Book ID: CBB609532977

Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning (2021)

unapi

How ed tech was born: Twentieth-century teaching machines—from Sidney Pressey's mechanized test-giver to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box. Contrary to popular belief, ed tech did not begin with videos on the internet. The idea of technology that would allow students to “go at their own pace” did not originate in Silicon Valley. In Teaching Machines, education writer Audrey Watters offers a lively history of predigital educational technology, from Sidney Pressey's mechanized positive-reinforcement provider to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box. Watters shows that these machines and the pedagogy that accompanied them sprang from ideas—bite-sized content, individualized instruction—that had legs and were later picked up by textbook publishers and early advocates for computerized learning. Watters pays particular attention to the role of the media—newspapers, magazines, television, and film—in shaping people's perceptions of teaching machines as well as the psychological theories underpinning them. She considers these machines in the context of education reform, the political reverberations of Sputnik, and the rise of the testing and textbook industries. She chronicles Skinner's attempts to bring his teaching machines to market, culminating in the famous behaviorist's efforts to launch Didak 101, the “pre-verbal” machine that taught spelling. (Alternate names proposed by Skinner include “Autodidak,” “Instructomat,” and “Autostructor.”) Telling these somewhat cautionary tales, Watters challenges what she calls “the teleology of ed tech”—the idea that not only is computerized education inevitable, technological progress is the sole driver of events.

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Reviewed By

Review Stephen Petrina (2023) Review of "Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (pp. 88-90). unapi

Review Victoria Cain (July 2022) Review of "Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning". Technology and Culture (pp. 853-855). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB609532977/

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Authors & Contributors
Chapman, Anne
Hume, Natalie
Agnieszka Rychwalska
Andrzej Nowak
Liggieri, Kevin
Kurlansky, Mark
Concepts
Technology and society
Communication technology
Methods of communication; media
Computers and computing
Educational technology
Teaching; pedagogy
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, early
19th century
21st century
Early modern
20th century, late
Places
United States
Germany
Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
India
Institutions
Facebook (firm)
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