The History of Educational Technology.pptx

It’s amazing how quickly technology changes,
even in the course of six months. But can you
imagine how much it has changed over decades?
The Timeline of Educational Technology in Schools
Infographic shows how educational technology has
evolved in schools over the past 114 years.

Educational Technology Timeline
1650
The Horn Book
Wooden paddles with
printed lessons were
popular in the colonial era.
On the paper there was
usually the alphabet and a
religious verse which
children would copy to
help them learn how to
write.

1870
The Magic
Lantern
The precursor to a slide
projector, the ‘magic lantern’
projected images printed on
glass plates and showed
them in darkened rooms to
students. By the end of
World War I, Chicago’s
public school system had
roughly 8,000 lantern slides.

1890
School Slate Used throughout the 19th century
in nearly all classrooms, a Boston
school superintendent in 1870
described the slate as being “if the
result of the work should, at any
time, be found infelicitous, a
sponge will readily banish from the
slate all disheartening recollections,
and leave it free for new attempts."

1890
Chalkboard
Still going strong to this
day, the chalkboard is one
of the biggest inventions in
terms of educational
technology.

1900
The Pencil
Just like the chalkboard, the
pencil is also found in
basically all classrooms in
the U.S. In the late 19th
century, mass-produced
paper and pencils became
more readily available and
pencils eventually replaced
the school slate.

1905
Stereoscope
At the turn of the century, the Keystone
View Company began to market
stereoscopes which are basically three-
dimensional viewing tools that were
popular in homes as a source of
entertainment. Keystone View Company
marketed these stereoscopes to schools
and created hundreds of images that
were meant to be used to illustrate points
made during lectures.

1925
Film Projector
Similar to the motion-
picture projector, Thomas
Edison predicted that,
thanks to the invention of
projected images, “books
will soon be obsolete in
schools. Scholars will soon
be instructed through the
eye.”

1925
Radio
New York City’s Board of
Education was actually the
first organization to send
lessons to schools through
a radio station. Over the
next couple of decades,
“schools of the air” began
broadcasting programs to
millions of American
students.

1930
Overhead
Projector
Initially used by the U.S.
military for training
purposes in World War II,
overhead projectors quickly
spread to schools and
other organizations around
the country.

1940
Ballpoint Pen While it was originally invented in
1888, it was not until 1940 that
the ballpoint pen started to gain
worldwide recognition as being a
useful tool in the classroom and
life in general. The first ballpoint
pens went on sale at Gimbels
department store in New York
City on 29 October 1945 for
US$9.75 each.

1940
Mimeograph
Surviving into the Xerox
age, the mimeograph made
copies by being hand-
cranked. Makes you
appreciate your current
copier at least a little bit
now.

1950
Headphones Thanks to theories that students could
learn lessons through repeated drills
and repetition (and repeated
repetition) schools began to install
listening stations that used
headphones and audio tapes. Most
were used in what were dubbed
‘language labs’ and this practice is still
in use today, except now computers
are used instead of audio tapes.

1950
Slide Rule William Oughtred and others developed the
slide rule in the 17th century based on the
emerging work on logarithms by John Napier.
Before the advent of the pocket calculator, it was
the most commonly used calculation tool in
science and engineering. The use of slide rules
continued to grow through the 1950s and 1960s
even as digital computing devices were being
gradually introduced; but around 1974 the
electronic scientific calculator made it largely
obsolete and most suppliers left the business.

1951
Videotapes The electronics division of entertainer Bing
Crosby’s production company, Bing Crosby
Enterprises (BCE), gave the world’s first
demonstration of a videotape recording in
Los Angeles on November 11, 1951.
Developed by John T. Mullin and Wayne R.
Johnson since 1950, the device gave what
were described as “blurred and indistinct”
images, using a modified Ampex 200 tape
recorder and standard quarter-inch audio
tape moving at 360 inches per second.

1958
Educational
Television
By the early sixties, there
were more than 50
channels of TV which
included educational
programming that aired
across the country.

1970
Hand-held
Calculator
The predecessor of the
much-loved and much-used
TI-83, this calculator paved
the way for the calculators
used today. There were initial
concerns however as teachers
were slow to adopt them for
fear they would undermine
the learning of basic skills.

1972
Scantron The Scantron Corporation
removed the need for
grading multiple-choice
exams. The Scantron
machines were free to use
but the company made
money by charging for their
proprietary grading forms.

1980
Plato Computer Public schools in the U.S.
averaged about one
computer for every 92
students in 1984. The Plato
was one of the most-used
early computers to gain a
foothold in the education
market. Currently, there is
about one computer for
every 4 students.

1985
CD-ROM Drive
A single CD could store an
entire encyclopedia plus
video and audio. The CD-
ROM and eventually the CD-
RW paved the way for flash
drives and easy personal
storage.

1985
Hand-held Graphing
Calculator
The successor to the hand-
held calculator, the graphing
calculator made far more
advanced math much easier
as it let you plot out points,
do long equations, and play
‘Snake’ as a game when you
got bored in class.

1999
Interactive Whiteboard
The chalkboard got a facelift
with the whiteboard. That got
turned into a more interactive
system that uses a touch-
sensitive white screen, a
projector, and a computer.
Still getting slowly rolled out
to classrooms right now.

2005
iClicker
There are many similar tools
available now, but iClicker
was one of the first to allow
teachers to be able to quickly
poll students and get results
in real time.

2006
XO Laptop
The ‘One Laptop Per Child’
computer was built so it was
durable and cheap enough to
sell or donate to developing
countries. It’s an incredible
machine that works well in
sunlight, is waterproof, and
much more.

Electronics is the main technology
being developed in the beginning of 21st
century. Broadband Internet access became
popular and occupied almost all the
important offices and educational places
and even in common places in developed
countries with the advantage of connecting
home computers with music libraries and
mobile phones.
Technology in the present times

2010
Apple iPad
Just like the original school
slate, could the iPad bring
Thomas Edison’s statement to
life? Could the iPad make it
so “scholars will soon be
instructed through the eye.”
Only time will tell.

Technology in the present times

The History of Educational Technology.pptx

The History of Educational Technology.pptx

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