Virtual Education: Cases in Learning & Teaching Technologies (Repost)

Early computer researchers sought ways to use the new invention for learning and teaching purposes. Instructional computing at that time took place on mainframes in the form of typing and reading text, but serious efforts were made to further utilize the computer power to serve education. Examples include the Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations (PLATO) (Alpert & Bitzer, 1970) project, which managed to integrate text and graphics, and the Time-shared, Interactive, Computer-Controlled Information Television (TICCIT) (Merril, Schneider, & Fletcher 1980) project, which introduced the concept of learner-controlled instruction. A major advantage in such environments is the availability of information in the centralized system that was sharable by all users.