The history of the modern computer age is a brief one. It has been about 50 years since the first operational computer was put into use: the MARK 1 in 1944 at Harvard and ENIAC in 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania. Early use of computers in education was primarily found in mathematics, science and engineering as a mathematical problem-solving tool, replacing the slide rule and thus permitting students to deal more directly with problems of a type and size most likely to be encountered in the real world.[6]
In 1959, at the University of Illinois, Donald Bitier began PLATO, the first, large-scale project for the use of computers in education. The several thousand-terminal system served undergraduate education as well as elementary school reading, a community college in Urbana, and several campuses in Chicago.[7] Thus, the era of computers in education is little more than 35 years old.[8]
The Early Pioneers
At Dartmouth, in 1963, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz transformed......
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