Timeline: History of Instructional Technology

30,000 BCE

Cave Drawings

Many researchers claim that cave drawings made in the early ages were made for communication and teaching purposes, but the real reason is still unknown.

3000 BCE

Papyrus

Papyrus, from which we get the modern word paper, is a writing material made from the papyrus plant, a reed which grows in the marshy areas around the Nile river. Papyrus was used as a writing material as early as 3,000 BC in ancient Egypt, and continued to be used to some extent until around 1100 AD.

510 BCE

Pythagoras Academy

Pythagoras academy is in its very essence the very first formal education academy in recorded history. The importance of this event is that it laid the foundation for educational system which we know and recognize today. Students were taught in an open classroom setting the very elements if philosophy, science and mathematics

5 BCE

Clay Tablets

Clay tablets were a medium used for writing. They were common in the Fertile Crescent, from about the 5th millennium BC. It is possible to correct errors on the tablet. The tablet was then baked until dry and hard, either by leaving it out in the sun, or in a fire. Sun-baked tablets could be moistened and recycled. The ones that survived thousands of years were baked in fire. They were used by the Sumerian civilisation in Mesopotamia.

382

Manuscript

Before the inventions of printing, in China by woodblock and in Europe by movable type in a printing press, all written documents had to be both produced and reproduced by hand. Historically, manuscripts were produced in form of scrolls (volumen in Latin) or books (codex, plural codices). Manuscripts were produced on vellum and other parchment, on papyrus, and on paper.

1100

Boards

Slate boards were in use in India in the 12th century AD, and blackboards/chalkboards became used in schools around the turn of the 18th century. Blackboards were first used in music education in the 16th century in Europe.

1440

Printing Machine

In Germany, around 1440, goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which started the Printing Revolution. Modelled on the design of existing screw presses, a single Renaissance printing press could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday, compared to forty by hand-printing and a few by hand-copying.

1921

Radio

Educational radio is the first electronic medium educators used to teach at a distance. With the advent of broadcasting the federal government issued the first educational radio license to the Latter Day Saints’ University of Salt Lake City, in 1921.

1930

Projector

Projectors were used to show educational films in classrooms, serving as a predecessor of videocassettes, DVDs and Blu-ray technology. Filmstrip projectors allowed teachers to pause presentations for class discussions by turning a knob, and the projectors were widely used in classrooms until VCRs replaced them in the 1980s.

1990

Computers

Professors in colleges & teachers in schools take help of audio-visual techniques to prepare lesson plans for children. For this, they use Microsoft PowerPoint to prepare electronic presentations about their lectures.These electronic presentations can be shown on multimedia and sound projectors in classrooms. It is an interesting and simple method to learn for students.

2021