History of Teaching Machines

teachingmachin.es

39 points·cardamomo··7 comments

In case it's not clear from the timeline, this is part of a larger project by Audrey Watters, writer of the fantastic Hack Education blog (http://hackeducation.com/).

Teaching Machines is the title of her forthcoming book, to be published by MIT Press.

Wasn't expecting to see Sesame street on the list. You could indeed argue its a system for broadcasting information to young children. But by that definition would a teacher with a standardized textbook not apply as well (only less technologically advanced as it uses paper instead of radio waves)?

I fondly remember the first time I did a computerized spelling exercise at school. Especially in what I didn't learn (spelling) and what I did (Windows 1.0 when I minimized the application and started clicking around).

If sesame street is in, then every puppet or shadow show going back to prehistory is also a teaching machine.

Well no, Sesame Street was explicitly designed for engaging and teaching young children. Significant research and testing went into production to validate.

AH Thanks for sharing this. SUPER fascinating. I've always loved B.F. Skinner (1955) after I learned about pigeon superstition from the intro to Mr Nobody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye5D1qdTh4Q

Make sure you’ve watched Mind Field episode about replicating Skinner Box experiment on humans. (It’s probably for YouTube Premium accounts only, but really worth it)

https://youtu.be/BR-eMMCp7tg

Thanks for the heads up.

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