Who Is Important Here?

If you could choose three people as the most prominent people in educational technology, who would you select?  This is the question I posed to one of my classes.  I gave no ground rules.  We have no text book with a chapter that discussions this.  It’s wide open.

Pick three and give the reasons for selecting each.

If you think about this question in a different context, it could be easy to answer.  Name the three most important people in the history of American government.  In technology, it would be easier to list the three most important people in the world of personal computers or in the development of the Internet.

Educational technology is more obscure.  The entry in Wikipedia wasn’t created until 2005, four years after most topics were entered.  There is no standard introductory text that is used in edtech.  In fact, most of the people I know in this field are self-taught.

It will be interesting to see the names that make the list.