Instructional Technologies: A Timeline |
| 1910: The first catalog of instructional films is published. "Books will soon be obsolete in schools….It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture." (Thomas Edison, 1913) |
| 1923: The National Professional Organization for Visual Instruction is founded. It later became the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. |
| 1924: Sidney Pressey invents a "teaching and testing" machine. |
| 1940s: The first computers are developed. |
| 1950s & 1960s: The popular audiolingual method (ALM) of language learning leads to the creation of the "language lab". |
| 1957: The USSR launches Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite, and the US government reacts by dedicating more money to technology in schools. |
| 1963: IBM and Stanford University collaborate on a program (Coursewriter) to introduce computers into elementary schools. |
| 1968: B.F. Skinner writes The Technology of Teaching. |
| 1970s: The first home computers are developed by Apple and IBM. |
| 1980s: Home computers proliferate and computers begin to be widely used in schools. |
| 1989: The University of Phoenix online campus is founded. |
| 1991: The World Wide Web is developed and the first "web page" appears. |
| 1993: The Mosaic web browser is developed (Mosaic later becomes Netscape). |
| 1995: The US Department of Education awards its first Technology Innovation Challenge Grants. |
| 1998: Google is founded. |
| 2001: Wikipedia appears. |
| 2004: Duke University distributes iPods to all incoming first-year students. |
| 2011: Softmedia reports that there are 582 million web sites, more than twice as many as in 2010. |