Timeline: The History of Educational Technology

30,000 BCE

Pre-History

In primitive times, there are tools, in order to educate the young, such as hard sticks, plants for colouring, and walls as a drafting board, which were used in purpose of drawing caves. Teaching was also applied orally through imitation of stories and folklore histories.

2700 BCE

Beginning of the Instructional Technologies

Formal education had been started to be taught. Informing was also started to be made by speeches to the crowds. Furthermore, Sumerian Abacus was appeared to have been used in education, which is a calculating tool, before the written modern numeral system.

500

Writing

In order to record writings, many different materials were used in early times such as clay and wax tablets, stone clays, and metal sheets. One of the most used ones after them was papyrus, made from the papyrus plant. When attaining papyrus was difficult, parchment was also started to be used. Afterwards, the codex was recognized as a modern book which is more suitable for retaining the information.

1450

Producing Classroom Materials

Printing Press was invented, which enabled to produce vast amount of books easily in quite short time, compared to manuscript ones.

1600

Public Education

Public education in classes became officially widespread. Along with that, the usage of blackboards, books, chalkboard slates in classrooms started to become common.

1884

Printing Devices

Mimeograph and spirit duplicator were invented and improved, which were also important classroom material suppliers.

1900

Audiovisual Age

The utilizations of some developed devices like radios and some kind of projectors (film strip projector, overhead projector, slide projector) began in lessons to be able to profit the learning.

1960

Information Age

With the inventions of TVs, VCRs, audio tapes, and VHS tapes, presentations of the lessons have been enriched in terms of educational purposes.

1990

Computer Age

Computers, which was actually created in 1800s, and CDs got started to be common in classrooms. Moreover, Microsoft Powerpoint and the first smart boards began to be used.

1995

Digital Age

The usage of networks and internet connection were also started to be demanded in schools. Communication with the people around the world through networks and the internet became widespread.

2000

Interaction Age

Smartphones,tablets, laptops, applications, social medias, various websites, blogs, podcasts, and many other similar tools have been benefited now in classrooms commonly. Conceptualisation of these means in education makes the students more interactive, not only with each other but also any people, place, and information in the world.

2049