Category Archives: Online Learning

The S-Curve of Educational Video

I just posted the most recent piece in my series of columns, “Educational Technology Points of Inflection.” It explains where educational video is in its development life cycle.

The machine Thomas Edison said would replace the textbook.

The machine Thomas Edison said would replace the textbook.

Thomas Edison exclaimed as early as 1913 that “It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture.” He also predicted that motion pictures would replace the textbook and that schools would change drastically. Despite the incredible advances in digital video of the past 25 years, which meet or exceed the exponential increases of Moore’s Law, Edison’s pronouncements remain unrealized. Furthermore, the time of exponential increases in basic capabilities might well be coming to an end, “the significant positive slope of the linear portion of the development curve suggests that significant, even amazing, advances likely lie ahead for video as an effective educational technology.”

You can read the entire piece here: “Educational Video on the S-Curve of Video Technology Development.”

A blog… Finally!

First Web Server

This not the specific computer on which I placed my first Web server, but it is the same model of computer, a NeXT Cube

I didn’t call it a blog, but I started my first Web site on a NeXT Cube on Thanksgiving, 1995. The computer was on loan from the US Air Force Academy, and when a new colleague told me about this new thing called the World Wide Web, I decided I needed to get involved. It turned out that the particular computer I happened to have available was the same type of unit on which Tim Berners-Lee had invented the World Wide Web at the Center for Nuclear Research (CERN)! Going to the CERN FTP site, I downloaded the necessary software, configured the Unix-based software, and,voilà, I was online with my first Web presence! Now, almost 20 years later I am embarking on a blog using WordPress, pretty much the gold standard for this type of functionality.