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.

PLATO's birth

Chalmers Sherwin, a physicist at the University of Illinois, suggested a computerized learning system to William Everett, Dean of the College of Engineering. Everett recommended that Daniel Alpert, another physicist, convene a meeting on the topic that included engineers, educators, mathematicians, and psychologists. After several weeks of meetings the group was unable to suggest a single design for such a system. Alpert was unhappy with the results, but before announcing their failure he mentioned the meetings to a lab assistant, Donald Bitzer. Bitzer claimed that he had already been thinking about the problem, and suggested that he could build a demonstration system.

Related Topics:
Physicist - Donald Bitzer

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Donald Bitzer, regarded as the "father of PLATO", succeeded largely due to his rejection of "modern" educational thinking. Returning to a basic drill-based system, his team improved on existing systems by allowing students to bypass lessons they already understood. Their first system, PLATO I first ran on the locally-built ILLIAC I computer in 1960. It included a TV for display and a special keyboard to navigate the system's menus. In 1961 they introduced PLATO II, which ran two users at once.

Related Topics:
Donald Bitzer - ILLIAC I - TV

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Convinced of the value of the project, the PLATO system entered a major redesign between 1963 and 1966. The new PLATO III allowed "anyone" to design new lesson modules using their TUTOR language, brainchild of Paul Tenczar. Built on a CDC 1604 which had been given to them for free by William Norris, PLATO III could run up to 20 lessons at once, and was used by a number of local facilities in Urbana-Champaign that could be attached to the system with their custom terminals.

Related Topics:
CDC 1604 - William Norris - Terminal

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