The Teaching Machine!

The teaching machine, although not quite as industrial as it may sound did make a lot of commotion in the teaching world, even till this day the teaching machines original goals are still being implemented in the classroom today.

How did such a machine come about you may ask?

Well on one Fathers Day Skinner decided to visit his daughters math class. During this visit he realized that the teacher was making one very important mistake when teaching these children. While the students were doing their exercise worksheets there was no immediate gratification if the answer was correct.

So what did Skinner do you may ask now?

Skinner made a machine that broke problems into smaller steps, and after each step was accomplished the student would find out immediately if the result was correct or incorrect. 

And wa-la the teaching machine ^

Now, you may be wondering what is a modern day teaching machine like?

Well wa-la. New age teaching machines look anything similar to these types of machines, where instant feedback is presented to the children after a response is given!

Skinners Birds

Skinner used pigeons to learn about reinforcement learning, yes pigeons! These pigeons were put into a box/cage and were left there for a few days, the birds were put in fairly hungry, so that the want for food was increased. There was a random timed feed distributor in the box. When ever feed would come into the box, the pigeons did a little computing in their brains and thought that whatever the actions they were doing before the feed was distrubuted must be the reason they were recieving food. Resulting in something like this ........

Just kidding, ;)

but really pigeons were doing all sorts of things they thought would let them receive the food. If one was bobbing its head when the food came. It would continue to bob its head until the food came again.

Another experiment, that I find to be cool, that Skinner did with pigeons is teaching them to play ping pong with each other.

These birds quickly learned that the winner, or the pigeon that could successfully get the ball past the other pigeon, the opponent, then they (the winner) would be rewarded with food. 

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Pigeon/