Timeline: History of EdTech

200,000 BCE

Oral Communication

In ancient times, oral communication was used to transmit and maintain stories, folklore, histories, and news, making good memorization a necessary skill. This is still the case in many aboriginal tribes today.

1400 BCE

Written Communication

During the 7th century BC, Moses, according to the Bible, utilized carved stone to impart the ten commandments in a kind of writing. Despite the fact that Socrates is claimed to have been anti-writing, written modes of communication make analytic, long chains of reasoning and argument much more accessible, reproducible without distortion, and hence more amenable to scrutiny and critique than speech.

1920

Broadcasting and Video

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began broadcasting educational radio programs for schools in the 1920s. Insects in Relation to Man was the BBC's first adult education radio broadcast in 1924, and the same year, J.C. Stobart, the new Director of Education at the BBC, pondered the possibility of 'a broadcasting university' in the journal Radio Times (Robinson, 1982). Television was first used in classrooms and for general adult education in the 1960s.

1954

Computer Technologies

In essence, programmed learning development automates teaching, structures knowledge, and assesses student comprehension while requiring no human involvement beyond content creation, selection, and loading. The idea is to provide learners with immediate feedback.

1997

Social Media

Although social media is technically a subset of computer technology, its evolution deserves its own chapter in educational technology history. Blogs, wikis, YouTube videos, mobile devices such as phones and tablets, Twitter, Skype, and Facebook are examples of social media technology. Social media is frequently used by young people and "millenials," or many students in post-secondary education.

2021

A Paradigm Shift

Many of the claims made for a new technology are unlikely to be true or novel. The old technology usually survives, either as part of a more specialized 'niche,' such as radio, or as part of a richer technical environment, such as video on the Internet. At least in terms of educational technology, the Internet's impact on education constitutes a paradigm shift.

2022