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The Teaching and Computing Collection captures the rich history of how computers have been used for teaching.
Decades before computers were available to consumers, attempts were made to invent machines to “automate” teaching. Some early examples of this became associated with “behaviorist” views of learning, and specifically, B.F. Skinner. A somewhat simplistic view of the history of educational technology purports that some educators tried to “port” early teaching machines, based upon behaviorist learning theory, to create what became known as “Computer Assisted Instruction” (CAI). This type of computer-based learning is generally contrasted with computer-based educational technologies grounded in constructivist and constructionist learning theory. In reality, when computers became available to educators, there was a wide spectrum of experimental attempts to employ them to teach students, and those attempts were grounded in an equally wide array of learning theories.
The collection consists of an extensive collection of books, documentation and software that captures the rich history of how computers have been used for teaching. Here is a tiny sample of what is in this collection.
Think-A-Tron
PLATO
On the Web
PLATO History Foundation
The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture (Brian Dear)
Athena
The New Media Museum holds fifteen linear feet of records related to MIT’s Project Athena and the history of educational computing projects at MIT. The records accumulated over the course M. E. Hopper’s decade of various types of academic involvement with Athena and the MIT Center for Educational Computing Initiatives under the direction of Steven R. Lerman. Her roles evolved from writing her doctoral research about academic computing projects that used Athena (TODOR, Mechanics 2.01 Problem Set Solutions) and AthenaMuse (Physical Geology Tutor) to eventually working on the final cleanup and documentation of AthenaMuse 2.2 (multimedia extensions to X-Windows). The New Media Museum collection specifically includes over three linear feet of records about the creation, functionality and use of AthenaMuse and the projects that used the software. The records also include the original tapes and transcriptions of oral histories about many projects at MIT.
On the Web
Educational Courseware Production in Advanced Computing Environments (M. E. Hopper, Doctoral Dissertation)
AthenaMuse 2.2 Documentation (Hopper, M. E., Editor, MIT Center for Educational Computing Initiatives)
Usable Software in Advanced Educational Computing Projects (M. E. Hopper, ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics)
The Role of Learners in the Construction of Successful Courseware Projects in Distributed Academic Computing Environments (M. E. Hopper, Presentation at Annual Meeting of American Educational Research Association)
A Project About Projects: Watching Academic E-Media Projects Evolve (M. E. Hopper, MIT Media-in-Transition Conference)
Methods for Studying Educational Computing Projects: Challenges and Opportunities (M. E. Hopper, History of Computers in Education SIG, IFIP World Computer Congress Conference Proceedings).
Wisdom from Athena: A Paradigm for Precognition (M. E. Hopper, Presentation at SIGCIS Workshop: Recomputing the History of Information Technology, Society of History of Technology)
AthenaMuse Software and Visual Computing Group (Athena Historyfrom A to Z, MIT)
Projects of the MIT Visual Computing Group and Application Development Group of Project Athena (MIT)
Looking Back at Project Athena (Eva Charles Anna Frederick, MIT News)
Perspectives on Project Athena (Ronald L. Orcutt and Earll M. Murman, ACM SIGUCCS)
Project Athena: Supporting Distributed Computing at MIT (J. M. Arfman and P. Roden, IBM Systems Journal)
Athena History from A to Z (MIT)
Project Athena Records (MIT ArchivesSpace)
Project Athena (MIT Museum)
Project Athena (Wikipedia)
Project Athena (Grokipedia)
Open Education
The New Media Museum collection includes extensive background research used for writing a paper with a rationale for creating open learning management systems.
The New Media Museum also holds records about a project M. E. Hopper started in early Spring of 2001 to create a public directory of free and open educational materials available on the Web. She presented about this at a conference at MIT in February 2021.
Finally, the New Media Museum has information about MIT’s OpenCourseWare which was announced just a few short months after Hopper’s Where’s the Media? presentation.
On the Web
MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT Official Website)
OCW Milestones (MIT OpenCourseWare)
MIT OpenCourseWare Press Conference – April 4, 2001 (YouTube, MIT OpenCourseWare)
MIT OpenCourseWare (Wikipedia)
Bookshelf
These are some of the most relevant books in the collection. More…
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