CLASSROOM TECHNOLOGY THE LEARNING MACHINES

1650 – HORN-BOOK Wooden paddles with printed lessons were popular through the colonial era.

1850 – FERULE A pointer and a corporal punishment device – all in one convenient instrument

1870 – THE MAGIC LANTERN The predecessor to the slide machine, the magic lantern projected images printed on glass plates.

1890 – SCHOOL SLATE Widely used throughout the 19 th century

CHALKBOARD Perhaps the most durable instrument of American education, it would remain a standard tool from the era of the one-room schoolhouse to the computer age.

PENCIL In the late 19 th century, mass- produced paper and pencils became more readily available, gradually replacing the school slate.

STEREOSCOPE At the turn of the century, the Keystone View Company began to market stereoscopes – three-dimensional viewing devices popular in home parlors – to schools, with educational sets containing hundreds of images.

1925 – FILMSTRIP PROJECTOR The cousin to the motion- picture projector: Thomas Edison predicted that, with the advent of projected images, “books will soon be obsolete in schools. Scholars will soon be instructed through the eye.”

RADIO New York City’s Board of Education was the first to pipe lessons to schools through a radio station. Over the next two decades, “schools of the air” would broadcast programs to millions of American students.

1930 – OVERHEAD PROJECTOR Widely used by the U.S. military to train forces in WWII, the overhead projector eventually spread to schools.

MIMEOGRAPH Surviving the Xerox age, the mimeograph produced copies through a hand- crank mechanism.

1950 – LANGUAGE-LAB HEADSET Inspired by theories that students learned languages best through drills and repetition, schools began to install cubicle farms with headsets and audio tapes.

1957 – READING ACCELERATOR With an adjustable metal bar that helped the reader march down a page, the device was meant to improve reading efficiency.

1957 – SKINNER TEACHING MACHINE The behavioral scientist B.F. Skinner developed a series of devices that allowed a student to proceed at his or her own pace through a regimented program of instruction.

1958 – EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION By the early 1960s, there were more than 50 channels that included educational programming on the air across the country.

1960 – LIQUID PAPER A secretary made the white liquid in her kitchen and sold her company to Gillette for nearly $50 million.

1965 – FILMSTRIP VIEWER All the benefits of a filmstrip projector, personalized.

1972 – THE HAND-HELD CALCULATOR Though studies showed that calculators improved students’ attitude toward math, teachers were slow to adopt them for fear that they would undermine the learning of basic skills.

SCANTRON The Scantron Corporation eliminated the hassle of grading multiple-choice exams. The machines were free to use, but the company made money by charging for proprietary grading forms.

1980 – PLATO COMPUTER Public schools in the United States averaged one computer for every 92 students in 1984; in 2008 there was one computer for every 4 students.

1985 – CD-ROM DRIVE A single CD-ROM disc could store an entire encyclopedia, plus video and audio.

1985 – HAND-HELD GRAPHING CALCULATOR Cartesian equations made easy!

1999 – INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD The traditional whiteboard was reinvented using a touch- detecting white screen, a projector, and a computer.

ICLICKER It allows teachers to poll or quiz students and receive results in real time.

2006 – XO LAPTOP The device’s creators seek to supply “one laptop per child” and sell it in developing countries for less than $200 each.

IPAD The school slate reimagined. Is it the end of the textbook?