The history of education is classical described as part of sociology. For example, there is a history of education in russia, in the United states and so on. This approach doesn't focus on education media, but on the education without technology. The better approach is to ask first, which kind of media are used and then describe the situation in a given epoch or a country.
Let us make an example. In former times books were very expensive. That means it was not possible to give a book to every student. The result was, that the only media in education was oral speech. Because speech is cheaper then a printed book. As a consequence the education was grouped around institutions which were able to speak for example around a school or a university. The reason, why the teacher is talking for 45 minutes constantly and the professor at the university is doing the same for 90 minutes has to do, that the spoken word is the cheapest for of education.
Let us compare this with teaching by books and teaching by the internet. Both are modern form of education which are technology driven. The disadvantage of the book and the internet is, that it costs more. For example, in the year 1950, teaching by internet was not available. And teaching with books was very expense. Nowadays the situation has changed, in todays classrooms it is possible to switch between the media. The teacher can stop to speak and give books to the students which they have to read alone. THe precondition is, that the school has enough books for everybody. In a recent most advanced form of education, even the books can be replaced by a computer. Instead of reading a book, the student can ask Facebook.
The surprising fact is, that media-centred education works very similar in any country worldwide. That means, a spoken education in the US works similar to a spoken education in Japan, and a facebook centered education is Germany is equal to a Facebook centered lesson in Brazil. Because of that reason, a classification according to media technology is the strongest approach for talking about education. It makes sense to classify the education system according the technology which is used.
The most surprising fact is, that even non-technology like a human-teacher can be called a media technology. Because the number of words a human teacher can speak in 45 minutes can be measured and he has some feature, which are not available by books for example the ability to answer individual questions. Perhaps, some teachers see themself as some kind of education robot who is doing every day the same and answers the same questions again and again ...
Wikipedia has a huge list of education technology, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_technology For example, radio, VHS cassettes, serious games, computers, tablets, mobile devices, OpenCourseware (webportal), digital whiteboard, Blogs, Webcams, Screencasts, Augmented reality and Moodle. Most of these topics are discussed under the term computer technology. The idea is to use modern computers not for gaming, not for business applications and not for science but for teaching the students.
It is surprising, that nearly all of the modern technologies can be used outside of a school, for example from home. They are grouped around a device, called computer hardware. Only if we are ignoring the computer, education technology has to be centred around an institution. Because, if no computer is available, the education content has to delivered somewhere else for example with a public library or a teacher who can speak to the student. The perhaps most important revolution is, that a computer is able to replace a teacher. That means the computer can replace the institution of a school.
Proofing that statement is easy. We have to only go back into a time, in which computers were not available but the need for education was there. Worldwide, the time before the year 1980 is the right timeperiod for analyzing this situation. The homecomputer revolution in that time wasn't there. The only form of education was a school or a book. A school can be seen as a oral medium in which the educational content is transported with speech. It works in a way that one teacher can tell the content to 30 students at the same time. That means, if the idea is to teach 300 students, 10 teachers are enough. The productivity is compared to individual teaching much higher. And a oral school can be seen as the classical education media in the history of mankind. it was there before the invention of computers and before the first printed books were available.
Now let us compare a school with Open Course ware. The last one is more effective, because one teacher can educate not only 30 students, but 30 million at the same time. They are all connected over the internet and can play the video stream on their consumer devices. A second advantage is, that this works over national borders away. Open Course ware is recorded at the M.I.T. but can be consumed worldwide.
What is the idea behind Open Course ware? It is mainly a huge collection (more then 2200 cources, thausands of videos) of video recordings, the access is for free and it was recorded at the famous M.I.T. university which has the worldwide top teachers. The more general idea is not to use a computer for support traditional education, but using education content for doing something useful with existing computer technology. That means, the computer is not used in the classroom, the computer is used to replace the classroom.
The surprising fact is, that OpenCourseWare is not very famous. Most school and universities are not part of the consortium, they are not streaming their lecture to the internet. I would guess, that most lectures held at universities are never get recorded and never get distributed to a wider audiance. The reasons are copyright questions, not familiar with modern technology, a moral decision against doing so, and general critics on the concept that the student can choose for themself what they want to watch.
What we can say about OpenCourseWare is, that is the latest iteration in media education technology which is available since 2002. It can be seen as an improved tele-teaching school which was done in the past over VHS cassettes and public television.
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