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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

by 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”.
  - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
    I'm originally from the US (I moved to Australia in my mid-20s), and it's interesting how different it was for me and for my Australian partner. I first used a computer when I was a toddler in the 1980s, and I have been using them ever since. I went to a very low-income public school in a poverty-stricken, high-crime neighborhood, and we were using computers (albeit very outdated Apple II's that had been donated) starting in 1st grade. We were writing stories and printing them out by second grade, and learning how to "surf the web" and cite websites by 3rd. By high school, we were learning Photoshop and video editing. Meanwhile, my partner attended a very expensive private school, yet his first experience with a computer came drastically later (like some time around 2000 or so?), and it was because his family bought one, not because the school had them. On the other hand, he was already playing video games on a SNES from an early age, whereas I didn't get my first console (a cheap secondhand GameCube) until 2005 or 2006 when I was a university student. I can really see the difference in our parents, too. His mother is essentially computer illiterate to this day, whereas even my grandpa (born in 1930 and grew up sharecropping) was making websites without any help from his children or grandchildren while I was still a little kid.
MichaelRo 3y ago
That's interesting and good to know. I imagined Western Europe was much more advanced computer-wise, since PCs were out from 1982 onwards and by the time I started high school, 486s were available and Pentium would appear soon. I started high school in Romania in 1992 and in the beginning we only had two PCs, one AT with VGA color monitor and one XT with monochrome Hercules, and the rest were Romanian made CP/M machines with 8 inch floppies and horrible keyboards that would either fail to get the input or get stuck. PC keyboard was like walking on the Moon compared to early keyboards. We had Junior: https://retroit.ro/product/junior/ https://retroit.ro/product/junior/ And CUB-Z: https://retroit.ro/product/cub-z/ https://retroit.ro/product/cub-z/ After about a year the CP/M machines were decommissioned and 386 PCs brought in as replacements.
- guappa 3y ago
  Italian. I finished high school in 2003 and I never touched a computer while in school. We did have one at home, since as back as I can remember, but it was uncommon to have one. Towards the end of the 90s it had become somewhat common.
  - anotheruser13 3y ago
    There were no PCs when I was in high school. We had classes in BASIC running on a time shared DEC PDP11. I got in trouble for running $TALK, which was like a very primitive chat app. Good times... Didn't get to see any kind of PC until 82 or so, my boss had a "Trash 80" which he used to access APL workspaces from home.

by sen 3y ago

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”.
- RoyalHenOil 3y ago
  I'm originally from the US (I moved to Australia in my mid-20s), and it's interesting how different it was for me and for my Australian partner. I first used a computer when I was a toddler in the 1980s, and I have been using them ever since. I went to a very low-income public school in a poverty-stricken, high-crime neighborhood, and we were using computers (albeit very outdated Apple II's that had been donated) starting in 1st grade. We were writing stories and printing them out by second grade, and learning how to "surf the web" and cite websites by 3rd. By high school, we were learning Photoshop and video editing. Meanwhile, my partner attended a very expensive private school, yet his first experience with a computer came drastically later (like some time around 2000 or so?), and it was because his family bought one, not because the school had them. On the other hand, he was already playing video games on a SNES from an early age, whereas I didn't get my first console (a cheap secondhand GameCube) until 2005 or 2006 when I was a university student. I can really see the difference in our parents, too. His mother is essentially computer illiterate to this day, whereas even my grandpa (born in 1930 and grew up sharecropping) was making websites without any help from his children or grandchildren while I was still a little kid.

MichaelRo 3y ago

That's interesting and good to know. I imagined Western Europe was much more advanced computer-wise, since PCs were out from 1982 onwards and by the time I started high school, 486s were available and Pentium would appear soon. I started high school in Romania in 1992 and in the beginning we only had two PCs, one AT with VGA color monitor and one XT with monochrome Hercules, and the rest were Romanian made CP/M machines with 8 inch floppies and horrible keyboards that would either fail to get the input or get stuck. PC keyboard was like walking on the Moon compared to early keyboards. We had Junior: https://retroit.ro/product/junior/ https://retroit.ro/product/junior/ And CUB-Z: https://retroit.ro/product/cub-z/ https://retroit.ro/product/cub-z/ After about a year the CP/M machines were decommissioned and 386 PCs brought in as replacements.

guappa 3y ago
Italian. I finished high school in 2003 and I never touched a computer while in school. We did have one at home, since as back as I can remember, but it was uncommon to have one. Towards the end of the 90s it had become somewhat common.
- anotheruser13 3y ago
  There were no PCs when I was in high school. We had classes in BASIC running on a time shared DEC PDP11. I got in trouble for running $TALK, which was like a very primitive chat app. Good times... Didn't get to see any kind of PC until 82 or so, my boss had a "Trash 80" which he used to access APL workspaces from home.