The+Magic+Box

= The Magic Box = Paul, R. (Executive Producer) & Petrina, S. (2002, October 11). : Technology in education (Sound Recording). Washington, D.C.: National Public Radio, Sound Prints.

You can watch this story unfold in a form of time line we created at http://www.xtimeline.com/timeline/Story-of-Educational-Technology

The Magic Box illustrates what Marshall McLuhan asserted in that ‘the content of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium’

Take for instance the pencil. It is among the most ubiquitous technology we have and its impact on man has been tremendous and yet it remains invisible. We do not think nor ask how the pencil came into being. And the same thing has happened to the computer. The computer, like the pencil, is essential and yet we forget that it is there and what the world would be like without it.

The Magic Box is an attempt by Paul and Richard to study how the computer got into our classroom. We assume that the computer belongs in the classroom but the computer did not just organically get there. It took extensive engineering to bring computers and education together and it involved primarily teachers and salesmen.

The introduction of technology in the classroom can be traced back to the early effort of Sydney Pressey who developed a machine often called the ‘Automatic Teacher’. One of Pressey’s main arguments was that the ‘Automatic Teacher would lead to the individualization of education. However, the machine was costly and he was ahead of his time. It was also the depression of the 1930s and due to cutbacks in spending, the machine was abandoned. However, a version of it was used by the Navy until the 1950s primarily as for data collation.



Computers were sold to schools by IBM in the 1960s when Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society promoted the use of technology in the classroom. IBM took advantage of the school’s need for funds by selling them computers to record attendance. This was successful because schools got paid based on how many students turned up. Hence computers were not used in an educational sense.

It was the teachers in vocational institutes that gave rise to the concept of computer as instructional tool. Students in the vocational institutes were non college bound and they were destined for menial jobs like punch cards which was what computers were used for then. Hence students were taught how to use computers. However, some teachers let their students use computers anyway they wanted to and in the process teachers also thought of using computers as instructional tools. IBM exploited this by producing the Course Writer software program marketed towards small children. The software had some success with about a third of American students having exposure to the program at some point. However, there were concerns that typing may deform the child's hands and no one could demonstrate the definitive value of using the computer for educational purposes.

This may have been the end of the computer in schools if not for Steve Wozniak. In the 1970s in California Steve Wozniak, who was building his own computer, met Liza Loop. This meeting changed not only his life but our lives as well. Wozniak is credited with contributing significantly to the personal computer revolution of the 1970s. Loop is credited with providing children with public access to her centre, the LOOP Centre, and for being the first person to take an Apple Computer into the classroom. Steve Jobs who later joined Wozniak decided to make computers accessible to children as he believed that a child’s first computer will remain his computer of choice for life.

Steve Job partnered with Steve Wozniak and they invented the Apple II home computer and introduced it into the market in 1977. This was one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. The Apple II became one of the most recognizable and successful computers during the 1980s and early 1990s. It was aggressively marketed through volume discounts and manufacturing arrangements to educational institutions which made it the first computer in widespread use in American secondary schools.



In 1984 the Macintosh personal computer was released and targeted teachers as their main market while IBM continued to deal with school administrators. This is noted as potentially one of the biggest reasons for the success of the Macintosh.



The success of Apple Computers, in the 3 billion dollar educational market, prompted other companies to target schools. IBM was the major player with then vice president Jim Dezell getting IBM back into schools with the IBMC 1500. This computer was still too big and costly and once again failed to make an impact. At this point other computer companies started to appear in the market like Univac, Commodor, Tandy, and Atari. All were failures until the emergence of Microsoft Windows, software that mimicked the Macintosh interface, once again ushered the PC back into the Educational system.

The Internet has a huge impact on the use of educational technology in school but that’s another story.

Find out the lately [|Apple Macintosh Computers].