[Insert technology here] will revolutionize education...

In a previous post on the Khan Academy I said in an aside I think that video’s threat to teaching jobs is greatly exaggerated. When the printing press was invented people probably said “No more need for teachers, you can learn from a book”. Every new technology is predicted to revolutionize teaching and to cause the disappearance of the bulk of teaching jobs. People said it about radio, they said it about film, they said it about TV. They now say it about YouTube videos and laptops. I was asked for evidence for the “They said it about film” part. Given that when I was school we watched educational films projected on the wall at least someone was eager to use the medium in education so someone must have said it. However, the quote comes from an interesting source: Thomas Edison. I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks. I should say that on average we get about two percent efficiency out of schoolbooks as they are written today. The education of the future, as I see it, will be conducted through the medium of the motion picture … where it should be possible to obtain one hundred percent efficiency. Thomas Edison (1922) quoted in Larry Cuban, Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920. Whilst researching this quote I came across Quote Investigator which discusses the history of the quote. This led to an interesting article using the quote to comment on the current Let’s-give-all-the-kids-laptops/iPads movement. Of course, I could have easily found a dozen such articles. And when was television the answer to all educational ills? Well, recently...