A Trip to the Past and Future of Educational Computing: Understanding Its Evolution

Abstract

Although machine use in education was introduced in the 1920s with instructional radio and 1950s with instructional television, these technologies lacked one of the most important components of learning-interaction. Computers have filled this void. The functions they have served, the ways they have been used, and the terms they have been given have changed since their introduction to our schools, but their rooted presence in our educational lives has continually increased over time. Our in-depth review of the literature illustrated that there are three distinct periods of educational computing based on the predominant computer technologies and computer functions of the time. We named these three periods the "Mainframe Period", "Microcomputer Period", and "Internet Period". Taking the past and current trends into account and considering such shifts in society as moving from standardization to customization and personalization, from proprietary resources to open resources and from using different tools for different functions to convergence of functionalities in one tool, we propose the next period, which we call the "Personalized Computing Period", in which the predominant computer technology will be "Personalized Integrated Educational Systems" that serve four major functions to support the informationage paradigm of education: Record-keeping, planning, instruction, and assessment, as well as such secondary functions as communication, general student data, school personnel information and system administration.

LearnOnline

“…mobile phones and PDAs. As the popularity of hand-held devices is tremendously increasing (Savel & Munro, 2011;Lippincott, 2010;Aslan & Reigeluth, 2011), so good PLEs should be compatible with all types of devices i.e. personal computers/laptops and hand-held devices.…”

Application of Instructional Design Models by Prospective Teacher Students

“…As a tutor, the computer is used to teach students, while a computer tool is used to help handle academic tasks, and as a tutee, the computer is taught by students by creating programs. PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) was the first electronic learning system developed by Donald Bitzer in 1959 (S. Aslan & Reigeluth, 2011;Valentine, 2014). The learning system that used advanced technology in the 1970s was TICCIT (Time-shared Interactive Computer-Controlled Information Television) (Merrill, 2013;Reigeluth, 1979).…”

“…SOCRATES (System for Organizing Content to Review and Teach Educational Subjects) is a tutorial-based learning system. At the same time, CLASS (Computer-based Laboratory for Automation of School Systems) is a drill-based learning system (Sinem Aslan & Reigeluth, 2020).…”

“…There were two competing microcomputer companies then, Apple II and IBM. Apple II is mostly used for learning because of its graphics capabilities and courseware availability, while IBM is mostly used for business and industrial purposes (S. Aslan & Reigeluth, 2011). The microcomputer era has made computer-based learning more rapid because teachers can develop their application of teaching materials to help the learning process of their students.…”