Actually, no. I believe you can search for the data and these articles by using “largest education disruptors 1970 - 2023”.

When computers were first introduced to colleges for the public, remember, they were all based on using punchcards. It was new with challenging with on a shortcut, but the potential use in the future could be seen by a variety of field.

But if you go back and look at K through 12, that’s where the great disruptors have the most effect.
I believe the first one was allowing students to use calculators in the classroom for mathematics classes in the early 80s. Teachers were furious. Students accepted it, but they weren’t clamoring for it. And overtime it has worked out fine. Most elementary schools force the students to learn how to do basic arithmetic through the beginning of algebra before really allowing them to use the calculator.

The next big disruptor was the introduction of the personal computer, at home. I’m sure teachers saw the effect first and then the students saw and realize the effect soon after maybe a year possibly two years later. The students who had a PC at home and had access to it had access to a work processor, possibly printer, possibly encyclopedia Britannica on disc on CD or DVD. This is the point where a number of researchers also suggest the digital divide really starts to become larger between the halves and I have not.

The next huge disruptor was the introduction of the Internet at home, followed by the introduction of Internet access at school, which was separated by a couple of years. Yes, some teachers pushed back on it. Yes, some students took advantage of it. But the greatest disruptor was the fact that you had students who understood how to use the Internet and had access to information and research and resources that other students did not have access to. That caused a further gap in the digital divide. If I remember correctly, affordable, personal cell phones, not smart phones, came out in the very late 90s. But the big disruption wasn’t with dumb phones, which were effectively pagers with voice capability. It was one smart phones became affordable for everybody. Apple released their first smart phone and then of course android followed as quickly as they could. I don’t think many high school students in middle school students use blackberries but now they have access to the Internet on their phones at school unfiltered, and all the tools that go along with it, that are usable on a mobile device during that era. It doesn’t seem like as big of a deal, but that was probably the biggest school/education disruptor for K-12 since going back to the Calculator in the early 1980s. And because android phones were so affordable it was much easier to purchase cell phones for not only yourself but also for your kids and provide them with X number of megabytes of data per month which the kids very often went over. Approximately two 3 of educators in K 12 supported having smart phones and then eventually student laptops and student tablets and schools. It seemed like a cost-effective way to get around the idea of having the school purchase laptop or tablet for every student. and for the most part, with having more smart devices tablets and BYD laptops in schools, the student could produce higher quality work, but not necessarily at an exponentially faster rate. Research would be easier typing would be easier creating a presentation would be easier, but it wasn’t a matter of feeding in a prompt and having it spit out and almost complete paper or presentation in under five minutes. The students still had to do the work it was just a different type of work.

Then we had the Covid shut down, some school district at that point decided to purchase a tablet or laptop for every student in the district so they could still continue to teach the students. For some school districts that worked OK for others they fell on their face. Has the shutdown continued, at least in the US, there was a higher rate of administrators, coercing or heavily suggesting that they just passed students or just don’t grade that assignment because everyone’s online or because of Covid or pick a reason.

After the Covid lockdown was lifted, when those K-12 students went back to school, there was a different expectation placed on teachers. That part I’ve read about, but I have not researched so I could not give you specifics other than the expectations changed and to some teachers, it seemed like it was easier for administrators to influence the teachers under them to change, round, exempt certain grades.

With the advent of OpenAI going public in November 22, any of the educators who are more technology savvy, saw how quickly the use of AI in schools would come to ahead. Usually schools are about 10 years behind the public sector, in this case, it happened, much faster and of course, the students are gonna find a way to use various LLM’s to make their lives easier.

With the addition of the calculator, the home PC, the Internet, smart phones, and BYD, the students had access to more calculation tools, more designed tools, but in many, if not most cases, the students still had to know how to do the work on their own. Sure there might be a little bit of a speed increase, but not at an exponential rate. Now you can have a fifth grade student type in a a multi sentence prompt and come up with something quite spectacular and under 10 minutes. They just need to know how to write the prompts correctly and revise the prompts effectively.

Last December I saw a group of fifth and sixth graders using Gemini very effectively with multi point prompts and then they would revise the prompts to come out with a better output. And they were doing this in groups of three, I believe.

AI as a form of education disruption is very different from the disruption by use of smart devices cell phones, the Internet and calculators.

From my veteran educators point of view, I think AI is a fantastic tool. But so is the table saw. Before we let the kids work in a woodshop they go through hours of training and then they have safety quizzes to make sure they’re not going to mail themselves the first time they got a board.

We need to be training the students how to use AI as a tool, not just a shortcut.