Title: Ed Tech: What's the Use? the History of Educational Technology Is a Reminder That It's Not the Machine That Matters-It's Finding the Tool That Best Serves Your Educational Objective
Abstract: In June 1997, THE Journal published an article called Computers in Education: A Brief History. That article is still one of the most popular on our website, but--to put it mildly--a lot has changed in ed tech since then. This is less a sequel to that article than a companion piece that dips back into the past, traces the trends of the present and looks to the future, all with an eye toward helping districts find the right device for their classrooms. When thinking about the role of technology in education, the logical starting point is exploring why the connection between computers and education was ever made in the first place. My starting point is Logo, an educational programming language designed in 1967 at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) by Danny Bobrow, Wally Feurzeig, MIT professor Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon. This language was a derivative of the Ai programming language LISP, and ran on the PDP-1 computers from Digital Equipment Corp. Seymour Papert had studied with the constructivist pioneer Jean Piaget, and felt that students could learn more by constructing their own knowledge and understanding by working firsthand with mathematical concepts, as opposed to being taught these concepts in a more directed way. In 1973 the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center introduced the Alto computer, designed as the world's first personal computer. At Xerox, Papert's push to turn kids into programmers led to the development of Smalltalk--the first extensible, object-oriented programming language--under the direction of Alan Kay. Because these early computers were captive in the research lab, local students were brought in to explore their own designs. Another path to educational technology began that same year, when the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) was started in an old warehouse in Minneapolis. Part of the state's educational software push, the original programs were simulations designed for a timeshare system running on a mainframe, with terminals placed in schools. Using this system, students could take a simulated journey along the Oregon Trail, for example, and learn about the importance of budgeting resources and other challenges that faced the early pioneers. Another simulation let the students run a virtual lemonade stand. Years later, the MECC software was rewritten for early personal computers. In the early days, educational computing was focused on the development of higher-order thinking skills. Drill-and-practice software only became commonplace much later, with the release of inexpensive personal computers. By the late 1970s, personal computers came to market and started showing up in schools. These included the Commodore PET (1977) and Radio Shack TRS-80 (1977), among many other systems. But the computer that ended up having the greatest impact on schools at the time was the Apple II, also introduced in 1977. It used floppy disks instead of cassette tapes for storing programs and also supported a graphical display, albeit at a low level. The first generation of computers in schools was not accompanied by very much software, though. The customer base was not yet big enough to justify the investment. The Uses of Ed Tech, Past and Present In 1980, Robert Taylor wrote a book, The Computer in the School: Tutor, Tool, Tutee. The underlying idea in this book was that students could use computers in three different ways: 1) As a tutor running simulations or math practice, for example; 2) as a tool for tasks like word processing; or 3) as a tutee, meaning the student teaches the computer to do something by writing a program in Logo or BASIC. This model touches on several pedagogical models, spanning from filling the mind with information to kindling the fire of curiosity. Even though technologies have advanced tremendously in the intervening years, this model still has some validity, and some contemporary technologies are better suited for some pedagogies than others. …
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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