History of Computers in Education
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[edit] Purpose
The field of computers in education is, of course, part of the overall field of education. Because computer use now permeates education, every teacher should have some knowledge of the field of computers in education. The purpose of this document is to provide a relatively short overview of this history along with some links to resources that may be useful to people who want to study this history in more detail.
[edit] Short History of Computers in Education
Various activities in Minnesota, beginning about 1963, are important parts of the history of computers in education. An excellent document capturing part of this history is a 1995 interview of Dale LaFrenz. Quoting from that interview:
After five years at the lab school I left, but during my stay a U-Hi there that were five others (David C. Johnson; Pam Katzman; John Walther; Tom Kieren; Larry Hatfield) in the mathematics department who were convinced that the computer was going to be an integral part of education. In 1963 we decided that every kid needed to have a computer access. We began looking around for a way to provide access. Some people will remember that at the time Minneapolis-St. Paul was the computer capitol of the world; this is where all the action was as we made most of the computers here. Univac's home-base was here; Control Data's home-base was here; Honeywell was here and in the computer business at the time; IBM was down the road in Rochester; and then 3M, while not making computers, was making all kinds of other related products.
This is a Work in Progress. This Page is merely a stub.
Note by David Moursund.
- The interview with Dale LaFrenz indicated that by 1963 Robert Smith (people called him Doc Smith) at Control Data had put together some curriculum and computer activities based on a large set of pre-punched FORTRAN cards. Students could create a variety of programs making use of subsets of this large deck of cards, and run them on Control Data Corporation computer.
- By that time, some precollege students had been using FORTRAN (on various computers) for about five years. That is, the history of precollege students doing programming goes back at least to 1958. I believe Richard Andree was involved in some of this early work.
- I first became involved in the educational use of computers at the precollege level in Summer 1963 when I helped teach a class for Talented and Gifted students that was given on the University of Wisconsin campus. The students learned FORTRAN and I taught some uses of computers in numerical analysis.
Here is a further quote from the 1995 interview of Dale LaFrenz:
- O'NEILL: With the development and growth of the courseware idea, did you get away from then teaching programming?
- LAFRENZ: Yes. The evolution that took place in the United States and the one that we had in Minnesota where it started was paralleled across the United States and is now being paralleled in Europe. That is, we first started out to
teach programming. Then we began to see that there is more to this than just teaching programming. Then we started having stored programs in the library, or software, and then there was the whole era of three, four years that we went through where computer literacy was the thing to do. During this time we discovered that, "The computer's going to have greater influence on society than just a few programmers sitting around. In fact, it may be going to invade every part of our lives." About 20 years ago we were predicting this would happen. We agreed that everybody who comes through a comprehensive K-12 education program should know about the positive and negative impacts of the computer.
[edit] References
A 11/27/07 Google search of the expression History of computers in education produced nearly 5 million hits. Here are a few examples.
Bowen, Jonathan (n.d.). The Virtual Museum of Computing (VMoC). Retrieved 11/27/07: http://vmoc.museophile.org/.
Computer History Museum (n.d.). Computer History Museum: Where computer history lives. Retrieved 11/27/07: http://www.computerhistory.org/. NECC (n.d.). National educational Computing Conference (NECC). Retrieved 11/27/07: http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC/history.html#%231.
Cormode, G. and Krishnamurthy, B. (6/2/08). Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Retrievedd 6/18/08: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2125/1972
This document provides some demographics and other information on 25 NECC conferences beginning with the first one held in June 1979 in Iowa City, Iowa.
Quirk, Kathy (8/24/07). Tracing computer history from “ancient” times to the latest technology. University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee). Retrieved 11/27/07: http://www4.uwm.edu/about_uwm/news_press/uwm_featured_stories_detail.cfm?customel_datapageid_11602=135365. Quoting from the article:
- Thomas Haigh, assistant professor of information studies at UWM, is among a very small number of computer experts in the world who are also historians, studying the role of technology in broader social change. These new experts are tracing how computers have changed business and society.
THE Journal (June 1997). Computers in education: A brief history. Retrieved 11/27/07: http://www.thejournal.com/articles/13739_1. (13 pages)
THE Journal June 1997). Retrieved 11/27/07: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5022/is_199706. This issue of Technological Horizons in Education contains six articles. A free one-week membership will give you free access (for a week) to the articles. The articles are:
- The best time to plant a tree was twenty-five years ago.(outlook for computing and education) (Technology Information)(Cover Story)by Luskin, Bernard J.
- Some reflections(the 30-year history of computers in education) (Industry Trend or Event)(Editorial) by Charp, Sylvia.
- Technology in education and the next twenty-five years. (Technology Information)(Cover Story)by Withrow, Frank B.
- The future of computers and learning. (Technology Information)(Cover Story)by Bork, Alfred.
- Computers in education: a brief history. (Technology Information)(Cover Story)by Molnar, Andrew S.
- Educational computing: how are we doing?(history of Logo programming language) (Technology Information)(Cover Story) Papert, Seymour.
Willoughby. Stephen S. (December 1983/January 1984). Mathematics for 21st century citizens. Educational Leadership. Retrieved 11/30/07: http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_198312_willoughby.pdf.
This article provides a snapshot of math education in 1983, some history of reform during the past 20 years, and some recommendations for the future. Calculators and computers are strongly recommended.
