During the session Richard posted a number of questions. Some you need the visuals to think about but here are some questions and responses that worked well with text. I hope I've captured it all, and keep adding to the list!
1. What is your earliest memory of an educational technoloyg?
- Frances Bell: teacher had a set of fabric pockets with exercise cards and you had a real sense of achievement as you put your card in a pocket and move on to the next one.
- George Siemens: school in Mexico and couldn't afford paper. Each child had a slate and chalk.
- George Siemens): The PET ...as a computer
- cindys: DEC Rainbow
- George Siemens: writing tablet
- jcrom: Blackboard
- Don McIntosh: Farm Radio Forum
- Bob Sleik: Tandy 1000 with 8 inch floppy disk
- Doug Symington: Atari ST for term papers for me re computers
- DeirdreB: French class having recorded tapes
- @injenuity: I have a letter from my grandmother describing telecourses from the 1960's
- cindys: filmstrips
- amanda: New Math coloured blocks
- Doug Symington: might have had some audio tapes for languages in k-12 but-- and *do* remember felt boards now mentioned....
- amanda - slides
- cindy: I still use a feltboard with preschoolers
- dnorman: a wooden "shoe" with laces that we used in preschool to learn how to tie our own shoes...
- cindy: my 30 year old son had that chalk board in Mexico. They still find paper expensive
- Bob Sleik: film projectors - being the library resouce student trained on how to use it.
- Doug Symington: Dewey
- Alec Couros: schwier
- amanda: Tony Bates
- @injenuity: prokofy
- George Siemens: Merril
- Sylvia Currie: Marlene Scardamalia
- George Siemens: Bereiter
- len: Richard Lewis
- DeirdreB: Siemens
- Doug Symington: Zygotsky
- George Siemens: cdn: Anderson
- cindys: katy campbell
- George Siemens: Garrison
- George Siemens: Abrami
- Doug Symington: McLuhan
- cindys: nancy white
- Sylvia Currie: etienne wenger
- Alec Couros: jonassen
- George Siemens: not ed tech, but great writer: Kegan
- francesbell: etienne wenger
- Don McIntosh: Mager
- DaveC: Neil Postman
- Alec Couros: did anyone say seymour papert?
- George Siemens: and Alec, and Wiley
- Richard Schwier: the open course we're seeing now, such as Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course
- Sylvia Currie: browsers
- amanda: WWW/Internet
- George Siemens: the film projector
- Alec Couros: gopher
- George Siemens: the radio
- amanda: email
- Treva Emter - HPSD : computers became more affordable for schools
- DeirdreB: invention of the internet
- DaveC: I'd say the ballpoint pen.
- Treva Emter - HPSD : open source materials
- francesbell: literacy being value for working classes
- Don McIntosh: Television in the 50's - the answer to all our educational problems
- DeirdreB: Web2.0
- George Siemens: public schooling for all
- Treva Emter - HPSD : collaborative work using the web
- Alec Couros: any form of quick duplication (press, photocopy, etc.)
- dnorman: digital natives (George Siemens: great answer DNorman)
- len: single concept 8mm movie cartridge: .-)
- Doug Symington: non-keyboard IO devices for computers (i.e., tablets and interactive whiteboards)
- amanda: social networks
- George Siemens: great answer DNorman
- Don McIntosh: The availability of the PC.
- Sylvia Currie: group communication, not just one-to-one
- Don McIntosh: Skinner's machines
- Alec Couros: Laser Discs ... they should have been something, we have a ton downstairs we can't play
- Bob Sleik: the original laser disks (the size of full size records
- people lens (This one was fun! Match the faces with names)
- researchers lens
- organizational lens
- "thinkers" in ICT lens
- publication lens
- panacea lens
- social lens
- theoretical lens
- national lens
1. What is your earliest memory of an educational technology?
Pencil, china ink and brush, calligraphy notebooks
2. Who is the most influential scholar in educational technology you can name?
Ted Nelson, Alan Kay, Stuart Moulthrop, Charles Peirce, Umberto Eco
3. What is an important event in the history of educational technology?
World Wide Web
4. What are some of the historical lenses we can use to look at the history of EdTech?
Social semiotics
This is a most powerful example of how two heads are better than one, and three heads are better than two.
I think that we each have our lists of influential people on the technology side. Mine is populated with people that you have probably never heard of, but who I work with and who have been pecking away at this for decades but do not write scholarly papers.
I'd like to see some narratives of these types of people, not just the "famous" ones.
The best parts of museums for me has always been the exhibits and re-enactments of ordinary life "back in the day".
I'm also attracted to the "day in the life" and hidden gems that we can discover.
So, bring 'em on! We're soon going to open up a wiki as a temporary storage space for items, and it will be a place where you can gather these stories and add them to the collection.
Thanks!
hello:
I was delighted to see Richard's post.
As I've been out of the country (Canada) for a couple of weeks, I'm just catching up on the tail end of one SCoPE conference and the start of another, and so the emails are often out of context. However, as I was reading through the various posting around those educators who have influenced the direction of education and technology, I found myself thinking about the "little" names....the ones that might not be known outside of their own institutions or their own communities (many of which will not be "main stream" communities).
As I'm still catching up on all my email, I have no names to offer right now, but as we are building up a list of influential experts, I do hope there's a place to capture the influence of the less-well-known.
Thanks, Chris Horgan (SAIT Polytechnic)
Not sure if I can add anything new, but here it goes...
What is your earliest memory of an educational technology?
Crayons and colouring books
Who is the most influential scholar in educational technology you can name?
Paulo Freire (one of them at least)
What is an important event in the history of educational technology?
Free and open source web 2.0 tools - grant learning power/responsibility to the "people" , opening up possibilities to a wider range of people independently of educational budgets, etc
I also was not able to attend the Elluminate session, so here goes my thoughts:
1. What is your earliest memory of an educational technology?
- Filmstrips. Remember the "beep" sound when it was time to proceed?
2. Who is the most influential scholar in educational technology you can name?
- Jean-Francois Lyotard. While he did not address educational technology in the way we may consider it here, I think he discussed how we can have this very subjective discussion itself.
- I suppose I should also mention Jean Baudrillard as well, though Lyotard has had more of a personal effect on me.
3. What is an important event in the history of educational technology?
- Tim Berners-Lee helped us to communicate together, which is a first step in education.
- Bill Gates showed us we can communicate better when all our technology plays in the same sandbox.
4. What are some of the historical lenses we can use to look at the history of EdTech?
- Freire's concept of banking in education; educational technology now allows for more voices in learning.
Thank you for the feedback, Richard. My user profile on my home computer got corrupted last week, so reinstalled the operating system and most of the programs, and am finally trying to catch up a bit on my (electronic) life. Let me begin my reflection on your suggestion here.
Jean-Francois Lyotard -- Lyotard was one of the founding members of and more important of those considered to be postmodernists. I recall the first time I read his seminal work The Postmodern Condition (which was funded partly as a Canadian initiative in Quebec), I was a bit overwhelmed. This work addresses issues of a society where knowledge and power are seen through the lens of those who hold it, so how we see the world is partly due to those who are in control. His definition of postmodernism itself, which (translated into English) is "incredulity toward metanarrative," can mean that diversity of worldview (in its many meanings) means that a traditional Western view of history and society (which is overwhelmingly dominated by a US view of "things") is derived from a power that no longer can be seen from a merely one-sided perspective (the dualistic "we are right" or "of course this is the 'true' way to perceive" this or that). In a nutshell--in an incredibly complex world that is now made even more complex (and flat) with technology and online social networking and learning, it is not longer as easy to assume everybody sees the world or learning or education or "right" or "wrong" in the same way, as "we" no longer have the power to enforce it.
While Lyotard is certainly more complex and controversial, this was the thinking I had when I first suggested him here. Lyotard is not per se focused on technology, but as technology how has such an influence on how and why and who uses it educationally, I think his work is even more important now.
Regarding Baudrillard, I was thinking about his concepts in his work Simulation and Simulacra as well as his concept of hyperreality. With an increasingly complex world that is focused on production and consumption (here we go again with the power issues and who controls what for whom; think about this from our perspective on education and learning), scenes in the media and technology are often more real than reality itself (who doesn't think life for reality tv stars is better, or that we should all look and act like supermodels or glitterati?), so there is a blurring between our lives and the ways we begin to "believe" our lives should be? While this is before Baudrillard wrote, think about how glamorous movie stars were when they smoked; even network news people used to smoke on sets. Everybody smoked, so when the science reports started to show smoking is dangerous, nothing really changed until we stopped seeing the "reality" of smoking as "glamorous;" remove it from the media, and we tend to then emulate it in out lives.
When I mentioned Baudrillard, I thought of his work and how Second Life and social media are more real than F2F relationships for many people, and while this can be contested and seen from a variety of perspectives, I simply like the way Baudrillard helps to provide a framework from which to consider these ideas.
Phew, all this thinking about these two makes me want to reread them . . .
Your suggestion of Freire is interesting. We've so far largely focused on people in the edtech field, but it makes sense to expand our discussion to include theorists that have contributed to the foundation. In this regard, we may find value in considering Oltlet, Bush, etc. EdTech is not a field that developed in a vacuum. As we consider our project here, we need to tie developments of the last century to the long timeline of history...and will need to include many theorists, inventors, and others that we might not typically equate with edtech.
George
George, this is a good point. When you and Richard started talking about this issue, there were no ed tech people per se who came to mind. I then started to consider how I approach these issues, and my worldview has been heaviy influenced from these people, so thus my contribution.
No, this stuff we are doing does not arrive in a vacuum, and I think that if we consider this we will become better educators and learners in the process.
There is already a need to put this information into a searchable repository.
It seems obvious that we should also include a technology (or media) lens. I suggest that we go back to the 19th century and include correspondence, radio (Farm Radio Forum), adult education development (the Antigonish movement).
Earliest memory of educational technology:
I was going to say those film projectors that had little strips of film that came in tiny canisters, but then George's answer reminded me what technology really is. My answer would be those almost tan colored pieces of paper with the special lines that we used to learn how print (they obviously didn't work for me).
Who is the most influential scholar in educational technology you can name?
Rick Schwier and Alec Couros (they are the most influential in my life at least).
What is an important event in the history of educational technology?
Invention of telephone and radio.
What are some of the historical lenses we can use to look at the history of EdTech?
I would say the lens of our own experience. We have seen so much of the history of EdTech first hand.
I can't believe that I forgot the printing press. Sorry about that.
Rick
In honor of our 10th birthday, we've brought back our oldest available index. Take a look back at Google in January 2001.
Somehow seeing the "no results" feedback in the search has a lot of impact for me. A lot has happened very recently! Obviously many search terms turn up empty: Wikieducator, Open Educational Resources,etc. Here's one for contrast. The term Edublogger didn't exist in 2001, now it shows 76,400 results!

and Connectivism returned 71 hits, but not many are "connected" to our good friend George's ideas.
My, it isn't easy to keep up with the acceleration is it?
1. What is your earliest memory of an educational technology?
Sesame Street, calculator, microscope, typewriter
2. Who is the most influential scholar in educational technology you can name?
Murray Goldberg
3. What is an important event in the history of educational technology?
telecommunication
4. What are some of the historical lenses we can use to look at the history of EdTech?
EdTech through the senses – sight, audio, touch, smell, taste
The evolution of edtech pedagogies – the self paced era, the constructivist era, the connectivist era, …
And Murray Goldberg. Of course!