Printing Press

The Printing Press! Bernardo's Production Response #2

1) When was your technology tool invented?

The printing press was invented in 1440 in Germany by a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg. This would be the beginning of a printing revolution. Other methods of printing like a woodblock printing style could be seen in East Asia since the 8th century during the Tang dynasty. In Europe, woodblock printing based on existing screw presses was seen by the 14th century. The main difference between Gutenberg's new model and previous models was the development of hand-molded metal printing matrices, this generated a 'movable type' press. It was now possible for accurate and efficient copies of metal matrices to be created in large quantities.

2) When was it first used in education (and how)?

There is no exact date for when it started to be officially used in terms of education. However, due to its obvious function, being able to make many more copies at a faster rate than even the best scribes, and the significant increase of accurate copies with no errors as seen when copies were created by hand, the rise of the printing press was quick. The swift growth of literacy due to the large amounts of copies changed the social, economic and cultural structure of the times as reading was no longer only available to the elite. Many manual like books would be created for trade-related job teaching techniques increasing the rise of individual traders.

3) How did the technology/media tool (re)reshape educational practice and teaching/learning – or transform literacy learning and/or social-institutional-classroom organization? (Changing roles in classrooms, changing positions of authority, power relations, modes of exclusion or inclusion, ideology and modes of social action or creativity?

The ability to mass-produce written material was an idea for many decades. It had been used previously most famously in China as mentioned before, but making each individual page out of wood took a lot of time. Gutenberg's printing machine was most famously used to print the Bible. Another famous book was the Ars Minor which was a fourth-century Latin work widely used in teaching Latin, which was the language of science and learning in Gutenberg's time. Before his invention books were very expensive and time-consuming to make and reproduce, thus it something that only the wealthy could afford. Now with the printing press, the ability for books to spread was far more convenient, giving a rise in literacy in the region. Knowledge before could only be spread orally, which was in line with Plato's view of prioritizing direct speech and condemning writing on paper. Now knowledge was being recorded on paper, this of course came with some issues as if the knowledge was incorrect, it was being mass-produced and spread at a fast pace. In the classroom

4) If possible, try to connect your analysis to the literacy paradigms (de Castell & Luke, or Multiliteracies).

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