The History of Instructional Technology

School Museums

1905

The first school museum was created in St. Louis, Missouri.

The Visual Instruction Movement

1908

The start of rapidly increasing interest in using media in the classroom.

Instructional Films

1910

The Rochester, NY public school system became the first to adopt films for regular use.

Thomas Edison's Vision for the Future

1913

Edison predicted that, "Books will soon be obsolete in the schools. It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture. Our school system will be completely changed in the next ten years."

Instructional Radio

1920

(1920s-30s): The increasing use of radio broadcasting led to more growth and technological advances within the visual instruction movement.

Behavioral Objectives

1934

Ralph Tyler fathered the behavioral objectives movement.

World War II

1939

(1939-1945): In spite of the war, rapid growth and incorporation of media in classrooms slowed down. But these advances, such as those with audiovisual devices, were found very useful by military personnel.

Media Research

1945

After WWII, there was a huge investment in media research, with the goal of finding the most effective ways to utilize media for instructional purposes.

Television

1950

The newest advance in audiovisual mediums in the 1950s was the television.

Instructional Television

1952

The Federal Communications Commission ignited the rapid increase of televisions used for instructional purposes by setting aside 242 television channels for educational usage. The Ford Foundation also contributed to this growth by funding over $170 million on educational television.

Programmed Instruction

1954

(mid 1950s-mid 1960s): This movement was a huge factor contributing to the development of the systems approach.

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives

1956

This was created by Benjamin Bloom and others to explain the idea that there are various types of learning outcomes.

Sputnik

1957

Sputnik was the first orbiting space satellite, launched by the Soviet Union.

Criterion-Referenced Testing

1960

This type of testing measures how well someone is able to perform a specific behavior.

Instructional Design Models

1962

These models were created in the early to mid 1960s by Gagne, Glaser, and Silvern.

Conditions of Learning

1965

Gagne wrote a book on the conditions of learning. Within this text, he claims that there are five domains of learning outcomes that all require a different set of learning conditions unique to the domain.

Events of Instruction

1965

This is another idea posed by Gagne that states there are nine essential teaching activities for attaining any learning outcome.

Formative Evaluation

1967

Formative evaluation is a trying and revision process named by Michael Scriven.

Summative Evaluation

1967

This testing process does not assess the instructional materials at hand until they are in their final form.

Cognitive Psychology

1980

In 1980 there was a spark of interest regarding how cognitive psychology principles could be applied to the instructional design process.

Early Computers

1983

Although computers were used in the 1950s, they did not become influential on instruction until later in 1983 when they started being used in about 75% of all secondary schools in the United States.

Constructivism

1990

This is a collection of similar views of learning and instruction.

Internet

1995

Across all industries, computer related advances, especially the internet, has sparked interests in incorporating more digital resources into instructional trainings and education.

My Birthday

Mar 9, 1999

I was born on March 9th, 1999.