Learning 3107773 1920

The History of Educational Technology

By Kadriye Erdemir
  • 400 BCE

    Written Documents

    Written Documents
    By the fifth century BCE, written documents
    existed in ancient Greece.
  • 1100

    Slate Board

    Slate Board
    Slate boards were in use in India in the 12th
    century CE.
  • 1200

    Scrolled Manuscript

    Scrolled Manuscript
    Scrolled manuscripts handwritten by monks
    around 1200 CE.
  • 1440

    Printing Press

    Printing Press
    The invention of the printing press in Europe
    in the 15th century.

  • Blackboard/Chalkboard

    Blackboard/Chalkboard
    Blackboards/chalkboards became used in
    schools around the turn of the 18th century.

  • First Formal Correspondence Education

    First Formal Correspondence Education
    Improvements in transport infrastructure in the 19th century, and in particular the creation of a cheap and reliable postal system in the 1840s, led to the development of the first formal correspondence education.

  • BBC

    BBC
    The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began broadcasting educational radio programs for schools in the 1920s.

  • Television

    Television
    Television was first used in education in the 1960s, for schools and for general adult education.

  • The Open University (OU)

    The Open University (OU)
    In 1969, the British government established the Open University (OU), which worked in partnership with the BBC to develop university programs open to all.

  • Satellite Broadcasting

    Satellite Broadcasting
    Satellite broadcasting started to become available in the 1980s.

  • Early Phases of The Internet

    Early Phases of The Internet
    With the development of web-based learning management systems in the mid-1990s, textual communication became the main communication medium.

  • Digital Compression and High-speed Internet Access.

    Digital Compression and High-speed Internet Access.
    In the 1990s, the cost of creating and distributing video dropped dramatically due to digital compression and high-speed Internet access.

  • The Word Wide Web

    The Word Wide Web
    The Word Wide Web was formally launched in 1991. The World Wide Web is basically an application running on the Internet that enables ‘end-users’ to create and link documents, videos or other digital media, without the need for the end-user to transcribe everything into some form of computer code.

  • Mosaic

    Mosaic
    The first web browser, Mosaic, was made available in 1993.

  • Learning Management Systems (LMSs)

    Learning Management Systems (LMSs)
    In 1995, the Web enabled the development of the first learning management systems (LMSs).
    LMSs became the main means by which online learning was offered until lecture capture systems arrived around 2008.

  • Youtube

    Youtube
    YouTube started in 2005 and was bought by Google in 2006. YouTube is increasingly being used for short educational clips that can be downloaded and integrated into online courses.
    The Khan Academy started using YouTube in 2006 for recorded voice-over lectures using a digital blackboard for equations and illustrations.

  • Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)

    Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
    By 2008, George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier in Canada were using web technology to create the first ‘connectivist’ Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), a community of practice that linked webinar presentations and/or blog posts by experts to participants’ blogs and tweets, with just over 2,000 enrollments.
    The courses were open to anyone and had no formal assessment.

  • Wearable Tech

    Wearable Tech
    2013 saw the limited release of Google Glass, the first mass-produced wearable device providing an augmented reality platform and cloud access to the user.
    The possibilities for educational activities utilising Google Glass are beginning to take shape.