1962 Roger Ebert Article Unearthed On Distance Learning For Homebound Students (medium.com) 16
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes:
In 2011, the late film critic Roger Ebert gave tech's movers-and-shakers a PLATO history lesson in his Remaking My Voice TED Talk. "When I heard the amazing talk by Salman Khan on Wednesday, about the Khan Academy website that teaches hundreds of subjects to students all over the world, I had a flashback," explained Ebert. "I was sent over to the computer lab of the University of Illinois to interview the creators of something called 'PLATO.' The initials stood for Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations. This was a computer-assisted instruction system. Which in those days ran on a computer named ILLIAC. The programmers said it could assist students in their learning...."
Ebert probably would have been surprised to see how the COVID-19 pandemic caught U.S. schools flat-footed in 2020. In a never-before-published chapter that didn't make it into his book The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture, author Brian Dear reveals that Ebert reported on PLATO's potential to deliver online learning to homebound students in a 1962 article he wrote for the News-Gazette while still in high school. Ebert's Jan. 6, 1962 story on PLATO began:
"For no more than the price of a good television set, homebound handicapped children may soon be able to get an education equal to those offered in schools. [...] Other predicted uses for the unique teaching system include [...] an education system which allows the student to set his own pace, instead of forcing him to 'stay with the class.'..."
Dear points out that the PLATO project launched the first week of June 1960, more than sixteen years before Salman Khan was even born.
Ebert probably would have been surprised to see how the COVID-19 pandemic caught U.S. schools flat-footed in 2020. In a never-before-published chapter that didn't make it into his book The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture, author Brian Dear reveals that Ebert reported on PLATO's potential to deliver online learning to homebound students in a 1962 article he wrote for the News-Gazette while still in high school. Ebert's Jan. 6, 1962 story on PLATO began:
"For no more than the price of a good television set, homebound handicapped children may soon be able to get an education equal to those offered in schools. [...] Other predicted uses for the unique teaching system include [...] an education system which allows the student to set his own pace, instead of forcing him to 'stay with the class.'..."
Dear points out that the PLATO project launched the first week of June 1960, more than sixteen years before Salman Khan was even born.
PLATO still exists (Score:2)
at cyberone.org
Though it's mostly used for playing a few old games, it still has several developer's from the original systems, and is also a good place to discuss running your own system (see http://www.control-data.info/C... [control-data.info])
Re:PLATO still exists (Score:4, Interesting)
Gah, I forgot to fix the link - https://cyber1.org/ [cyber1.org]
PLATO - Through A Locked Glass Door (Score:5, Interesting)
In the late 1970s I learned that my campus had PLATO terminals, and decided to do my bachelors thesis on developing a system for learning cuneiform on it. Got the thesis topic approved, and after a surprising amount of effort found where the terminals were. They were in a the teaching hospital on campus, next to the medical library, and they were in a little dark room with a glass door that was locked. I went up the chain of organizational authority to see how I could use them, and in the end found that I would have to apply for a grant, get in funded, and only them could I touch the PLATO terminals. I never ever saw them used, nor ever found anyone who knew of them being used.
Re: (Score:2)
Could not open them, so did not find out until we got them home that all the graphics cards were pulled.
Just my 2 cents
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Schools should close indefinitely (Score:2, Informative)
We should consider defunding the schools as well as the police. If schools open, children will get infected and bring it back to their parents. Many of those parents are Javascript programmers who make 100k a year. Stay home. Wear a mask. Wash your hands.
PLATO was my life (Score:5, Interesting)
I was a PLATO IV user in college in the 70s, and it consumed my life - a bit much so for my education. But I learned a lot developing "lessons" (what PLATO called programs) and tools for other lesson developers, and also the sort of hijinx, problems and friendships that reappeared many years later in online communities. Later I would work alongside PLATO systems developers at DEC. I still fondly remember That Friendly Orange Glow.
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Indeed! For several years in high school and after I spent far too much time in =avatar on NovaNET and the original CERL system, too. I also did educational things, and did learn some TUTOR programming.
PLATO had such an amazing set of tools and features, especially for the limitations of the era. It worked well on a 2400bps dialup, and 512x512 pixel resolution addressable display, later in color.
Usenet and the Internet were a disappointments in comparison to the sort of community found on those systems.
Re: PLATO was my life (Score:2)
I was using PLATO in the early 80s. This article brings back the horror of that time. It was no fun for us to use. Perhaps our administrator didn't let us use the fun part.
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I'm another Plato-ite. I was on the CERL system. Champaign-Urbana where the University of Illinois was had a whole social underground clustered around Plato. I knew people who went on to work for Novanet and some of the other companies that wrote training software for both private companies and the government.
My one notable thing was that at one time I was one of the only people to have a Plato terminal in my bedroom linked to CERL over a cable television network. It was the late 80s and the Plato staff and
Comprehensive education (Score:4, Interesting)
Schools were not caught blind. There is a fair amount of infrastructure that allows us to teach remotely. What was missing were college educated teachers who were computer literate, too many teachers have to taught step by step how to use an obvious program like Teams, and students who value learning over grades. Without these two elements, remote learning is very difficult. Teachers are reluctant to learn, and students are reluctant when they do not understand how to get the grade they want.
The second issue is that teacher involves a fair amount of motivation. Some students are just going to learn no matter what. Some students, given a book, a worksheet, an adaptive interactive computer model, are going to learn everything. Other students given the same resources are going to figure out how to complete the work without doing any work. I saw one kid a long time ago figure out that if he got everything wrong, he would be given simpler questions and eventually complete all objectives but at such a low level that no learning occurred. I saw another kid realize that he could take the test a few time as quickly as possible, and use the process of elimination to guess enough answers to get a passing grade.
The point is that teaching is not about task completion, which is what computers are good at measuring, but learning which no one is good at measuring. So distance learning requires motivation of someone who is not in the room and measurement of learning of someone who may be actively trying to subvert countermeasures.
And teachers can't use the motivation that one might have in the workplace, and the kids likely do not have the maturity to even understand of respond to such motivations. If we do actually have an instrument that measures learning, the reluctant student may find it too difficult and refuse to do it, or may create some drama and cry to an adult to get sympathy for something that is simply their unwillingness to learn. For instance, on the AP exam the alleged most intelligent students in the world started crying because they did not know how to upload a file. I have done AP. I know the instructions are detailed, but not always complete for every contingency. Part of being an AP student is understanding context. But in this case, as so many other, adults break down when a crying child thinks that life is unfair, and blames the adult.
I mean seriously, how can anyone expect a child to learn when all the responsibility is on the adult. If the child can simply say I can't remember a password or the Zoom does not work, and get a pass, what motivation do they have. If you have a choice between learning or throwing a temper tantrum to get out of learning, which do you think they will make?
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DAMN, that's a good response! Salut!
I often wonder what would've happened if I'd had more control over, been more responsible for, my elementary and high school education? I certainly was smart enough (IQ 160+), but would've I been better suited to make those decisions? (As an example: anyone who can prove I was better off being forced to study "Great Expectations" in English class (mixed with a group of students who pretty much didn't want to read ANYTHING, much less that!), rather than using the time a
I read this as Roger Ebert (Score:2)
and was like.. wtf...
July 1984 Story on the PLATO Atari Cartridge (Score:2)
PLATO RISING: Online learning for Atarians [atarimagazines.com]: "By 1978, the PLATO terminal evolved into a high-resolution, touch-sensitive screen with a dedicated keyboard, graphics printer and 1200-baud modem. As personal computers became more capable, CDC developed terminal "emulators" that gave some PC's, such as the zenith Z-100 and the IBM PC, the ability to connect to the PLATO system. This eventually led to the Homelink "after-hours" service, which was affordably priced at $5 per hour; as a result, a whole new generat