Table of Contents
The Tech & Learning 100@30
1/1/0001 By:
By Matt Bolch; Illustrations By Jay Bevenour
AS PART OF OUR 30TH-ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION, Tech & Learning is compiling
a list of the people most important to the creation and advancement of the use
of technology in education. Our first 30 honorees are plucked from the past:
the founding fathers and mothers whose inventions, declarations, and theories
set the table for where we are today. Here is our list. Did we miss someone?
Respond to our reader poll at www.techlearning.com/30thanniversary.
Burrhus Frederic “B.F.”Skinner
Burrhus Frederic “B.F.”Skinner(1904–1990) has been called the most influential psychologist
of the 20th century, but the Harvard professor who
invented operant conditioning also shaped teaching.
Skinner invented the teaching machine, a mechanical
device that allowed users to respond to questions and
receive rewards for correct responses. In The Technology of
Teaching, he outlined five main obstacles to learning (fear
of failure, task too big, lack of directions, lack of clear directions,
and lack of positive reinforcement) and ways each can
be overcome (give immediate feedback, break task into
smaller steps, repeat directions as necessary, work from
the simple to the complex, and give positive reinforcement).
Craig R. Barrett
Craig R. Barrett(born 1939) retired last year from Intel Corp. as
CEO and chairman of the board after a 35-year
career, but his passion continues to inspire successive
generations of learners. Barrett has taken
on national and international roles in the advancement
of technology and learning. Until last year he
was chairman of the United Nations’ Global
Alliance for Information and Communication
Technologies and Development, which works to
bring computers and other technology to developing
parts of the world. He is also a private-sector
advocate of a national science, technology, engineering,
and math (STEM) education initiative.
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
(1911–1980) was a professor of English literature who pioneered
the study of media theory. His 1951 book The Mechanical Bride:
Folklore of Industrial Man helped establish popular culture as a
field of study, while 1962’s The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of
Typographic Man examined how communication technology
(alphabetic writing, the printing press, and modern electronic
media) affects cognition and social organization. McLuhan
received wide acclaim for his 1964 book Understanding Media, in
which he set out his belief that media, and not their content, should
be the focus of study. The popular quotation “The
Sugata Mitra
Sugata Mitra is a professor of educational technology at the School of
Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle
University in the UK. While at the National Institute of Information
Technologies, where he remains chief scientist emeritus, Mitra
ran what is known as the Hole in the Wall experiment to gauge
unsupervised learning. A computer was placed in a kiosk in a
slum in Kalkajo, Delhi, and children were allowed to use it
freely—and did so, proving that children can learn to use computers
without formal instruction. Mitra continues to explore what he
calls minimally invasive education in his work in education technology
for remote and rural areas.
Angus S. King Jr.
Angus S. King Jr.,(born 1944) served two terms as governor of Maine
and established the nation’s first one-to-one laptop
initiative late in his second term. In 2000, King established
the Maine Learning Technology Initiative,
whose goal was to provide students with the skills
they need to succeed in the 21st century. The effort
culminated in the fall of 2002 in each seventh-grade
student and teacher’s receiving a laptop; eighth
graders followed a year later. King is a distinguished
lecturer at Bowdoin College in Brunswick,
ME, and a Segal lecturer in American politics at
Bates College in Lewiston.
David Thornburg
David Thornburg is director of global operations at the Thornburg Center, which
he founded to help clients think intelligently about the future
and explore ways telecommunications and multimedia will
change the face of learning. His education philosophy is based
on the idea that students learn best when they are constructors
of their own knowledge. Thornburg also believes that students
who are taught in ways that honor their learning styles retain
the native engagement with learning with which they entered
school. His latest book, When the Best Is Free, explores the
world of free open-source software in education, with special
emphasis on tools for student use.
Linda G. Roberts
Linda G. Roberts directed the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational
Technology from its inception in September 1993 to January 2001
and was the secretary of education’s senior adviser on technology. At
the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment before joining
the Clinton administration, she directed three landmark studies of
technology that became the basis for federal and state law and policy
on education technology. Roberts played a key role in developing
the E-rate, the program that brings the Internet and advanced
telecommunications to the nation’s schools and libraries.
Benjamin S. Bloom
Benjamin S. Bloom(1913–1999), an educational psychologist, and his co-workers at the
University of Chicago developed a six-step stairway for learning that
helped classify educational objectives and is the basis for the theory of
mastery learning. Each successive step builds on the ones below. While
other systems for learning have been created, Bloom’s system is easily
understood and has been widely applied. Starting from the bottom, the
steps are knowledge, which forms the basis for higher levels; comprehension,
grasping a concept; application, using what one has learned;
analysis, breaking information down; synthesis, putting separate ideas
together; and evaluation, judging the worth of material.
Scott McNealy
Scott McNealy(born 1954), chairman and cofounder of
Sun Microsystems, was an early advocate
of the networked-computer environment.
McNealy, who also is chairman of Sun
Federal Inc., helped set the industry agenda
through his vision of network computing,
which has been a guide and a barometer for
the direction and pace of technological
innovation. Sun Microsystems is responsible
for Java, the Solaris operating system,
and the Niagara computer chip. McNealy is
furthering his commitment to education by
working with Curriki, a global education
and learning community dedicated to delivering
global access to knowledge.
Julie Young
Julie Young is president and chief executive offer of Florida Virtual
School, which she helped launch in 1997. The organization,
which has a staff of more than 1,200, provides nearly 100
courses to more than 130,000 students annually. Young
chairs the United States Distance Learning Association and
serves on the boards of the North American Council for
Online Learning and the Florida Learning Alliance. She is a
member of the Southern Regional Education Board’s
Distance Learning Task Force, the Florida TaxWatch Center
for Educational Performance and Accountability, and the UT
TeleCampus National Advisory Board. In 2003, Young was
inducted into the USDLA hall of fame.
M. David Merrill
M. David Merrill is an instructional effectiveness consultant and a professor emeritus at Utah
State University. He has been a major contributor to the field of instructional
technology, especially in the area of first principles of instruction, as outlined
in five steps of engagement. According to these steps, instruction occurs
when the learner engages in solving real-world problems, uses existing
knowledge as the basis for new learning, receives a demonstration of new
knowledge, applies new knowledge, and integrates that knowledge. Merrill
teaches online courses at Brigham Young University Hawaii and the University
of Hawaii. “Information is not instruction,” Merrill has famously said.
Bob Pearlman
Bob Pearlman is a consultant on strategy for developing 21st-century schools. From 2002 to
2009, he directed strategic planning for the New Technology Foundation, a
school-development organization that supports the replication of the New
Technology 21st Century High School model in more than 50 communities
across the United States. Pearlman consults and speaks on 21st-century
learning widely in the United States and the UK. He also consults on strategy
for education reform, assisting key reform initiatives around the country.
Al Gore
Al Gore (born 1948) is credited with pushing
through Congress legislation that
led to the commercializing of the
Internet in the early 1990s. As a
senator in the early ’80s, Gore was
known as an Atari Democrat
because of his intense interest in
technology as an economic engine.
He coined the phrase “information
superhighway” and later, under the
Clinton administration, was the
first U.S. vice president to hold a live interactive news conference on an international
computer network. One of the goals of that administration was to
connect every U.S. classroom to the Internet by the turn of the millennium.
Alan November
Alan November is the senior partner in and founder of November Learning, a company that
empowers educators to apply tools and strategies across the curriculum.
November, an international leader in education technology, was among the first
to recognize the importance of Web 2.0 technologies in enhancing classroom
learning. He is the author of Empowering Students with Technology and a
founder of the Stanford Institute for Educational Leadership Through
Technology. November, who was selected as one of the original five national
Christa McAuliffe educators, leads the Building Learning Communities summer
conference, which features presenters and participants from all over the world.
Seymour Papert
Seymour Papert (born 1928) is a mathematician
at MIT and one of the pioneers
in the study of artificial intelligence,
having founded MIT’s AI
Laboratory with Marvin Minsky
in the mid-1960s. He also created
the Logo programming language,
which was designed as a
tool for learning by children.
The Logo Foundation was created
to inform people about Logo
and to support the use of Logobased
software for learning and
teaching. Papert serves on the advisory board of the Lego Mindstorms product
line, which was named after his seminal book Mindstorms: Children,
Computers and Powerful Ideas and which forms the basis for the First Lego
League, which has worldwide participation.
Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura (born 1925) did pioneering research in social
learning theory early in his five-decade teaching
career at Stanford University. The Alberta,
Canada, native is best known in education circles
for his research on the role of social modeling
in human motivation: for example, the
famous Bobo doll experiment in 1961. That test
demonstrated that we learn aggression and
other behaviors by observing and imitating
other people. Bandura has been at Stanford,
where he is professor emeritus of psychology,
since 1953. His current research focuses on the
influential role of people’s beliefs in their ability
to exercise control over their lives, especially in
the area of self-development.
Robert Mills Gagne
Robert Mills Gagne (1916–2002) began to develop his “conditions of
learning” when he was a research manager at
the U.S. Air Force and Department of Defense
following World War II. Throughout his career,
which included a professorship in the educational
research department at Florida State
University, the educational psychologist greatly
added to the knowledge of instructional design.
He also applied instructional concepts to computer-
based and multimedia learning. His
“nine events of instruction” are: gain attention,
inform learner of objectives, stimulate recall of
prior learning, present stimulus material, provide
guidance, elicit performance, provide
feedback, assess performance, and enhance
retention transfer.
Howard Gardner
Howard Gardner (born 1943) is the John H. and Elisabeth A.
Hobbs professor of cognition and education at
the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The
developmental psychologist is best known in
education circles for his theory of multiple
intelligences, a critique of the notion that there
exists but a single human intelligence that can
be assessed by standard psychometric instruments.
Gardner has written more than 20
books that have been translated into 27 languages
and several hundred articles. Building
on his studies of intelligence in Frames of
Mind, Gardner has also written Leading Minds,
Changing Minds, and Extraordinary Minds.
Nicholas Negroponte
Nicholas Negroponte (born 1943) is founder and chairman of the
One Laptop per Child nonprofit association.
He is currently on leave from MIT, where he
cofounded and directed the media laboratory.
Negroponte is a pioneer in the field of computer-
aided design and author of the 1995
best-seller Being Digital, which has been
translated into more than 40 languages. In
the private sector, Negroponte serves on
Motorola Inc.’s board of directors and is general
partner in a venture capital firm that has
provided start-up funds for more than 40
companies, including Wired magazine.
George W. Bush
George W. Bush (born 1946) and Ted Kennedy (1932-
2009) helped shepherd the No Child
Left Behind Act of 2001 into law.
Bush proposed the sweeping education-
reform bill shortly after
taking office, and Kennedy was a
sponsor of the resulting Senate
bill and helped it gain passage. The
NCLB touts standards-based education
reform because its backers
believe that high standards and
measurable goals can help students
learn. The act requires states
to develop basic-skill assessments
that are given at specific grade levels in order for the states to receive federal
funding. Each state establishes its own achievement standards, however.
Dennis Harper
Dennis Harper is founder and CEO of Generation YES, which teaches and empowers students to
solve technology problems in their schools and communities. Generation YES
(Youth and Educators Succeeding) grew out of a successful pilot program funded
by a Technology Innovation Challenge Grant from the U.S. Department of
Education while Harper was with the Olympia (WA) School District. What was then
called Generation www.Y was an innovative model of student involvement in infusing
schools with technology, driving teachers’ professional development, and
improving schools. More than 100,000 teachers and students participated in the
project, which was christened Generation YES after the grant ended. Harper
served on the ISTE board of directors from 1997 to 1999.
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs (born 1955) is an American entrepreneur
who cofounded Apple Inc.,
which marketed the first Apple II and
Macintosh personal computers in the
late 1970s. Jobs was among the first
to see the commercial potential of
the computer mouse. He left Apple in
the mid-’80s to found NeXT, a computer
company specializing in highereducation
and business markets.
Apple bought NeXT in 1997, and Jobs
rejoined the company as its CEO.
Apple has regained some of its luster through the introduction of the iPod and the
iPhone, both of which are making inroads as educational-content platforms.
LeRoy Finkel
LeRoy Finkel (died 1993) was one of the founders in
1978 of Computer-Using Educators
(CUE), a California-based organization
that has since gained a national reputation
for its leadership in the use of
technology in the classroom through
both its annual conference and general
advocacy. LeRoy was an educator
who recognized that technology would
become a major factor in the educational
process. According to friends
and colleagues, he showed the way as
teachers struggled to integrate computers
into their classrooms, and their
lives. He wrote books and articles,
praised good products, sniped at bad
ones, and scrutinized every aspect of
educational computing for the benefit
of all. He died (WHEN) In his memory,
CUE offers an annual fellowship to
promote leadership in the field of educational
technology.”
James D. Finn
James D. Finn (1915–1969), an education technology
pioneer, viewed technology as much
more than machines. After serving in
the military in the instructional-aids
and training departments at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, he spent two
decades as an education professor at
the University of Southern California.
Finn sought to elevate audiovisual
education to a professional field of
study and to base it on research and
theory. He believed that technology
encompassed processes, management,
and human and non-human
controls. Finn served as president of
both the Association for Educational
Communications and Technology and
the National Education Association in
the early 1960s.
Albert Shanker
Albert Shanker (1928–1997) had activism in his veins.
During his undergraduate years at the
University of Illinois in Urbana-
Champagne, Shanker picketed segregated
movie theaters and restaurants
and joined several socialist clubs. He
taught for seven years in the New York
City school system, where he devoted
increasing time to union work. He was
president of the local United Federation
of Teachers for 12 years and of the
American Federation of Teachers from
1974 until his death. But Shanker was
also a proponent of accountability, calling
for national teaching standards,
charter schools, responsibility for
results, peer review, and minimumcompetency
testing of new teachers.
Bill Gates
Bill Gates born 1955) is best known for developing the Windows operating system,
which is used in a huge majority of the world’s computers. The PC
enables all types of learning in both personal and classroom environments.
These days the Harvard dropout and world’s richest man continues
to bolster education through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
which supports organized and individual learning across a wide variety
of local, national, and global projects. Educational initiatives include a
global-libraries award to promote free access to information technology;
national grants to support smaller schools and charter schools; and
endowed scholarships at U.S. and UK universities.
Jeannette M. Wing
Jeannette M. Wing is assistant director of the Computer
& Information Science & Engineering
Directorate at the National Science
Foundation. A doctoral graduate of
MIT, she is also the President’s
Professor of Computer Science in
Carnegie Mellon University’s computer
science department. In 2007,
CISE’s more than $527 million budget
funded 86 percent of all federally
subsidized research in computer science.
The organization also contributes
to the education and training
of future generations of computer
scientists and engineers. Wing’s
recent research has focused on strengthening software security.
Clifford Stoll
Clifford Stoll is an astronomer at the University of Berkeley but is probably
best known as a leading authority on Internet security (he caught
the “Hanover Hacker”) and as a bit of a technology curmudgeon.
He is the author of High Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don’t
Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer
Contrarian, which asks readers to check the assumptions that
dominate our thinking about technology and the role of computers,
especially in the classroom. In his 1995 book Silicon Snake
Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway, Stoll warned
of the effect the Internet may have on human interaction.
Lajeane G. Thomas
Lajeane G. Thomas is a professor of curriculum, instruction,
and leadership at Louisiana Tech
University who has helped prepare
teachers for the 21st century. She is a
past president of the International
Society for Technology in Education
and a longtime chair of its accreditation
and standards committee. Thomas
directed ISTE’s National Educational
Technology Standards Project, which
was funded by the U.S. Department of
Education’s Preparing Tomorrow’s
Teachers to Use Technology grant, and
served on the National Council for
Accreditation of Teacher Education’s
technology task force, which developed
the report “Technology and the New
Professional Teacher: Preparing for
the 21st Century Classroom.”