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9 BCE
ORAL COMMUNICATION
One of the earliest means of formal teaching was oral – though human speech – although over time, technology has been increasingly used to facilitate or ‘back-up’ oral communication. In ancient times, stories, folklore, histories and news were transmitted and maintained through oral communication, making accurate memorization a critical skill, and the oral tradition is still the case in many aboriginal cultures. -
7 BCE
TOOLS IN ANCIENT WORLD
The first examples of educational technology in the ancient world were the tools that students and teachers used for writing. Over thousands of years and across the continents, various surfaces have been used as a medium for writing, including wax-covered writing boards (by the Romans), clay tablets (in the middle east), strips of bark from trees (in Indonesia, Tibet and the Americas), thick palm-like leaves (in South east Asia) and parchment, made of animal skin. -
1400
SCHOOL EXISTENCE
By the end of the Middle Ages, and after the invention of printing (a truly disruptive technology), schools would eventually become common in many towns and villages across Europe, with the main intention being to ensure children could read and write. Then, by the time of Shakespeare’s Europe, in the 15th century, schools had more or less become the education system that can be recognised today. -
LIBRARY AND PENCIL
By the mid-1600s, the modern library and the pencil were introduced, marking the first examples of educational technology. -
BLACKBOARDS/CHALKBOARDS
Later still, the 19th century marked the advent of textbooks and improvements in writing tools available to teachers and students, notably blackboards and chalk, as well as the use of ink pen rather than just pencil. Blackboards/chalkboards became used in schools around the turn of the 18th century. -
TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS
The 20th century was a key time in education, when the ideas of philosophers like John Dewey really started to gain ground. At the end of World War Two the U.S. Army started using overhead projectors for training. -
COLD WAR COMPETITION
Technology originally made its way into the U.S. education system as a necessity to prepare for an increasingly digital future and as part of its Cold War era competition. The Vocational Education Act in 1963 funded technology use in schools. As a result, students learned programming languages like BASIC, and PCs gradually made their way into some classrooms. -
MICROCOMPUTERS
The first was less common. Mathematician and professor Seymour Papert first introduced microcomputers in the classroom by teaching basic programming in the early 1980s. Children learned the language commands that would create graphic shapes. Papert based his instructional program on a theory of constructivism that he termed “bricolage,” which is a strategy in which students assemble the building blocks of learning themselves. -
WWW
A mere decade later, the Internet connected computers worldwide. The dramatic growth of the World Wide Web introduced email, video, and a variety of digital media. More importantly, it enabled two-way communication between anyone, anywhere, and anytime. -
21. CENTURY SKILLS
Beginning in the early 2000s, there was a greater emphasis on a new form of education: STEM, short for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Computers and technology are the future — we may as well embrace them for all the benefits they bring to the classroom. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills lays out a similar vision for integrating technology in the classroom.
