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Period: 3500 BCE to 149 BCE
Ancient Times
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3400 BCE
Hieroglyphics
Egyptian hieroglyphs combined logographic and alphabetic symbols and indicated that there was an education system. -
480 BCE
Abacus
Used as a counting mechanism and for trade. -
150 BCE
First Computer
The Antikythera mechanism is regarded as the earliest mechanical analogue computer and was used to perform astronomical calculations in Ancient Greece. -
Period: 150 BCE to 1299
Middle Ages
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700
Quill Pen
The quill is a pen made from a bird feather taken from the five outer left wing feathers. -
1100
Slate Boards
Slate boards were in use in India. -
Period: 1300 to
Renaissance
Education and new ideas flourished from the 14th to 17th centuries. -
1450
Printing Press
German goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printing press. The duplication of information made education more accessible. -
Blackboards/Chalkboards
Used in America since the 18th century.
Overhead projectors came into use after World War 2 and were mostly replaced by data projectors in the 1990s when PowerPoint became popular. -
Period: to
Early Modern
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The Pencil
Nicholas Jacques Conte was an officer in Napoleon's army. He mixed powdered graphite with clay and formed the mixture into rods. -
The First Correspondence School
The Society to Encourage Studies at Home was founded by Anna Eliot Ticknor. -
Period: to
20th Century
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First Calculator
The first calculator was patented in Japan and was called the Yazu Arithmometer. -
Radio
The BBC broadcasts educational radio programs. -
First Stored-program Computer
The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine was built at Victoria University in Manchester. It took up an entire and was nicknamed "Baby". -
Television
TV was first used for educational purposes in the 1960s. -
Period: to
Computer Era
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The Dynabook
The first lightweight, portable, battery-operated networked computer with colour graphical display. It is said to have inspired modern notepads and laptops. -
Open University
The Open University (OU) was first established by the British government in partnership with the BBC to develop university programs for all. -
PLATO
PLATO was a generalized computer assisted instruction system and comprised several thousand terminals worldwide on nearly a dozen different networked mainframe computers. PLATO was a highly successful system, lasting almost 40 years. -
Period: to
Modern Day
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WWW
The World Wide Web was formally launched in 1991 and allowed users to create and link documents, videos and other digital media. -
First LMS
WebCT was the first learning management system. WebCT later became Blackboard. -
Google!
Google began as Larry Page and Sergey Brin's research project while they were both still students. -
Wikipedia
First founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Controversial and not always reliable, but one of the most-visited sites on the Internet. -
Skype
Skype allows users to make voice calls over the Internet, as well as online chat, file transfer, and video conferencing. -
YouTube
Created by three friends as a way to share home video clips online. Google purchased YouTube in 2006. Today YouTube is one of the largest and most popular video distribution platforms. -
The First MOOC
The first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) was launched by the University of Manitoba and presented to 25 paying students. Over 2000 thousand students also took the online course free of charge. -
Zoom
Eric Yuan was inspired to develop videoconferencing technology due to his dislike of travelling. -
Google Classroom
Google Classroom is a free application aimed at teachers and students to ease with communication, organisation and management of assignments and to go paperless. -
Teams
Microsoft Teams brings together people, conversations and content, as well as required tools in order to easily collaborate to achieve more.
