From NSF, Paul was recruited by IBM’s PC development team in Boca Raton, Florida, shipping the first Personal Computer. Paul came to IBM to develop and evaluate educational software for the IBM PC and help launch the IBM PC as a product that could be effectively used even by kindergarten school children. Paul demonstrated new IBM educational products at software events and developed marketing relationships with educational industry leaders.
Paul Evans with Charlie Chaplin’s “The Little Tramp” character (left) and Minnie Mouse (below) at early IBM software marketing events.
At IBM Paul Evans was responsible for IBM’s entry into the education marketplace with the IBM PC and related educational software. His first development project in multimedia was in 1982 where digitized speech was used to help build and convert Dr. John Henry’s Martin’s educational materials to a computer-based reading program for kindergarten youngsters. Paul directed the National field research on the effectiveness of “Writing to Read” for IBM in conjunction with the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J. The computer program was statistically validated to be highly effective in teaching pre-school children to read and write.
Shown above members of the advisory panel of experts for the testing of Writing To Read: Dr. Ernest Boyer US Commissioner of Education; Dr. Jean Chall Harvard University seminal researcher on the developmental stages of reading: and. also above, Dr. Kenneth Clark psychologist, educator, and social activist. His research, in particular his “doll study,” was crucial to the desegregation of public schools.
Seeing the success of Writing to Read and the potential for emerging educational technology worldwide, IBM implemented a 10-million-dollar corporate responsibility campaign (aligned with the Sullivan Principles promoting corporate social responsibility) to teach school children to read and write in South Africa before the end of the apartheid era.
Paul Evans was subsequently asked to provide consulting services in South Africa, and other IBM interests in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the former Soviet Union.
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