Student Impressions of Internet History Milestones (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog)
This morning I gave my students a randomized list of key events in the history of the internet, and asked them to estimate the year when each event happened. “Average” gives the average of all student guesses. “Actual” gives the actual date. “Diff” gives the difference.
| Event | Average | Actual | Diff | ||
| IBM founded | 1980.6 | 1911 | 69.6 | ||
| first computer with a disk drive | 1983.7 | 1956 | 27.7 | ||
| first computer sold with a keyboard and monitor | 1984.8 | 1960 | 24.8 | ||
| mouse (pointing device) | 1988.0 | 1963 | 25.0 | ||
| word “hypertext” coined | 1988.0 | 1965 | 23.0 | ||
| internet created | 1986.6 | 1969 | 17.6 | ||
| working computer hypertext system demonstrated | 1989.0 | 1968 | 21.0 | ||
| first e-mail message sent | 1987.0 | 1971 | 16.0 | ||
| Apple Computer Co. founded | 1982.1 | 1976 | 6.1 | ||
| first commercial computer game | 1984.6 | 1978 | 6.6 | ||
| CD (compact disc) | 1986.4 | 1981 | 5.4 | ||
| Microsoft Windows | 1987.9 | 1983 | 4.9 | ||
| HyperCard (hypertext system for home computers) | 1991.0 | 1983 | 8.0 | ||
| World Wide Web created | 1990.8 | 1990 | 0.8 | ||
| first graphical web browser created | 1990.0 | 1993 | -3.0 |
Some of these details are fairly obscure — at least, for the vast majority of people on the planet who don’t get their jollies researching the history of technology. So I’m generally pleased with what I saw.
The collective intelligence of the class was able to sort these events roughly in chronological order, which suggests they have a certain familiarity with the medium of the internet. But it looks like they underestimated by about half the amount of time that has passed since these milestones. They got more accurate with more recent events.
The average answer for the date of the creation of the World Wide Web is correct, but graphical browsers are actually a few years older than the average figure guessed by the students.
I played hooky to go see Wild Robot this afternoon, so I went back to…
I first started teaching with this handout in 1999 and posted it on my blog…
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. @thepublicpgh
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Mike, I'll have to look up "Mediamorphosis".
Moira, you're probably right -- it was during the 80s that a lot of this technology filtered into people's homes.
I don't know that it's fair or useful to say it's a problem of history education... I have to remind myself that some of our most tech-savvy students might never have done any significant work from a DOS command line, so I need to work a little harder to get them to see how computers mediate our experiences.
Wow, that's pretty fascinating! Maybe we all thought the 80's because that's when the technology filtered down to the masses? I know my family got our first CD player sometime in the mid-80's. As a child, it's easy to think that when your family gets something it must be brand-new and supercool! Just a guess?
I suspect the Lynx web browser would seem something like the ancient telegraph to today's students.
What I found more compelling was that nearly all the averages fall within the 1980's! Is this a product of their own histories (e.g., I think it's safe to guess that most of these students were born in the mid 80s)? Or is it the result of nostalgia TV? Apathy? Or just poor history education in high school today? Until you're 18, I think history is all just a matter of who won what war, and when...sadly.
Are you using a text called Mediamorphosis in this class? I like the way that one explains the historical development of electronic media, particularly in terms of "convergence."