Paul arrived at IBM from the National Science Foundation where in addition to policy research he had been working with colleges and universities on novel applications in the use of computers in learning and education. There were no IBM personal computers at the time, only large expensive ones. At IBM, Don Estridge, the visionary father of the IBM PC, saw education as a market entry opportunity for the IBM personal computer under development at the lab in Boca Raton, Florida.
Don told Paul he wanted to build and test a computer program that would teach pre-school children how to read and write. What gave him the idea? Don met a retired school superintendent, Dr. John Henry Martin, who insisted that he had a program to teach pre-school kids to read and write. But it needed to be put on computer. So, Don asked Paul to go to Stuart, Florida and meet Dr. Martin and find out if what he was telling Don was real.
It was real, and within 2 months IBM signed a contract with Dr. John Henry Martin and began field testing the product in pilot schools, first, with IBM typewriters, while the software was being written for porting the product over to the IBM PC.
But Don Estridge didn’t stop there, he wanted the product evaluated by the best outside scholars and a Blue-Ribbon Panel including the former US Commissioner of Education, Dr. Ernest Boyer; Dr. Kenneth Clark, the psychologist who played the key role in the Brown vs Board of Education for the desegregation of schools; and, Dr. William Turnbull President of The Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey. (See photos of the Blue Ribbon Panel below at the end of this page.)
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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