Plato

PLATO, an apronym for Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operation, was one of the first generalized Computer assisted instruction systems, originally built by the University of Illinois (U of I) and later taken over by Control Data (CDC), who provided the machines it ran on. PLATO ran for many years at the U of I, but William Norris's plans to make it a major force in the computing world and a keystone of corporate social responsibility failed. Although the project was economically a failure and supplanted by other technologies when it was finally turned off in the 1990s, PLATO nevertheless pioneered key concepts such as online forums and message boards, online testing, email, chat rooms, picture languages, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multiplayer online games.

Other versions

CDC eventually sold some of the rights to PLATO to the newly-formed The Roach Organization in 1989. In 2000 TRO changed their name to PLATO Learning and continue to sell and service PLATO courseware running on PC's. CDC continued development of the basic system under the name Cybis after selling the name to Roach, in order to service their larger commercial customers. The University of Illinois also continued development of PLATO, eventually setting up a commercial on-line service called NovaNET in partnership with University Communications, Inc. CERL was closed in 1994, with the maintenance of the PLATO code passing to UCI. UCI was later renamed NovaNET Learning, which was bought by National Computer Systems. Shortly after that, NCS was bought by Pearson, and after several name changes now operates as Pearson Digital Learning.

Related Topics:
The Roach Organization - NovaNET - University Communications, Inc - National Computer Systems - Pearson - Pearson Digital Learning

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

CDC, meanwhile, sold off their mainframe Cybis business to University Online, which was a descendant of IMSATT. UOL was later renamed to VCampus. With one remaining mainframe system still running for the FAA, VCampus granted non-commercial rights to run a Cybis system to Cyber1, operating on a Cyber emulator running NOS, CDC's operating system. This followed limited rights to run NOS being granted by Syntegra (BT), which had inherited the remainder of CDC's mainframe business. Cyber1.org offers free access to the system, which contains over 16,000 of the original lessons, in an attempt to re-build the original PLATO communities that grew up at CERL and on CDC systems in the 1980's.

Related Topics:
University Online - FAA - Cyber1

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

PLATO courseware was fairly extensive, covering a full range of high-school and college courses, as well as topics such as reading skills, family planning, Lamaze training and home budgeting. However the most popular "courseware" remained their multi-user games and computer role playing games such as dnd, although it appears CDC was uninterested in this market. As the value of a CDC-based solution disappeared in the 1980s, interested educators ported the engine first to the IBM PC, and later to web-based systems. Today, however, even the web-based versions appear to have disappeared.

Related Topics:
Lamaze - Computer role playing games - Dnd - IBM PC - Web

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~