Teaching Machines: Learning from the Intersection of Education and Technology

Technology promises to make learning better, cheaper, faster—but rarely has it kept that promise.

The allure of educational technology is easy to understand. Classroom instruction is an expensive and time-consuming process fraught with contradictory theories and frustratingly uneven results. Educators, inspired by machines’ contributions to modern life, have been using technology to facilitate teaching for centuries.

In Teaching Machines, Bill Ferster examines past attempts to automate instru...