SLATES, SLIDE RULERS, AND SOFTWARE--TEACHING MATH IN AMERICA
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The American psychologist B. F. Skinner believed that it might be possible to teach arithmetic more efficiently using machines similar to those he had devised for teaching animals. With this instrument (right), if students entered the right answer, they could turn the knob and move on to another problem. If not, they had to keep working where they were.   
Teaching Machine - Click To Enlarge
TEACHING MACHINE
 

Skinner displayed the machine in March 1954 at a University of Pittsburgh conference. In later versions of the device, a second sequence of questions repeated those that had been missed the first time. Skinner’s ideas, in combination with the work of others, gave rise to several attempts to automate teaching, an effort that became known as “programmed learning.”  

In order to teach students how to calculate on a slide rule, schools bought oversized instruments like the one below.  It is over 2 meters (over 7 feet) long. This example was used at a girls’ high school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

 

Slide Rule - Click To Enlarge
SLIDE RULE

 

  During the 1950s, Americans continued to adopt teaching apparatus developed overseas. Emile-Georges Cuisenaire (1891-1976), a Belgian schoolteacher, developed a colorful set of rods for teaching students basic properties of numbers and rules of arithmetic. Cuisenaire published an account of his rods in French in 1953 and attracted the attention of Egyptian-born educator Caleb Gattegno (1910-1988). 

Cuisenaire and Gattegno soon published an account of the rods in English. The rods came to be used in the United States and in many other countries. This set was used by an American teacher in the South Pacific.  

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Cuisenaire Rods - Click To Enlarge
CUISENAIRE RODS

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