As a history major, my first instinct is to look up the history of computers, and how they have grown in American Society. For myself, I can first remember the apartment in Auburn with my mom and my sister. My mom had a computer, and she would go to picnics with the people she met on the internet. Things have definitely changed since 1992, but to look up the major milestones in technological history would provide an insight.
It is very interesting to see the basic time line of technology in the classroom. It becomes plain that the use of technology is just a baby when compared to other age-old education methods. The first computer was created in 1946 (the vacuum-tube based), that is just 63 years ago. Two generations, and after that everything moved so quickly.
This site says that schools didn't even get computers until 1975, which were for merely educational purposes. It wasn't until 1986 when schools began to purchase computers with the intent of using them for instructional assistance and career assistance. And it has only been within the last 10-15 years that computers are seen as a necessity in each classroom.
One thing that comes to mind is can we trust an instructional method that is so new and innovative? Can just simply training youth on how to use them be sufficient?
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Ah, history. I remember when my high school, Bradwell Institute, got its first PC. It was a TRS-80 (the infamous TRaSh-80), which had a couple of text based adventure games, a cassette drive, and a green monochrome monitor. All of us dork kids loved to go to the library to gawk over it.
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember teaching on the TRS-80. It was an interesting start to a long and fun adventure.
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