A history of technological hype

Abstract

Education leaders frequently turn to technological solutions to improve schools, often without evidence of their effectiveness. According to Victoria Cain and Adam Laats, this pattern of leaders pouring money into new technological systems and then being disappointed in the results goes back centuries. They describe how, in the early 1800s, Lancastrian schoolrooms captured the public imagination and how, in the 1950s and ‘60s, were seen as a solution to current educational ills. These examples provide a warning to those who see online education as a silver bullet.