Educational Technology History

  • Period: 100,000 BCE to

    Oral communication

    Oral communication is the most trivial and basic skill of almost every human being. It is unknown when we started orally communicating but it sure is still around.
  • 700 BCE

    The Stone Tablets

    The Stone Tablets
    The Stone Tablets which include the Ten Commandments are the first form of writing according to bible.
  • Period: 700 BCE to 1400

    Written communication

    Emergence of written communication
  • 1400

    Printing press

    Printing press
    The invention of printing press in Europe was an important event. With the explosion in written material the people in government and business were required to be literate and this led to rapid expansion in formal education in Europe. It can be said that the press is the origin of newspapers, magazines, posters and modern textbooks.
  • BBC Radio Education

    BBC Radio Education
    BBCs first educational broadcasting for schools occured in 1920s. Also, they started broadcasting for adult education in 1924 for the first time.
  • Period: to

    Broadcasting and Video

    Start of broadcast and radio use in EDTech. Later, the radio had an alternative; Casettes. Casettes were replaced with CDs and USBs. Although we have quick access to auditory material in the current age thanks to the internet, radio still remains in most personal vehicles. Also, even though the projectors were formerly used mainly for business and military purposes, they made their way into the classroom.
  • B.F. Skinner's experiments on programmed learning

    B.F. Skinner's experiments on programmed learning
    B.F. Skinner started experiementing on teaching machines that used programmed learning in 1954.
  • Period: to

    Computer Technologies

    Emergence of Computer assisted education has come very late if we consider the first computer was invented as far back as 1833.
  • TV use in Adult Education

    TV use in Adult Education
    Other than radio broadcast, BBC also used TV for adult education. This occured in 1960s. Though, the Educational channels like National Geography and such still remains in the present day in Televisions.
  • Computer Networking

    Computer Networking
    Murray Turoff and Roxanne Hiltz created CMC in the late 1970s which is Computer Mediated Communication, combining classroom education with online forums.
  • Online Learning Environments

    Online Learning Environments
    In 1995, first learning management systems(LMS) such as WebCT were enabled by Web. Today there are a number of prestigious Massive LMSs like Microsoft teams and Zoom.
  • MOOC

    MOOC
    George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier created the first MOOC(Massive OPen Online Course) by 2008. Four years later, Two Stanford University professors launched a lecture capture based MOOC running on artificial intelligence.