When, where, and whydid the Apple Classroom of Tomorrow appear?

Apple Classroom of Tomorrow (ACOT) began in 1985 with three classrooms in different states where every student had access to a desktop computer at school and at home. This 1:1 ratio in a classroom at this time when most schools had 125 students per computer was not only innovative but rare.  As the head of the Apple-sponsored research said: “we set out to investigate how routine use of technology by teachers and students would affect teaching and learning.”

What did the Apple Classroom of Tomorrow look like in practice?

Researcher Jane David* described her visit in May 1986 to a fifth grade classroom in Blue Earth school (then a K-12 school housing all students in the rural Minnesota district). One of three initial classrooms chosen to participate in the experiment, David’s description of her two day visit to the…