ALFRED NORTON GOLDSMITH

When Thomas Edison invented the motion picture projector, he thought that he had invented an educational machine for teaching and learning and that is how he described it in his patent. Entertainment eclipsed it and educators made only slight use of it. The executives of early radio thought that they had a solution for university and other education, but there was very little use of radio for formal education. With television, the early expectation was that it would be a technological educational breakthrough and the U. S. Office of Education in the 1960s actually paid to have an airplane flying around the Midwest broadcasting educational television to schools. Again the materials never got developed for classrooms, but Sesame Street – financed originally by the Carnegie Foundation and the Department of Education – was the first large scale educational use of modern technology. In 1962 IBM had utilized a commercial computer for teaching but the cost of computers was so high that the idea was not realistic. When the PC movement began the many applications that were possible for business and personal activity was so great that there was little formal educational activity using PCs. But by second decade of the 21st century there were many excellent educational materials accessible via PC and millions of students were studying on line. The online University of Phoenix which had not existed before became the largest university in the country, and many millions of students throughout the world were learning via technology. Goldsmith’s “University of the Air” had finally emerged as the “University of the Internet”.

When Thomas Edison invented the motion picture projector, he thought that he had invented an educational machine for teaching and learning and that is how he described it in his patent. Entertainment eclipsed it and educators made only slight use of it. The executives of early radio thought that they had a solution for university and other education, but there was very little use of radio for formal education. With television, the early expectation was that it would be a technological educational breakthrough and the U. S. Office of Education in the 1960s actually paid to have an airplane flying around the Midwest broadcasting educational television to schools. Again the materials never got developed for classrooms, but Sesame Street – financed originally by the Carnegie Foundation and the Department of Education – was the first large scale educational use of modern technology. In 1962 IBM had utilized a commercial computer for teaching but the cost of computers was so high that the idea was not realistic. When the PC movement began the many applications that were possible for business and personal activity was so great that there was little formal educational activity using PCs. But by second decade of the 21st century there were many excellent educational materials accessible via PC and millions of students were studying on line. The online University of Phoenix which had not existed before became the largest university in the country, and many millions of students throughout the world were learning via technology. Goldsmith’s “University of the Air” had finally emerged as the “University of the Internet”.