April 21, 2022 - Drawing on Watter’s book and her ‘Hack Education’ blog, we are reflecting on elements of Watters’ historical take on personalised learning — one specific aspect of EdTech — and sharing five decolonial reflections on the current form and landscape of EdTech.

July 1, 2022 - Standardized testing created a ... grading, a common selling point for contemporary ed tech. She demonstrates how personalized learning advocates often critiqued education as being mechanized and one-size-fits-all....

Watters has written a highly readable yet exhaustively researched history of the failed attempts to successfully invent, produce, and commercialize a teaching machine. These men (and they were almost all men, white men at that) promised that students would finally be able to learn at their own pace and teachers would be free from the drudgery of grading.

September 9, 2026 - Yet today’s edtech leaders often ignore or choose to forget this history, argues Audrey Watters, a longtime critical observer of edtech...Watters traces the history of these pre-computer-age gadgets in her new book, Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning.

I've published four collections of my public talks, The Monsters of Education Technology (2014), The Revenge of the Monsters of Education Technology (2015), The Curse of the Monsters of Education Technology (2016), and The Monsters of Education Technology 4, as well as a book arguing that students should control their digital identities and digital work, Claim Your Domain. My book Teaching Machines (MIT Press, 2020) examines the pre-history of personalized learning.

September 7, 2021 - In Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning (MIT Press, 2021), Audrey Watters recounts the attempts over the past century to use technology to improve educational procedures.

February 9, 2022 - John O'Brien, EDUCAUSE President and CEO, talks with Audrey Watters, author of the new book "Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning".

In Teaching Machines, education writer Audrey Watters offers a lively history of predigital educational technology, from Sidney Pressey's mechanized positive-reinforcement provider to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box. Watters shows that these machines and the pedagogy that accompanied them sprang from ideas-bite-sized content, individualized instruction-that had legs and were later picked up by textbook publishers and early advocates for computerized learning...

September 9, 2021 - Audrey Watters' new book, Teaching Machines, examines the history of personalized learning and the role of technology.

Yet today’s edtech leaders often ignore or choose to forget this history, argues Audrey Watters, a longtime critical observer of edtech...Watters traces the history of these pre-computer-age gadgets in her new book, Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning.

May 13, 2025 - Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning by Audrey Watters 2021, MIT Press, $34.95; 328 pages.

Teaching Machines, the latest book by "ed-tech's Cassandra" Audrey Watters, chronicles the history of this century-old belief that the automation of education is necessary (and is surely coming any day now).

In Teaching Machines, education writer Audrey Watters offers a lively history of predigital educational technology, from Sidney Pressey's mechanized positive-reinforcement provider to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box. Watters shows that these machines and the pedagogy that accompanied them sprang from ideas--bite-sized content, individualized instruction--that had legs and were later picked up by textbook publishers and early advocates for computerized learning...

In this book Audrey Watters recounts this long history of automating the learning process by describing these previous efforts and their outcomes, showing how similar those efforts were to the ones today, both in terms of the promises made and ...

October 13, 2021 - The ideas behind the Pressey's and Skinner's machines were based on dubious behaviorist learning theories, a misunderstanding of a teacher's role, and a profound, unshakeable conviction that they had unlocked the mystery of student motivation and learning. That probably sounds familiar, says education and technology writer Audrey Watters. Watters is the author of a fascinating new book, "Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning," which recounts how these and other early "innovations" failed to live up to their hype.

August 3, 2021 - In Teaching Machines, education writer Audrey Watters offers a lively history of predigital educational technology, from Sidney Pressey's mechanized positive-reinforcement provider to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box. Watters shows that these machines and the pedagogy that accompanied them sprang from ideas—bite-sized content, individualized instruction—that had legs and were later picked up by textbook publishers and early advocates for computerized learning...

July 15, 2022 - Audrey Watters. Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning Boston: MIT Press, 2021. 328 pp. Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 July 2022

Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning by Audrey Watters (review)

June 9, 2024 - Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning is Audrey Watters’ sixth book and provides an insightful and compelling review of the history of automated and mechanized personalized teaching and learning.

August 3, 2021 - How ed tech was born: Twentieth-century teaching machines--from Sidney Pressey's mechanized test-giver to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box.Contrary to popular belief, ed tech did not begin with videos on the internet. The idea of technology that would allow students to "go at their own pace" did not originate in Silicon Valley.