4 ms·

How computers entered the classroom, 1960–2000

48 points by danso 3y ago

ViktorRay 3y ago
It's interesting how teachers and society in general welcomed the addition of the computer with such enthusiasm and optimism. Excitement at brining new science and technology to young ones and the hope and belief it would make society better. Pretty different from nowadays when new technology is met with fear, skepticism, cynicism, nihilism, and paranoia.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  I think people would still feel pretty positive about a new way to make particle board, it's the surveillance and psychological manipulation that makes everybody hate tech. If we somehow got rid of them, computers would be exciting to the public again.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  In the past it was easy to be romantic about flying cars. Today we understand they'd be built shoddily and rushed to market for the sake of short term profit, require mandatory subscription fees for basic features, spy on us, and come with falsely advertised self driving features. We didn't become skeptical of technology spontaneously.
- asdff 3y ago
  Honestly I blame my generation for absolutely ruining computing in good faith in the classroom. They gave us big desktop workstations without any sort of internet content filtering or even much of a need to use one with our schoolwork. It was an absurd amount of trust placed into 12 year olds hands. We would just web browse stupid sites, watch videos, play games, anything but schoolwork. Of course there was one IT worker in the school, and after what was in hindsight a very surprising amount of time they must have started checking logs and trying to route around what we were doing. It was like an arms race. Eventually it got to a point where they would reimage all the workstations nightly and made a big announcement about it. I'm sure they loved us.
- guappa 3y ago
  > Pretty different from nowadays when new technology is met with fear, skepticism, cynicism, nihilism, and paranoia. Could that be because initially they were products, and now we are the product?
- oven9342 3y ago
  Not only that, but there are even studies that question the usefulness of ~~investing~~ spending money in computer devices. All that Aforementioned enthusiasm and illusion were implemented into the educational systems without first assessing its scientific foundation. It’s like if surgeons started using plastic knives just because stainless steel looks dated, for example. These grumpy outdated Cassandras, who question the validity of change for the sake of change must be ignored in their laments because computer devices are very expensive and have a short lifespan, making them perfect for draining public resources Page 147: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264239555-en.pdf?expires=1709540568&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=CAC0113E8D9D6ADF39E7380E72C9B082 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264239555-en.pdf...
justforasingle 3y ago
I remember my primary school won a sun microsystems competition somewhere around the year 2000. We got our first computer lab set up with a few dozen PCs, and it was the only room in the school with air conditioning. That room was a god send in the Australian summer. Thank you sun microsystems.
sen 3y ago
I was in high school in Switzerland when PCs were first introduced to students (at least in my more rural area it happened in the very early 90s). When I first started school there only the library had 2 computers that were tied into the university networks and purely had access to some informational database systems that the librarians used. You could ask questions and they would look them up when they next had time, then print the results on dot matrix printers and give it to you the next day or so. A bit later we got our first “computer lab” which was a room with 4 PCs and a massive dot matrix printer on a rolling stand that you could roll over to your desk and print to. It was generally just learning to type and print documents and do BASIC. My main memory of it all was how convinced the teachers were that this was going to change the world forever. There was zero doubt or fear of negative consequences from computers, just pure wonder and excitement from all of them. They’d let us use them any time we wanted, in lunch breaks etc, because “anyone who doesn’t learn this stuff will be left behind”.
- bigger_cheese 3y ago
  I'm Australian, I started high school in 1996, what stuck out to me was lack of computer literacy in the vast majority of teachers. It wasn't uncommon for students to know more than the teachers. We had the occasional teacher who was enthusiastic, for example I had an English teacher who arranged for us to be email pen-pals with students from a school in Japan but for the most part the majority of teachers were utterly clueless about technology. One vivid memory I have is from grade 10. I elected to do a tech drawing class, we were supposed to have some lessons on using CAD and the school had presumably paid money for CAD software in the computer lab but the instructor (maybe 50 years old) had no clue how to use the software. So after maybe 2 lessons of him fumbling around and no one accomplishing anything it was back to drawing in pencil with a compass and a protractor for the rest of the semester.
  - sen 3y ago
    Yeah I’m Australian-born too, going back to Australia at the end of high school after doing most my schooling in Europe was mind blowing, like going back in time. Obviously some schools/unis were more advanced but almost everyone I met had never even used a computer in Australia, and at most had some email access for work/uni and that was it. The country itself was advanced tech-wise in companies/government but as far as education went it was really behind, and was basically left as “if you need computers for your job then they’ll train you”.
WalterBright 3y ago
I went through K-12 before computers arrived. Today, there is no improvement in math, reading, writing, history, science, etc., at all in the output of schools.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  It has declined. Kids have way less incentive to even learn to read. They just find the audiobook online, or have the computer read the page to them. IMO there should be no technology in school classrooms until high school. Kids do not need computers to learn K-8 subject matter.
  - brutusborn 3y ago
    I disagree, computers are just a tool. Learning basic programming in primary school helps build a foundation for more sophisticated knowledge in high school. It can also help contextualise mathematics. The problem is abuse of the tool, as you describe. In my primary school, we were taught how to use Microsoft Office by using a workbook the computer teacher licensed to the school. We had some of the best computer resources amongst local schools at the time, yet learnt almost nothing about computers. It took me until university to write a line of code.
    - asdff 3y ago
      This was the big shortcoming of computers in my education too. The kids famously knew more than the adults, but all we really knew how to do over them was use a two button mouse correctly and to browse a gui menu system. There was no one around to actually introduce you to how it all worked. I hope schools are better about that today, but its hard when the sort of expertise you need to quickly iterate off of generational knowledge is able to pull quadruple or more a teachers salary and works someplace willing to pay that much instead.
      - brutusborn 3y ago
        Where I live the only kids who program are those who are lucky enough to have a teacher interested in robots. They are taught to program robots as a fun activity rather than a part of the curriculum. I understand your sentiment about the opportunity costs for those with computing knowledge, but it wouldn’t be too hard to require teachers to do a basic computing unit at university. In the same way the best mathematicians are not usually school teachers, yet “regular” teachers seem to perform sufficiently.
dylan604 3y ago
I remember banging out BASIC on an Apple IIe in 6th grade to get simple things like an image of a turkey to display while playing Turkey In The Straw, or more complex like a down hill/slalom game. We had no idea what DATA 712101401c0067f22b229cdf5bd069a4 meant, but if you made a typo, it was hell to find it. By the time I was a sophomore, I had a CAD class that was always threatened to not be usable because jokesters thought it funny to remove the ball from the mice making the computers unusable. Eventually, my senior year, we had our first state level computer programming competition in PASCAL. Based on the school's performance my junior/senior year, a generous donation was made to the school so that the year after graduation, the school was gifted a very nice computer lab that made my freshman college class look antiquated (it pretty much was. printing code to greenbar FTW!!) It just so happened my younger sibling was a freshman that year and rubbed it in my face
guidedlight 3y ago
My earliest memory of a classroom computer was the Acorn Archimedes. Terrible computer, with great hardware. It was the beginning of ARM computing.
deckiedan 3y ago
My parents are both very computer literate (my mum was a programmer, my dad also wrote code & managed database teams...) and they were really good friends with the head teacher at my primary school (UK, 90s). They worked together with him to write a curriculum they used with the entire teaching staff in our school to learn the systems before the new Windows computers came in to replace the old acorns or BBC micros or whatever, including several "inset" (?) days. The big problem with all the teaching things at the time was being called "Windows for Dummies" or "Microsoft Office for dummies" or whatever - was that the teachers were really smart people - not dummies at all. So the "you don't understand the computer, therefore you are a dummy" was extremely degrading and put up walls instantly. How people respond when you teach people as "smart, interested and motivated, but currently still extremely unfamiliar and somewhat apprehensive" compared to "not especially clever, and it's a very complicated thing so don't expect to really understand it" is very different.
31carmichael 3y ago
TRS80, with cassette tape storage if you didn't have the floppy drives. Cool looking machine.

48 points by danso 3y ago

It's interesting how teachers and society in general welcomed the addition of the computer with such enthusiasm and optimism. Excitement at brining new science and technology to young ones and the hope and belief it would make society better. Pretty different from nowadays when new technology is met with fear, skepticism, cynicism, nihilism, and paranoia.

whatshisface 3y ago
I think people would still feel pretty positive about a new way to make particle board, it's the surveillance and psychological manipulation that makes everybody hate tech. If we somehow got rid of them, computers would be exciting to the public again.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
In the past it was easy to be romantic about flying cars. Today we understand they'd be built shoddily and rushed to market for the sake of short term profit, require mandatory subscription fees for basic features, spy on us, and come with falsely advertised self driving features. We didn't become skeptical of technology spontaneously.
asdff 3y ago
Honestly I blame my generation for absolutely ruining computing in good faith in the classroom. They gave us big desktop workstations without any sort of internet content filtering or even much of a need to use one with our schoolwork. It was an absurd amount of trust placed into 12 year olds hands. We would just web browse stupid sites, watch videos, play games, anything but schoolwork. Of course there was one IT worker in the school, and after what was in hindsight a very surprising amount of time they must have started checking logs and trying to route around what we were doing. It was like an arms race. Eventually it got to a point where they would reimage all the workstations nightly and made a big announcement about it. I'm sure they loved us.
guappa 3y ago
> Pretty different from nowadays when new technology is met with fear, skepticism, cynicism, nihilism, and paranoia. Could that be because initially they were products, and now we are the product?
oven9342 3y ago
Not only that, but there are even studies that question the usefulness of ~~investing~~ spending money in computer devices. All that Aforementioned enthusiasm and illusion were implemented into the educational systems without first assessing its scientific foundation. It’s like if surgeons started using plastic knives just because stainless steel looks dated, for example. These grumpy outdated Cassandras, who question the validity of change for the sake of change must be ignored in their laments because computer devices are very expensive and have a short lifespan, making them perfect for draining public resources Page 147: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264239555-en.pdf?expires=1709540568&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=CAC0113E8D9D6ADF39E7380E72C9B082 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264239555-en.pdf...

justforasingle 3y ago

I remember my primary school won a sun microsystems competition somewhere around the year 2000. We got our first computer lab set up with a few dozen PCs, and it was the only room in the school with air conditioning. That room was a god send in the Australian summer. Thank you sun microsystems.

sen 3y ago

I was in high school in Switzerland when PCs were first introduced to students (at least in my more rural area it happened in the very early 90s). When I first started school there only the library had 2 computers that were tied into the university networks and purely had access to some informational database systems that the librarians used. You could ask questions and they would look them up when they next had time, then print the results on dot matrix printers and give it to you the next day or so. A bit later we got our first “computer lab” which was a room with 4 PCs and a massive dot matrix printer on a rolling stand that you could roll over to your desk and print to. It was generally just learning to type and print documents and do BASIC. My main memory of it all was how convinced the teachers were that this was going to change the world forever. There was zero doubt or fear of negative consequences from computers, just pure wonder and excitement from all of them. They’d let us use them any time we wanted, in lunch breaks etc, because “anyone who doesn’t learn this stuff will be left behind”.

bigger_cheese 3y ago
I'm Australian, I started high school in 1996, what stuck out to me was lack of computer literacy in the vast majority of teachers. It wasn't uncommon for students to know more than the teachers. We had the occasional teacher who was enthusiastic, for example I had an English teacher who arranged for us to be email pen-pals with students from a school in Japan but for the most part the majority of teachers were utterly clueless about technology. One vivid memory I have is from grade 10. I elected to do a tech drawing class, we were supposed to have some lessons on using CAD and the school had presumably paid money for CAD software in the computer lab but the instructor (maybe 50 years old) had no clue how to use the software. So after maybe 2 lessons of him fumbling around and no one accomplishing anything it was back to drawing in pencil with a compass and a protractor for the rest of the semester.
- sen 3y ago
  Yeah I’m Australian-born too, going back to Australia at the end of high school after doing most my schooling in Europe was mind blowing, like going back in time. Obviously some schools/unis were more advanced but almost everyone I met had never even used a computer in Australia, and at most had some email access for work/uni and that was it. The country itself was advanced tech-wise in companies/government but as far as education went it was really behind, and was basically left as “if you need computers for your job then they’ll train you”.

WalterBright 3y ago

I went through K-12 before computers arrived. Today, there is no improvement in math, reading, writing, history, science, etc., at all in the output of schools.

SoftTalker 3y ago
It has declined. Kids have way less incentive to even learn to read. They just find the audiobook online, or have the computer read the page to them. IMO there should be no technology in school classrooms until high school. Kids do not need computers to learn K-8 subject matter.
- brutusborn 3y ago
  I disagree, computers are just a tool. Learning basic programming in primary school helps build a foundation for more sophisticated knowledge in high school. It can also help contextualise mathematics. The problem is abuse of the tool, as you describe. In my primary school, we were taught how to use Microsoft Office by using a workbook the computer teacher licensed to the school. We had some of the best computer resources amongst local schools at the time, yet learnt almost nothing about computers. It took me until university to write a line of code.
  - asdff 3y ago
    This was the big shortcoming of computers in my education too. The kids famously knew more than the adults, but all we really knew how to do over them was use a two button mouse correctly and to browse a gui menu system. There was no one around to actually introduce you to how it all worked. I hope schools are better about that today, but its hard when the sort of expertise you need to quickly iterate off of generational knowledge is able to pull quadruple or more a teachers salary and works someplace willing to pay that much instead.
    - brutusborn 3y ago
      Where I live the only kids who program are those who are lucky enough to have a teacher interested in robots. They are taught to program robots as a fun activity rather than a part of the curriculum. I understand your sentiment about the opportunity costs for those with computing knowledge, but it wouldn’t be too hard to require teachers to do a basic computing unit at university. In the same way the best mathematicians are not usually school teachers, yet “regular” teachers seem to perform sufficiently.

dylan604 3y ago

I remember banging out BASIC on an Apple IIe in 6th grade to get simple things like an image of a turkey to display while playing Turkey In The Straw, or more complex like a down hill/slalom game. We had no idea what DATA 712101401c0067f22b229cdf5bd069a4 meant, but if you made a typo, it was hell to find it. By the time I was a sophomore, I had a CAD class that was always threatened to not be usable because jokesters thought it funny to remove the ball from the mice making the computers unusable. Eventually, my senior year, we had our first state level computer programming competition in PASCAL. Based on the school's performance my junior/senior year, a generous donation was made to the school so that the year after graduation, the school was gifted a very nice computer lab that made my freshman college class look antiquated (it pretty much was. printing code to greenbar FTW!!) It just so happened my younger sibling was a freshman that year and rubbed it in my face

guidedlight 3y ago

My earliest memory of a classroom computer was the Acorn Archimedes. Terrible computer, with great hardware. It was the beginning of ARM computing.

deckiedan 3y ago

My parents are both very computer literate (my mum was a programmer, my dad also wrote code & managed database teams...) and they were really good friends with the head teacher at my primary school (UK, 90s). They worked together with him to write a curriculum they used with the entire teaching staff in our school to learn the systems before the new Windows computers came in to replace the old acorns or BBC micros or whatever, including several "inset" (?) days. The big problem with all the teaching things at the time was being called "Windows for Dummies" or "Microsoft Office for dummies" or whatever - was that the teachers were really smart people - not dummies at all. So the "you don't understand the computer, therefore you are a dummy" was extremely degrading and put up walls instantly. How people respond when you teach people as "smart, interested and motivated, but currently still extremely unfamiliar and somewhat apprehensive" compared to "not especially clever, and it's a very complicated thing so don't expect to really understand it" is very different.

31carmichael 3y ago

TRS80, with cassette tape storage if you didn't have the floppy drives. Cool looking machine.