiked himself out of that valley and took a ride from someone to the town. “You're a hero, son,” his father finally said with a smile.“ You saved Mark.”

    Most people agree that eating healthy food is important. But sometimes making good food choices can be difficult. Now, there are apps that can help people learn about the food they eat to improve their health and their dining out experience.

    Happy Cow app

    Vegetarians do not eat animal meat. Vegans do not eat any animal products. The HappyCow app is made for both groups. Users can search for vegetarian-vegan restaurants and stores around the world.

    Open Table app

    Open Table app helps people choose restaurants when they want to go out to eat. It is a free service that shows users restaurant available based on where and when they want to dine. It gives users points when they make reservations(保留，预定), which can add up to discounts on restaurant visits.

    Local Eats app

    Restaurant chains, like McDonalds, can be found almost anywhere a person might travel. But sometimes travelers want to eat like locals. The Local Eats app is designed for that. It can help you find local restaurants in major cities in the US and in other countries. It costs about a dollar.

Where Chefs Eat app

    "Where Chefs Eat" is a 975-page book. Most people would not want to carry that around. But there is a much lighter app version of the same name for just $15. Six hundred chefs provide information on 3,000 restaurants around the world on the Where Chefs Eat app.

    While elephants born without tusks (长牙)are not unheard of，they normally form just 2 to 6 percent of the population. However, that is not the case at Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park, where an astonishing 33 percent of female elephants born after the country's civil war ended in 1992 are tuskless. While that may appear to be just a coincidence, Joyce Poole, an elephant behavior expert, has another theory. The researcher thinks we may be witnessing unnatural evolution of the species due to the constant hunting of elephants for valuable ivory.

    Poole says before the country's 15-year-long civil war, the 100,000—acre park was home to over 4,000 elephants. However, by the time the conflict ended in 1992, about 90 percent of them had been killed for ivory to help finance weapons (武器)and meat to feed the soldiers. Of the less than 200 survivors, over 50 percent of adult females had no tusks. Therefore, it is not surprising that the park's tuskless elephant population has grown greatly.

    This is not the first time researchers have observed a great change in the population of elephants. At Zambia's South Luangwa National Park and Lupande Game Management Area ， areas which were heavily hunted in the 1970s and 1980s, 35% of elephants 25 years or older and 13% of those younger than 25 are now without tusks. A 2008 study published in the African Journal of Ecology found that the numter of tuskless females at the Ruaha National Park in Tanzania went from 10.5 percent in 1969 to almost 40 percent in 1989, largely due to illegal hunting for ivory.

    The recent ban on ivory in both the US and China should help get rid of, or at least reduce, elephant hunting. However, scientists are not sure how long it will take for elephants with a higher rate of tuskless females, to change the trend.

    For the past few months, my three-year-old daughter has spent an hour every week learning a foreign language. She walks into a small room in a local school, where she and a handful of three and four-year-old spend the next hour dancing to ^“La Vaca Lola”, a song about a Spanish cow, creating finger puppets(木偶) to voice what they like and don't like (me gusta, no me gusta) and shouting out which animals are big (grande) or small (pequeno).

    She tells us little about the classes. In fact, for the first few weeks, nothing at all. I begin to wonder if it was a huge mistake (each lesson works out at about £9) but then I show her “La Vaca Lola” on YouTube. She shouts vaca with enthusiasm and with what I hope is a Spanish accent.

    The wish to enroll(使……加入) her in language lessons came, like most things, gradually and then in a sudden rush. In my day job, I read and edit stories about the Chinese economy. For a long time, I felt that it would be good for her to learn another language but I had no great plan as to when.

    Then I read Edward Luce's The Retreat of Western Liberalism and all my thoughts and worry about the economy combined into a panic. Waking in a sweat, it seemed obvious that if my daughter was to have any kind of future, she would have to learn another language. Ideally (理想地) immediately.

    I thought about Mandarin Chinese, one of the top 10 languages most important for our future, according to the British Council (others include Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Dutch and Japanese). But there were no classes for young children nearby. There were, however, local Spanish classes—the number-one language on the list. When she started to sing "Incy Wincy Spider" in Spanish and English—helped by a Spanish nursery worker-our decision was made.