History of Educational Technology

Abacus

480 BCE

Herodotus first wrote about the abacus in 480 BC. The ancient Egyptians also used it as a counting mechanism and for trade. The earliest surviving abacus, the Salamis Tablet, is from around 300 BC and was used by the Greeks. The abacus we are most familiar with today is the Chinese suan-pan, which was first documented in 190 AD, a device that just about anyone could count on.

Quill Pen

1300

The quill is a pen made from a bird feather. The strongest quills were those taken from living birds in the spring from the five outer left wing feathers. Goose feathers were quite often used while rarer, more costly swan feathers were used for larger writing jobs.

Magic Lantern

1600

Introduced in the 1600s, the Magic Lantern (a predecessor to today’s projectors) continued the idea of the importance of images in learning.

Radio

1923

Radio had been used in education for a period of more than 80 years. It has in that time been used in many various ways. Its uses comprise school broadcasting, informal general education, social action programming and adult basic education and literacy.

Stored-Program Computer

Jun 21, 1948

The Manchester 'Small-Scale Experimental Machine', nicknamed 'Baby', was the world's first stored-program computer. It was built at the Victoria University of Manchester and ran its first program on 21 June 1948. Baby was a whopping-great thing, it took up a whole room! The SSEM had a 32-bit word length and a memory of 32 words.

Headphones

1950

In the 1950s, the price of personal audio technology finally made the language lab a feasible opportunity for language learners across the country. Headphones became popular in school language labs.

Whiteboards

1960

Whiteboards were invented to replace the Chalkboards.

E-textbook

1971

In 1971, Michael Hart scans and publishes the Declaration of Independence on the internet as the first document of what would eventually become Project Gutenberg, the first digital library in the public domain. Released in 1987 as an effort by Microsoft to showcase the advantages of the CD-ROM medium, Microsoft Bookshelf was the first widely-available educational program in an electronic format.

Smartboards

1991

Smartboards began being seen in school classrooms in 1991 when schools decided it was time to begin integrating technology into their everyday curriculum. The first smart board was an LCD pannel and a computer running integrated programs. This "smart board" was designed to work as a large display screen.

Google

1996

Google began in January 1996 as a research project, spearheaded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were both still students. It was different from other existing programs, as it had a very simple design. Today, more than half the nation's primary- and secondary-school students — more than 30 million children — use Google education apps like Gmail and Docs.

References

Oct 20, 2020

Posted on Rob Glass in Blog, Uncategorized on January 22, A Brief History of Language Learning Technology: Pre-Computers
https://elearninginfographics.com/timeline-of-educational-technology-in-schools-infographic/
https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/evolution-of-learning-technologies
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Educational_Technology_Innovation_and_Impact/Edutainment/Radio_Education

Student Info

Oct 20, 2020

Nergis Kavraz
2-C
190102017