1962 Roger Ebert Article Unearthed On Distance Learning For Homebound Students

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.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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