Hype surrounding the promise that technology has for education began with Thomas Edison in 1913, when he predicted that the motion picture would end the need for textbooks and revolutionize schools. Years later a phase of development was fueled by government funding, and the educational film industry reached a heyday following World War II, which…

Higher education is under enormous pressure to transform itself and embrace a new paradigm. Operating under an outdated model that no longer aligns with the realities of modern society, institutions of higher education are recognizing the need to drastically remake themselves or possibly cease to exist. This article explores the current landscape…

The early beginnings and evolution of the field of educational technology (ET) have been documented by various scholars in the field. Recently, another form of historical documentation has been undertaken through a project of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT). The AECT HistoryMakers Project is a collaborative…

The improvement of a professional group is due, in part, to its ability for introspection and self-evaluation. This is essentially the process of "analyzing" the profession as it currently is practiced, identifying necessary changes and improvements, and "synthesizing" or creating a new image or model of the profession to…

The importance of public education has never been greater as we enter the dawn of a new millennium. Innumerable efforts have been focused on improving public education, but the unfortunate result has been an array of fractured, piecemeal efforts. What is needed is a systemic approach to go from "tweaking" to "transforming"…

Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs) are the subject of numerous recent articles in "The Chronicle of Higher Education," "The New York Times," and other publications related to their increasing use by a variety of universities to reach large numbers of online students. This article describes the current state of these online…

Increasingly, "research" is not being conducted in a separate group in an organization; rather, it is being integrated into the fabric of the organization. Google recently described such an integrated, "hybrid" model of software research that is characterized by cycles of short duration and small-scope activity that is ongoing…

This article provides the rationales for three recommendations for the future of Instructional Technology: (1) instructional technology as a field seems to have reached a tipping point, where the basic approach to instructional design has stabilized to where further research at this level has waned, suggesting that it is time for instructional…

The author reviews various elements of what may be considered as evidence that the long-awaited shift in the education paradigm is actually happening. Concepts like student-centered learning, attainment-based evaluation, knowledge-based constructivism, and effort-based intelligence are growing, are being more widely recognized as important, and…

This article discusses the evolution of computing education in preparing for the next wave of computing. With the proliferation of mobile devices, most agree that we are living in a "post-PC" world. Using the Raspberry Pi computer platform, based in the UK, as an example, the author discusses computing education in a world where the…

Personal, Internet-connected technologies are becoming ubiquitous in the lives of students, and ubiquitous computing initiatives are already expanding in educational contexts. Historically in the field of education, the terms one-to-one (1:1) computing and ubiquitous computing have been interpreted in a number of ways and have at times been used…

The author traces the growth of K-12 online learning in the United States from its modest genesis in the mid-1990s with 50,000 students to the more than 4 million enrollments today, the fastest scaling ever of any innovation in K-12 education. The evolution from one-size-fits-all online courses to innovative, blended instructional models that are…

This article describes how a textbook has traced 30 years of evolution in instructional technology. One of the book's key continuing features is the ASSURE Model. To connect technology to learning, the Classroom Link was developed. As standards were formulated for teachers and students, they were included in the textbook. Other evolutionary…

Knowledge is like food and drink, a necessity of life, the motor of the economy, and a precondition for any social activities. While considering these facts, one cannot fail to notice that education and agriculture have a lot in common. This article reflects on the parallels between agriculture and education. While agriculture started modernizing…

The practice of distance education in the United States is traced back to its early roots. In the 20th century, distance education remained at the periphery in corporate training, K-12 schools, and most universities, but it gradually developed its practice by using broadcast media, and later the Internet. Since the turn of the current century,…