The Agency for Instructional Technology (AIT) was an organization founded through the United States Office of Education in 1962. Originally named the National Instructional Television Library, it worked with National Educational Television (NET, the precursor to the Public Broadcasting Service or PBS) to create and distribute educational films and associated program materials to television stations in the United States. In 1965 the National Instructional Television Library relocated to Bloomington, Indiana where it was funded and operated by the Indiana University Foundation; the organization aligned with Indiana University's other educational technology activities such as the Audio-Visual Center.

In 1968, the National Instructional Television Library was renamed the National Instructional Television Center (NIT). Following a landmark meeting between delegates from forty-seven states and four Canadian provinces, NIT became independent from formal ties with Indiana University, earned non-profit organization status, and renamed itself the Agency for Instructional Television (AIT) on July 1, 1973. Throughout the 1970s AIT enhanced its reputation by collaborating on series with local public broadcasting stations (ranging as far as WGBH-Boston to KCLS-Los Angeles), state boards of education, and educational research consortiums across the United States and Canada. These collaborations resulted in massive fundraising efforts and distributed productions across North America. Productions covered a wide range of educational topics including health, science, technology, math, arts, languages, literature, history, economics, social development, and cognition. Some popular programs from this time include Inside/Out (a series developed to help children deal with social, emotional, and physical problems), Ripples (an interdisciplinary series geared towards helping children understand relationships, emotions, aesthetics, and cognition), and Self Incorporated (a series designed to help young teenagers cope with physical and emotional changes).

AIT produced and distributed materials across new technologies (including videocassette, CDs, and electronic mediums) in the 1980s and 1990s; in 1984 the organization changed its name to the Agency for Instructional Technology to reflect these developments. This is the most current organizational name. Throughout the 1980s AIT cooperated with educators and researchers to identify curricular areas in which new technology materials, such as computer discs and audiocassettes, could be utilized. Major programs from the 1980s included Readit (a dynamic program in which John Robbins would draw on-screen as he read from children's books like The Boxcar Children and My Father's Dragon), It Figures (a math program geared towards fourth-grade curriculums), Sometimes I Wonder If It's Worth It (a mental health and suicide prevention program for teenagers), and Well, Well, Well (a health program hosted by the popular John Burstein character Slim Goodbody, who wore a signature unitard painted with internal anatomy).

AIT continued to make video productions in the 1990s, but it also delved into other educational programming opportunities. These include new media formats such as computer programs and games and emerging electronic distribution methods for schools accessing AIT materials. It also edited and distributed Technos, a quarterly journal dedicated to educational reform issues with a special focus on classroom technologies, from 1992-2002. AIT stopped producing new titles in 2011 and ceased operations in 2015, after which its corporate archives were transferred to the Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive.