When IBM introduced its first personal computer in , the educational world knew that it was on the verge of greatness. It seems like years since MySpace, first introduced in , Facebook and Twitter have changed both the communication and business worlds.
Instant connectivity has branched out from merely a tool of personal communication, to a platform for educational instruction and outreach. Social media is now being recognized as an accepted form of instruction in some instances, and groups such as Scholastic Teachers provide excellent support and tips for instructors. With the classroom having already evolved into a hotbed of technological advances, what can the future possibly hold that could further educational proficiencies even more?
With the evolution of technology, educational capabilities are growing and changing every day. The Internet is a vast electronic library of information, and both research and instruction can be achieved through a click of the mouse.
With these advances come new responsibilities to the instructor and therefore increase the value of a Master of Science in Education in Learning Design and Technology. A career in education requires hard work and dedication, but, for the diligent educator, can prove very rewarding. For those who are serious about success in the education field, staying well-informed of current and changing technologies is imperative.
As the world of technology evolves, the learning environment, both on-campus and online, will equally progress, and the need for teachers who are educated in technology and design will continue to grow. Lecture capture on the other hand required no changes to the standard lecture model, and in a sense reverted back to primarily oral communication supported by Powerpoint or even writing on a chalkboard.
Thus oral communication remains as strong today in education as ever, but has been incorporated into or accommodated by new technologies. Skinner started experimenting with teaching machines that made use of programmed learning in , based on the theory of behaviourism see Chapter 2, Section 3. There has been a recent revival of programmed learning approaches as a result of MOOCs, since machine based testing scales much more easily than human-based assessment.
PLATO was a generalized computer assisted instruction system originally developed at the University of Illinois, and, by the late s, comprised several thousand terminals worldwide on nearly a dozen different networked mainframe computers. PLATO was a highly successful system, lasting almost 40 years, and incorporated key on-line concepts: forums, message boards, online testing, e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multi-player games.
Attempts to replicate the teaching process through artificial intelligence AI began in the mids, with a focus initially on teaching arithmetic. Despite large investments of research in AI for teaching over the last 30 years, the results generally have been disappointing. It has proved difficult for machines to cope with the extraordinary variety of ways in which students learn or fail to learn.
Recent developments in cognitive science and neuroscience are being watched closely but at the time of writing the gap is still great between the basic science, and analysing or predicting specific learning behaviours from the science. Learning analytics, which also collects data about learner activities and relates them to other data, such as student performance, is a related development.
These developments will be discussed in further detail in Section 6. Arpanet in the U. A was the first network to use the Internet protocol in We see then the emerging division between the use of computers for automated or programmed learning, and the use of computer networks to enable students and instructors to communicate with each other.
The Word Wide Web was formally launched in The first web browser, Mosaic, was made available in Before the Web, it required lengthy and time-consuming methods to load text, and to find material on the Internet.
Several Internet search engines have been developed since , with Google, created in , emerging as one of the primary search engines. The first fully online courses for credit started to appear in , some using LMSs, others just loading text as PDFs or slides. The materials were mainly text and graphics. LMSs became the main means by which online learning was offered until lecture capture systems arrived around The courses were open to anyone and had no formal assessment.
In , two Stanford University professors launched a lecture-capture based MOOC on artificial intelligence, attracting more than , students, and since then MOOCs have expanded rapidly around the world.
Social media are really a sub-category of computer technology, but their development deserves a section of its own in the history of educational technology. Social media cover a wide range of different technologies, including blogs, wikis, You Tube videos, mobile devices such as phones and tablets, Twitter, Skype and Facebook.
Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as. In , the Lancastrian methodology of schooling was introduced in New York City and with this new method of teaching came a new form of educational technology. The monitors, who had been trained by the master teacher taught groups of approximately twenty students a skill, such as writing.
Lancaster chose sandboxes because they were the most economically affordable form of technology available at the time. With the decline of this teaching method, the use of monitors and sandboxes ended.
Later the sandboxes would be replaced by individual slates. Although they were more expensive, slates allowed students to practice their writing skills more easily.
Erasing chalk from a slate was quicker and cleaner than ironing the surface of the sandbox. While individual slates were used in classrooms during the early s, it was not until that the classroom chalkboard was first introduced. Shortly thereafter, Horace Mann began encouraging communities to buy chalkboards for their classrooms.
By the late s, the chalkboard had become a permanent fixture in most classrooms. As with many forms of educational technology, learning how to integrate the chalkboard into classroom instruction was not an easy task.
Similar to more modem forms of educational technology, the chalkboard also received praise from community leaders. Thinking of the blackboard as a revolutionary form of educational technology seems counterintuitive. But it is one of the few types of media that has survived the test of time and is still regularly used in classrooms today.
The height of its popularity was around The predecessor to the slide machine, the magic lantern projected images on glass plates. Around the turn of the 20 th century mass produced pencils and paper become readily available, gradually replacing the school slate.
At the turn of the 20 th century, the Keystone View Company began to market stereoscopes. The three dimensional devices, which were popular in home parlors, were sold to schools featuring educational sets containing hundreds of images. During the next several decades, the American educational system expanded and became more developed.
The price of producing paper and printing books also dropped to levels that enabled paper to replace slates and allowed each child to have his or her own books. But just as books were becoming widely available to students, a new form of educational technology began to emerge, namely film. The kinetoscope, which is now known as the motion picture, was invented in Over the next decade, film equipment was developed and refined.
And in , Charles Urban of London began exhibiting the first educational films. In , Thomas Edison also contributed to the use of film in the classroom by producing a series on the American Revolution.
With the rapid growth of American schools, both in terms of the number of schools and the quantity of students attending those schools, there was a pressing need to provide standard, high-quality instruction to large numbers of students. At the time, some proponents believed that using film in classrooms met this important educational need. Scholars will soon be instructed through the eye. It is possible to touch every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture.
Despite the explosion of educational films, conflict emerged between the commercial interests and the educational interests of the film industry. Concerns about the financial bottom line led the film industry to develop educational films which some critics claimed lacked content and were more theatrical in nature. In addition, teachers often were not asked for input and guidance in making educational films. Then, in the late s, sound film was introduced. Although the ability to include sound was a step forward for the film industry, it also contributed to the demise of educational filming.
Requiring new and expensive equipment, production of educational sound films became an expensive endeavor. At a time when commercial filming was struggling and educators were questioning the merit of film in classrooms, strong advocacy for educational sound films was lacking. Although film continued to be widely used by the government for armed forces training, agricultural demonstrations, and public relations, the impact of film in the classroom was minimal.
Radio entered the educational system in the early s. Like the early days of film, radio was heralded as a tool that would revolutionize classroom teaching.
Radio instruction will be integrated into school life as an accepted educational medium. Following a decision by the Radio Division of the U.
Department of Commerce to license time from commercial stations to broadcast educational lessons, many more schools and districts bought equipment and made plans to use the radio in classrooms. Falling equipment prices in the s further increased interest in the instructional use of radio. Typically, educational radio programs lasted between minutes and were broadcasted a few times a week. There were, in short, a variety and a wealth of curricular material on the air.
Two survey studies conducted in , one in Ohio and one in California found that the majority of schools had radio receivers. Moreover, the amount of radio hardware available to teachers in the s and s exceeded the amount of film hardware available at the height of film use. Higher education was also impacted by the invention of the radio.
Some colleges and universities established their own radio stations for instructional use. Ohio State University first began broadcasting weather reports in Educational technology zealots initially dreamed of the radio replacing both schools and teachers. But by the end of the s, funding and educators enthusiasm for radio use diminished significantly. Saettler identified problems with equipment and support as two factors that limited instructional use of radio.
Similar to problems encountered by educational films, another factor that contributed to the downfall of educational radio was the struggle between commercial stations and educators. A decision by Herbert Hoover, who was then Secretary of Commerce, to leave radio in the hands of American business, instead of having it controlled by the government made efforts to keep educational radio alive exceedingly difficult. Unable to conduct a unified fight to maintain a presence on radio stations, educational interests in radio were overpowered by the commercial radio stations united fight against educational radio.
By the end of the s, technology proponents had given up on educational radio and instead began focusing on the use of television in schools, which was perceived to be the ultimate combination of audio and visual technology.
Military to train forces during World War II and eventually the device spread to schools. An often overlooked form of educational technology, the typewriter is the one form of mechanical technology that has penetrated and been used by large numbers of students over several decades.
However, there are close parallels between the typewriter and more modem forms of computer-based technologies. The first functioning typewriter was marketed and sold by the Remington Arms Company in Soon thereafter, Ben Wood and Frank Freeman conducted a large-scale experiment to develop an understanding of how typewriters might be used in early elementary classrooms. In other words, rather than focusing narrowly on how the use of typewriters affected the writing skills of young children, Wood and Freeman were primarily interested in how instructional practices and classroom ecology changed.
In fact, the overhead projector, first invented in the s but adopted more widely in schools and businesses in the s, remained a popular way of displaying text on a wall or board right up to the turn of the century. Not only was it a great alternative to a blackboard, but it was a simple and effective way of allowing a teacher to quickly create content that could be re-used by colleagues. This was the order of business for almost 50 years, with few technological breakthroughs finding their way to the classroom right away.
The blackboard, both celebrated and loathed in equal measure, remained king until it was gradually ousted by whiteboards in the early s, a technology that itself was some 30 years old. The pace of change was glacially slow, and while some innovations would find their way into schools, the classroom would remain largely isolated from evolving technology until the turn of the current century.
The rise of the personal computer and the World Wide Web sparked one of the most dramatic technological breakthroughs in history.
The personal computer transformed the way learning was delivered to children, and drastically increased the pace of change.
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