The History of the Future of Education ~ Hack Education ~ by Audrey Watters | :: The 4th Era :: | Scoop.it

"I've been working on a book for a while now called Teaching Machinesthat explores the history of education technology in the twentieth century. And this year I've started a series on my blog, Hack Education, that also documents some of this lost or forgotten history. (I've looked at the origins of multiple choice tests and multiple choice testing machines, the parallels between the "Draw Me" ads and for-profit correspondence schools of the 1920s and today's MOOCs, and the development of one of my personal favorite pieces of ed-tech, the Speak & Spell.) See, I'm exhausted by the claims by the latest batch of Silicon Valley ed-tech entrepreneurs and their investors that ed-tech is "new" and that education -- I'm quoting from the New York Times here -- "is one of the last industries to be touched by Internet technology." Again, this is a powerful and purposeful re-telling and revising of history designed to shape the direction of the future."


Jim Lerman's insight:


Very enjoyable read.


Via Pieter de Vries