Here are some questions that I wrote down to myself of a sheet of paper.
Here are some ideas for events. I thought about events and theories regarding educational communication, art about computer science, and notions of large school social norms, and investigated possible ideas for events. I then looked for a rough year date of the initiation of the theory or event.
| Date | Name | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6600 BC | Jiahu Symbols | The Jiahu were a form of proto-writing that predated full featured writing. Without significant context, it would be very hard to interpret the meaning of a text written using these symbols. | Link. |
| 984 | Snell's Law | Ibn Sahl derived Snell's law in the manuscript On Burning Mirrors and Lenses. This law finds a mathematical explanation for why the image of a pencil in water is bent, when the object in reality is straight. While refraction is commonly used to indicate the flaws in visual perception and to justify the elevated position of writing, discoveries like Snell's law show that it is not the vision that is deceptive, rather our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature that are used to create the image. | Link. |
| 105 | Paper | Paper is invented, which is used for many purposes, including writing, which allowed laternatives to carving writing in stone and metal. | Link. |
| 1301 | Apprenticeship system | A system of education consisting of a master craftsman employing apprentices and mentoring them in a field until they have achieved a standard level of compentency. It has a very good student to teacher ratio and consists of a lot of learing by doing. | Link. |
| 1440 | Printing Press | The Printing press allowed for the mass production of printed materials, therebye bringing the power of writing to the masses. | Link. |
| 1721 | Factory system | The Factory system led to lowering the required skills of workers, treating them like interchangable parts, and informed | Link. |
| 1732 | Poor Richard's Almanack | Benjamin Franklin published Poor Richar'd Almanack, which was an early example of edutainment. | Link. |
| 1760 - 1840 | Industrial Revolution | The rise of production methods by machine. These eventually led to the development of the factory system. | Link. |
| 1804 | Jacquard loom | A mechanical computer that allowed for the manufacturing of textiles. This visual computing device predated general computing devices. | Link. |
| 1833 | Analytical Engine | Charles Babbage invented the analytical engine, which was the first general purpose computer. | Link. |
| 1843 | Factory Model School | Inspired by Prussia, Horace Mann brought over what is now the defacto standard model for public education, characterized by impersonal secular building, efficiency, and an emphasis on training students to be obedient productive citizens. The schools were free however and led to widespread educational opportunities in America. | Link. |
| Social Norms | 19th Century | Social norms dictate informal rules in society that are followed without communication. Sociology theorists such as Karl Marx, Talcott Parsons, Heinrich Popitz< have created theories for the development of social roles. For instance, Popitz believes that social norms can avoid mental processing by the brain and thereby speed up social interaction. I personally am skeptical of social norms and actively try to remove those that seem arbitrary. I would like every social norm to have an explicit reason./td> | Link. |
| 1924 | Zone of proximal Development | Lev Vygotsky defined the zone of proximal development as the difference between what a learner can do unaided and what they cannot do. The theory states that the role of education is to provide learners with experiences that they can do with guidance. | Link. |
| 1929 - 1935 | Cultural Hegemony | As part of his Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci developed the theory of Cultural Hegemony, which deals with long term dominant social norms of a time period, which allow a ruling class to dominate society by allowing them to think that the norms are beneficial to everyone. | Link. |
| 1946–1964 | U.S. Baby Boom | The U.S. had a period of high births following World War II. Birth spikes like these tax the U.S. social services, such as the education system which lead them to prefer standardization and quantity over quality. This creates a scarcity in high quality educational experiences which drives up tuition costs, which in turn increases the dependance of educated students on the standardized labor market. It also increased the number of young and old people who are dependant on the working age people to keep society moving. | Link. |
| 1950 | Scallfolding Theory | Jerome Bruner developed this theory when thinking about language acquisition in young children. The ideas is that an expert provides a lots of cognitive support and details at the beginning, but as a learner progresses, the supports are taken away until the learner becomes independant. This is intended to keep a child's learning in the zone of proximal development. | Jerome's NYU page. |
| 1962 | Serialism | 20th Century Composers started investigating composing music based on the manipulations of set theoretic structures. Music of this time period was tied quite literally to mathematics, although I question whether it really captures the feelings of dedicated mathematicians. | Link. |
| 1970 | Back to Basic Movement | Evidently their was a push to go back to the basics of traditional education in the 1970's because students were scoring poorly and starting to take too many electives. | Link. |
| 1980 | The Learning Company (TLC) | TLC was founded in 1980 and produced lots of learning software, including the popular Reader Rabbit series. | Link. |
| 1980 | Cognitive tutors | An automated system of providing immediate feedback to students and providing hints as to their next steps in solving a problem. | Link. |
| 1987 | Microsoft Powerpoint | Released in 1987 by the Forethought, Inc. software company, Microsoft Powerpoint grew to become one of the predominant software for creating presentations. It is used by many teachers, due to its ease of use and relative low cost for production. It is much cheaper to use than to hand-animate a story about one's subject. | Link. |
| 20th Century | Jerome Bruner's Perception Opinion theory | Jerome Bruner developed a theory for how people for opinions based on their perceptions. | Link. |
| 2000 | Serious Games Initiative | Serious games using fun as a pedegogical tool started coming more to prominance in various industries. | Link. |
| 2001 | No Child Left Behind Act | A federal education initiative designed to reduce the achievement gap by requiring that all students be put through standardized testing. | Link. |
| 2005 | Numb3rs TV Series | Numb3rs was one an American TV show that depicted mathematics in a way that showed its applicability to solving societies problems, such as crime fighting. It used visualizations and some details about the concepts that aided in grounding the descisions in solid mathematical theory. | Link. |