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Looking Back From the 1980s At Computers In Education
xzvf writes "As someone who went to high school in the '80s, this newsletter from 1980 (PDF) is a blast from the past. An interview with Microsoft talks up its BASIC language product and predicts voice control of computers in five years. Advertisements for Compute magazine, which was about to go monthly, and an article about a computer 'network' in Minnesota that connects some fax machine-looking terminal to a central computer over telephone lines. Lots of Atari, TI and RadioShack news too. It's a reminder from 30 years ago that we are still not using technology effectively in education."
to spy on kids and their families, anyway.
Now I can angrily wave a holographic display of this PDF while yelling at the soccer-robot-playing kids to get off my xerotolerant "lawn" area.
Speaking as a child of the 80s, I love the future. :)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Does anybody actually believe that we have progressed significantly in our use of tech to educate? I sure don't.
When I was in High School, back in the 80's, students were not allowed to use a computer unless they had completed Algebra 2 and were enrolled in Trig or calculus. Th reasoning was that computers were super calculators and, as such, the only students that needed them were advanced math students.
I was allowed in the computer lab, all Apple IIs', as long as I was there with an authorized student; however, I was not allowed to actually touch a computer. This created a procedure where I, and other interested students, would write out our programs on paper and then hand them to another, authorized, student, to type in to the computer.
Fortunately, an accountant I knew got an Apple II to run Visacalc on. I was then able to us a computer all I wanted so long as I was able to use the spreadsheet when he needed something set up on it.
We've tried just about everything over the years. We haven't found anything really amazing. Computers are not the royal road to learning.
Computers are good at learning management: Blackboard, Angel, Moodle, Desire2Learn etc.
Computers are good at drill type activities.
Computers are not much better than any other type of distance education. Most people prefer conventional classroom/lab education to computerized delivery. We've spent beaucoup bucks on experiments and most of those have not delivered on their promise.
...but my oxen died.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Back in the 1980s, we had such a bright outlook for the future of computing.
It sure hasn't turned out like we expected. Just take our software platforms today, for instance. On one hand, our most popular mobile devices (namely the iPhone and soon the iPad) are extremely locked up and restricted, with the vendor telling you EXACTLY which applications you're allowed to run.
Otherwise, we end up targeting the web. Sure, the web is good for some things, but back in the '80s we would have laughed at anyone who said that 25 years down the road, we'd be writing serious, million-line applications hosted in a SGML document, with logic written in a scripting language that's worse than Perl.
Hell, even Mac OS X hasn't evolved much past what NeXTSTEP was in the late 1980s. Windows is only slightly better than it was then. UNIX-like systems are mostly the same. We're even using the same windows system we used back then, and it really hasn't evolved all that much, either.
Of course, then there's all the DRM shit we have floating around.
I think we peaked somewhere in the 1970s, when Smalltalk and UNIX became somewhat mature. Then we fucked up, basically disregarded those much better technologies, and ended up in the pig trough that we're in today.
i have a friend who, when his kids asked him "can we av a computer daaad", went up into the loft, got out the TRS80 and a stack of byte magazines. the kids looked at him in this funny way, but they managed to get the machine working, chewed their way through the programs, and actually had fun with it.
he then promised them that their next computer (and this was only three years ago) would be a Pentium II.
my first application i ever saw was a 5 line PET Commodore 3032 BASIC program: for i = 1 to 40 print tab(i), i next i 50 goto 10. it scrolled numbers across the screen; i understood it instantly, and have never looked back. i was eight years old, and i was writing my own games within a year, moving @ and * symbols around the screen and firing "." symbols - three kids smashing down keys and jamming the other kids because the keyboard matrix on the Commodore PET wasn't smart enough to detect all the keys we were holding down, simultaneously, trying to blast each other to bits with fullstops.
with only an 8mhz CPU, 32k of memory, a 40x25 screen and BASIC to play with, there were no "expectations" of fanciness, fonts or even graphics to get in the way. the learning curve was quick and dirty, and there were no frills to overwhelm you.
but, most importantly, there wasn't a ton of software ready-made to "spoon-feed" you.
computer education is no longer education. at a British Computing Institute talk i attended, someone there made this brilliant analogy. he said that to parents, he asks them a simple question:
"computing is no longer taught in schools (parents look quizzical), they are simply 'trained' (parents look like they vaguely get it). if this was sex instead of computing that was taught in schools, would you prefer that your kids have sex _education_ or sex _training_? (parents finally get it)".
putting kids in front of microsoft products does them absolutely no service at all. it's why the OLPC project was created, to emphasise the goal of _educating_ kids about computers, rather than _training_ them to merely _use_ computers.
It's a reminder from 30 years ago that we are still not using technology effectively in education.
Yes we are. White boards are slightly more effective than chalk boards; they're a technological improvement.
we're not using technology effectively in transport either, or business or effectively using transport to move us around efficiently. or effectively using alternative energy sources even though methods have been around for decades now. or effectively handling energy consumption, waste management, environmental management, protecting children from predators, dealing with alcohol and drug abuse...
My point ? No matter what you look at from 30 years ago - we haven't made the progress that we always believed we should have by now...
If you like this, check out the Computer Chronicles the archive is hosting. It's always neat to see people reacting to old technology like it's new. Funny to hear the predictions that pan out, and even funnier to see the ones that don't. Check out the UNIX episode, a lot of what they say about UNIX applies to Linux today.
You can also find scans of some classic computer magazines at Atari Magazines and Old Computer Mags.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I grew up in Mankato, and I first used that MECC system discussed in the article around 1977 when I was in 4th grade. We didn't get Apples in our district until around 1978 or 1979, so for most of us, the MECC terminal was our first exposure to a computer. Our MECC sessions would continually print out on a large roll of yellow paper, and eventually it would run out and we'd need to get a teacher to help us reload it. Of course, it shouldn't be too surprising that most of us just used it for playing games. Among the games available on the MECC were Oregon Trail, a subhunt game (Seawolf?), and a dungeon game (Sceptre?). After a certain time of day (8am?), the access to some of the games was turned off, so some kids actually would arrive early just to play those games.
I greatly enjoyed the dungeon game, but never managed to get very far on it. Much later on, I learned about MUDs, and realized that I'd actually been playing one all those years ago. Nowadays, I suppose that many kids don't even know what MUDs are.
I was lucky enough to attend one of the only high schools in the country with access to computers in 1968. We had a teletype style terminal connected by acoustic modem to a mainframe; Fourtran 44. The teachers were pretty clueless about the technology but give a bunch of hungry kids manuals and access and stand back.
In 1981 my high school had one terminal to the district mini and one trs-80. The only use that I found for it was a source of tape and punch-outs to throw at school events.
In college (first year electrical engineering) I had no interaction with any computer system that was not running a game program.
It was not until years later (after dropping out of college) that I found a use for my old HP-12C. I was running an instrument on a survey crew and I got sick of waiting on crew chiefs to work the angles in their 41-CV's, so I wrote a proram for myself on the 12-C to calculate angles and short chords for setting pins on road construction.
That led to the past twenty years of computer programming (cogo to gis and finally database programming). I honestly wish that I had learned the joys of programming years earlier, but the educational system (as presented in highschool and college) did absolutely nothing to spark that fire.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Ah, such fond memories of the Oregon Trail... among other things!
Fascinating to read an article about its early days.
Wikipedia has a bit of history as well, if the name MECC takes you on a walk down memory lane...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECC
I can find accurate information much, much, much faster than I could in 1980.
So in terms of acquiring information, which is a precursor to acquiring knowledge, we are light-years ahead of where we were in 1980.
Now in terms of using technology to CONVEY information, I agree, we have lagged.
For example, in my view the presentation of Calculus has not changed much since its inception some 400 years ago. One of the biggest problems with the presentation is that we fail to bridge the gap between understanding of the abstract mathematical formulas and the concrete visualization of what they describe.
I firmly believe that computer graphics could help fill this gap but my professors still slog through crude chalk-board sketches trying to convey the concepts of area, volume, curvature, surfaces, rates of change, etc.
Every time I'm presented with a formula I'm doing mental tricks plugging in values for X & Y trying to visualize it. Computers could help here.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Voice control reminds me of the promise of flying cars. We will have both in about 5-10 years. And Duke Nukem Forever.
"It's a reminder from 30 years ago that we are still not using technology effectively in education."
Right, because we still have high-school graduates believing that voice-controlled computers will somehow be useful if we can just get more horsepower for speech recognition. Watch those Star Trek re-runs more closely, kids. There's a reason why only one person on the bridge has a computer that he can talk to: it'd be cacophonic chaos if everyone were talking at once.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Perhaps we should concern ourselves not with whether we're using technology effectively in education, but whether we are educating effectively PERIOD. There seems to be this weird trend toward technological methods simply because they use technology, not because they work better than other methods. Whether technology is used in an educational scheme is incidental -- what matters is whether the scheme is effective.
The implication here is that our education could be better if only we could figure out how to harness technology correctly -- as if the use of technology is now a requirement for good education. This is putting the cart before the horse.
I assume that this was submitted by somebody directly related to techlearning.com where the PDF is hosted (and whose server is being roasted by every /.er downloading a 32 page PDF at the same time... ), and they have an agenda to push 'solutions' on the education industry. In their minds 'effective' means people are buying whatever products their sponsors are hawking. Pfff. *cough*slashvertisement*cough*
The fact is technology has completely changed society, and education has not adapted. The internet has killed the exclusivity of the knowledge-based education paradigm. This isn't to say that people should not still learn facts, but there needs to be a new focus on logic, synthesis, and processes. People need to be taught how to find what they want to know, and not just by hur dur type things in da search box lol but real boolean logic. Then they need to be taught how to use that information in a synthetic, practical way.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. " Alfred North Whitehead
1. In my previous position, I worked at a high school which had a lot of fancy technology in place for teachers to use. One of the pieces of technology is a "smart board" that is basically a huge tablet with an image projected onto it from a normal projector. Unfortunately, when the "smart board" stops working, it becomes a huge useless slab that sits in the middle third of a regular whiteboard. It's always nice to be able to take a PowerPoint, convert it over to another easily editable presentation format, and write on it during a lecture, but I've found that the teachers are now at the mercy of the IT department for even classroom teaching.
There's also a document camera that teachers can use to show their work while sitting at their desk. What happened to simply writing everything in big bold letters on the whiteboard?
2. In my high school, the extent to which the majority of kids learn "computing" is in "Microcomputing Applications"; this is a class that teaches a hodge podge of various skills, like writing a letter in Word, filling in a spreadsheet in Excel, etc. As someone said above, this is not education, but simply training: people learned how to write letters in English class.
3. The best computing education I received was when I wanted to play computer games on locked down computers in a CCNA class. I didn't learn a damn thing about Cisco stuff (I was unmotivated to learn from CBT's in high school), but I did learn how easy it was to get rid of an admin password on Windows with physical access to the computer, and I also learned a bit about networking when setting up Quake 2 servers for other people to play on in class. Best part about it: I was not caught even once.
4. Of course, I learned a lot by deciding to install Linux 10 years ago on a spare box. Nowadays, I'm basically told that I'm living in an ivory tower and that "everyone uses Microsoft products."
Why are computers seen as mystical beasts with no rhyme or reason with the actual world? (1) showed me that computers are not even necessarily used as tools for effective teaching but as something "for technology's sake", (2) showed me that there is no drive to break this cycle in the educational system, (3) showed me that the assumptions taken when setting up the system were quite flawed and might be predicated on the presumption that kids wouldn't necessarily have the drive or knowledge to break the password, and (4) showed me that these years of "education" has culminated in an anti-Linux (and I might even go as far as saying "anti-intellectual") stance against computing.
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
It's used very effectively in university - languages - computational linguistics; speech recognition & analysis. .. for the few
Maths - Matlab, Mathematica etc. and on
It's available for some elementary and high schoolers too but not enough.
It's not the tech that's the problem - it's society.
Also, don't forget that many educational breakthroughs have come from computers - the ability to crunch stats
and have programs analyse and collect data. Statisticians compiling the data and great new revelations coming
The problem is money as ever..
The ipad will bring forth new educational possibilities that will be exploited for the few.
I used the Minnesota Education Computing Consortium timeshare system you speak of (the fax-like terminals). It had a 300-baud acoustic coupled modem and a large typewriter interfaced as a printer/input device. I remember accessing chat rooms even back then (I graduated in 1984, so this would have been 1982-4). That system was kinda clunky, even then. The computers we used in class were all Apple II+ at that point. (Yes, the MECC is the same one that produced Oregon Trail...)
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. -- L. Long
You, sir, are a crashing bore. Keep your lack of amusement to yourself, please, others may be enjoying the thread.
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. -- L. Long
...at the end of a road before a small brick building.
we are using technology effectively in education now? Most of what I've seen is the adaption of old tools and methods with very little new.
seriously... Math, English, History, Science... none of those require "technology", they require Teachers who are willing to teach. Administrators that are willing to discipline, and Parents who are willing to care. All this "technology" and hence all this spending hasnt raised up smarter children.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The best my high school could do in 1998 is have a lab with 25 Apple IIGS connected over a phoneline type network to a Mac Classic for printing. All they really taught us to do was play some Odell Lake and type a document with Appleworks. Thankfully I had my own PC at home and taught myself how to use a computer. The school finally invested in some PCs in 99 and even got an ISDN line to use the internet. The upside of all of this is that alot of people taught themselves how to use a computer, and ended up being all the better for it.
Computers are not fairy dust. One does not sprinkle "computers" on a problem to make the problem go away. They are simply tools that can be applied to solve a wide variety of problems -- but only work well when a real-world problem domain is understood by those attempting a solution. So much of "computers in education" have been ill-informed stabs in the dark by those who either don't understand the problem (and therefore relevant solutions) and/or who simply want to make money by selling solutions without regard to problems.
That said, computers are already transforming education because we're finally at the point where we can change the affordances of education. Consider the experience of having both good vs bad instructor/professors. As online video and remote classroom technologies improve, we're increasingly able to simply put all of the students in "the good prof's class" -- even though he or she is on the other side of the continent. You could be in the Big Lecture Hall with the bad prof, or have a world-class "+5 Insightful" instructor available via your computer. For live classes, this comes with the same Q&A opportunities as a standard classroom (more tech well-applied). For previously recorded classes, students get the benefit of review opportunities that never existed in a traditional class. Or in many cases, students can attend a live lecture with complete "recall" of the lecture material provided by increasingly good online presentation of the lecture video and notes.
Number Munchers was awesome. Also, when I learned BASIC and such I created a fake command prompt that gave nothing but syntax errors back to the user, as well as not allowing program breaks. Great for frustrating the hell out of the teacher, but I also implemented it as a kind of password system for some of my disks, as people would steal my work a lot. Of course those people weren't smart enough to bypass it by loading another disk with DOS on it and then swapping mine in to access my files, but if they were they would've done the work themselves anyway.
I think I still have an Apple II clone in storage at my parents' house... though since it's in the basement there's a good chance of water damage, unfortunately.
Yeah, that just happened.
Watch those Star Trek re-runs more closely, kids. There's a reason why only one person on the bridge has a computer that he can talk to: it'd be cacophonic chaos if everyone were talking at once.
Can you imagine trying to write software that not only accurately recognizes speech, but tries to intelligently follow conversations and wait until you're talking to it, specifically? So, the computer has to (1) only listen to authorized persons, (2) determine if what they're saying is a command. Sometimes in science-fiction, you get commands like "COMPUTER! [Do stuff]." But "computer" is a common noun that comes up in conversation, so it isn't always supposed to initiate commands. And considering the sensitive nature of the things that the computer can control, it seems like until you've got the software perfect, you'd have to get confirmations on commands, i.e. "Are you sure that you want to [do stuff]? Cancel or Allow?" Honestly, at that point, you might as well just carry a keyboard and a holographic command line. It's a hell of a lot cheaper.
I swear that's me in the striped izod with the scowl on my face because the girls are typing something wrong. The kid is the right age too.
Has it really been 30 years? I don't remember being anywhere near Mass. 30 years ago, though...
It's generally sex by way of computing...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Where I see the difference is that 30 years ago, children were being taught to program computers in school. Now days, they are being used essentially as a media delivery system. Schools use computers to keep the students interested in the lesson by videos and games. Students are encouraged to be consumers of computer technology, not the creators of it.
No matter how badly Gates might want to emulate the Enterprise's intuitive school-marm, there's still no interest in letting anyone within earshot know your google searches, login data, or taste in newds.
Ask.com did a big ad campaign about it back in 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070601190145/http://www.thealgorithm.com/
In 1989 my Jr High School had the only computer lab / classroom in the city. I believe there was one or two periods where you could take the computer course. I was lucky enough to get into one. I remember working on TRS-80's, writing basic programs (including a crappy centipede type program where the centipede only had one segment and you could almost never miss), and spooling programs to cassette tape. No wonder I'm a sysadmin now and not a programmer...
An essay I wrote connected to a free software project on educational technology: :-)
"Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools"
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
(The title has a double meaning.
The essential part is extracted here by Bill Kerr:
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-education-technology-has-failed.html
"""
Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand.
Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change...
So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process.
"""
More recent stuff by me on education and socio-technological change:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005584.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html
The good news is, in two to three years, people will be discarding today's fancy Google Android Smartphones, and they will make amazing educational platforms once they are free as hand-me-downs (instead of or in addition to OLPC-like endeavors):
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006250.html
No doubt most compulsory schools will try to suppress them. At least they will be usable outside of school.
More on this general idea of wearable computers changing the nature of education (and society) from Theodore Sturgeon written as a sci-fi short story "The Skills of Xanadu" in 1956, and which inspired Ted Nelson and other technology pioneers:
http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The first BASIC program I wrote was on a Teletype ASR-33 hooked up to the MECC time-sharing system.
Summer school between 6th and 7th grade, IIRC.
My first year in high school was in a shiny new building with nice computer labs full of 386s with Windows 3.1. (Although, I tended to gravitate to the one room with the few Macs when I could.)
Back then you couldn't lock everything down on the desktop, so we managed to explore every nook and cranny of Windows. The real challenge to us was the network, since it was locked down pretty well. I got on some sort of blacklist at one point for hanging around with kids who'd managed to hack the network. Eventually I managed to get into the computer office on a regular basis and even set up a rudimentary web server, once we'd integrated the internet and installed an ISDN line. They even let my plug in a phone line and RAS from home for free net access when I finally got my own computer. (My mom got that perk cut-off by abusing the RAS during school hours...)
Of course, back then, computer labs had an entirely different purpose than they have now. They taught you how to use and get familiar with computers, since most families did not have one at home. Nowadays they're just where kids go to check their Facebook.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
For what it's worth, Deerfield High School (which also served Highland Park, among other places) made computing available in a form that encouraged creativity--one of the best things about it was the lack of any relation to classroom activity.
Matt
In 1985, after studying advanced algebra in the classroom, we occasionally would adjourn to a back room where we "played" Green Globs running on Plato terminals seeing who could construct an equation that hit the most blobs in one go without hitting a blocker blob. It really was a blast, and honed my understanding of what we learned in class. Didn't really feel like learning, more like competitive fun! Thanks Sharon Dugdale!
http://www.greenglobs.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)
My wife was a teacher for 15+ years, teaching English and Mathematics at high school.
They didn't use computers for Mathematics. They used them for English. Remember how the English teachers used to nag you about writing out rough drafts, then revising them? I certainly didn't do that most of the time, because writing an essay multiple times was a drag. Now they use word processing, and learn about revising documents to improve them. That's a sensible use of computers, IMHO.
I'm sure they taught programming to those students who were interested, but using computers does not have to mean teaching programming.
The computer science and math teachers heard "new computers" and said, "Great, we'll take it."
Then I dropped the surprise on them, and said that this new lab was for the social studies teachers. That this was about exploring all areas of study with computers - art, literature, politics, you name it. "Nonono," said the CS people, "You've been misinformed. *We* get the computers."
That did not surprise me. What surprised me is when the social studies teachers said "Yeah, they get the computers. We don't want them." All they saw was a burden, changes to the curriculum, technology they did not understand, and a new dependency on their coworkers to keep the machines up and running. They were perfectly happy to let the CS teachers teach programming and that would be that. No need for computers in any of the social studies (and, by extension, humanities) classrooms.
Funny how far we *have* come, honestly. If only we could take what's out there on the net at our fingertips, and integrate it more directly into students' education.
[ At the time, in my neighborhood, the "state of the art" schools had a Mac hooked up to a laser disc player, and the students would put together multimedia reports on John F Kennedy to present to the class. The more typical schools had text terminals of maybe the 286 variety, and would be taught keyboarding and other office skills. ]
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
3.54MB for a newsletter? And from the '80s, I bet that must have been huge!
Yeah, I'm typing this just as it's downloading.
Wow! Your school was anal! I started high school in 1980, in 1982, I took the one Computer Programming. Funny thing was, the teacher was learning programming also so she would go to class at night and then come in and teach us what she had just been taught. Funny thing is, I read ahead in the text book and within a week, was far ahead ofthe teacher but, I digress.
We had two ASR33 ttys with acoustic modems that allowed us to dial into a HP2000 computer (at the Mathmatics and Science Center on Mountain Road for any Richmonders) that was shared by the whole district. We had to store our programs on punch tape and turn in printouts showing our programs and the outputs. We also had an early model Apple II. Our school system wasn't afraid of us using the computers. That was a fantastic class and an experience that I am very grateful for. Thanks Henrico County!
BTW, I'm still looking for an ASR33 (hint hint)
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Check out the black Bell and Howell branded Apple II on the cover. Apple was having trouble selling Apple IIs to schools, because the computer needed to have an interlock to power it down when you opened the cover to meet purchasing requirements. B&H manufactured a special Apple II with the required power interlock, a black case, black keyboard, a B&H logo in place of the Apple logo, and a B&H sticker on the bottom covering over the Apple sticker. The disk drives were also black.
There was an optional back attachment that provided a couple of additional power plugs, three line level audio inputs, and I think a video output. There was also a joystick socket on the right side of the case.
I got one of these because my dad knew a Bell and Howell distributor and bought it from him. Unfortunately mine is missing the space bar. Try and find a black Apple II space bar. Talk about unobtainium!
We may soon store library catalogs, or actual texts, on microprocessor-controlled optical discs to be retrieved and viewed on the same machines that play feature films and programmed instruction modules.
Whenever I look back through history like this, I get the sense that no one really knows what the hell they're talking about. People can't predict their way out of a paper bag. Whether it's economics, weather, technology or whatever, we're just really, really bad at it.
Maybe educational technology on computers has not advanced significantly because the interfaces we use, mouse, keyboard, monitor, are the same interfaces we used back when the first PC's came out? They have improved in resolution and speed, but there's only so many techniques you can use to present new ideas and concepts with those tools..
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
With the rise of Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, Microsoft ceased furthering the development of "free" (gratis) programming languages which came BUNDLED with the computer. Microsoft could have BUNDLED Visual Basic, and therefore empower their users the way that Commodore and Atari and even Apple (via Hypercard) tried to do... but instead Microsoft gambled it all on creating a *dependant* consumer class of users. That's why there was never a community of Windows users loyally subscribing to computer education magazines, and typing in program listings (the best way to learn programming). As soon as Windows became #1, all of these educational methods died.
Today most computer users do not know anything about computers. They just know rote clicks which is knowledge with a short shelf life... only until the next version of said Windows product (go into any used bookstore and check out the pricing on say a 3 year old used book for UNIX/Linux and one for Windows... the Windows book is usually under $1 because Vb6 knowledge was made worthless... while a book on Python 2.5 or PHP 5.0 still has loads of value). It's no surprise that some of the best programmers started out on these old 8 and 16 bit systems, and they're better not because these platforms were superior to today's.. no they're better because they were exposed to problem solving an an earlier age. That does not happen today.
I missed the days when PC's came with multiple programming languages for free... then I found Linux, and I realized it wasn't true that these things went away... only that Microsoft wasn't interested in hooking young kids on programming the way Atari, BBC, Apple and Commodore wanted to do (and did so well, for the time they were relevent)
Textbook publishers use technology in the same way that Microsoft uses Windows: as a monopolistic lever to force out any and all competition. At the moment the big publishers bribe lazy professors with PowerPoint presentations and the like so the professors can save time actually preparing their coursework. Similarly, publishers are hard-selling assessment packages as the best way to teach students science and math. Once the publisher convinces the professor to REQUIRE the use of the technology package, the publisher now has GUARANTEED sales of new books. The codes in the books ensure that used books are USELESS. So they get their hundred bucks per copy times 30 students in a first-year course. It bears absolutely NO relationship to the costs that go into making the book or even the technology package. Textbook publishers are scary shitless just like other trade publishers (and consumer publishers), only evil in their quest to dominate how students in this country learn. They make the materials, they set up the systems, they control how everyone learns. Very Orwellian. They make a show of allowing some professor-generated content into the system, but really it's all about vendor lock-in the way it is with every other shitty content producer who is afraid to compete on the quality of what they make. Can't wait for those hundred dollar ebooks, what great value! And who actually understands how to use all of this OTHER than the textbook publisher? That's right, it's in their interest to make them just complicated enough so the professor doesn't fuck with the publisher-provided content too much. It's not just the reason college and university bills are skyrocketing, it's about how our children learn. Wake up, people and let's think for ourselves and hire professors who create their own content not just warm bodies who shovel whatever not-proofread crap textbook publishers decide to reprint from the last five editions.
The problem is often that the use of technology in education is technology led rather than pedagogy led. Education needs to be led by thinking about how we can best teach our children and help them to learn (whatever your philosophy on what this entails), and use whatever technologies are appropriate. In too many cases it's tempting to start from a technology perspective of trying to force education to fit round a technology just because it's available and people think it's cool. Technologies offer affordances but they have to be understood as only part of a wider socio-technical system.
Don't blame Microsoft for peoples stupidity. I work on a Helpdesk at a school. We have tried to integrate computers into the classroom with very mixed success. Some teachers grab the opportunity and run with it. They are the ones that get good results. Then there are the other morons, who despite being trained by their peers, still report a problem as my Microsoft is broken. This is the majority. They will never have a clue on how to use computers, let alone integrate them into education.
You know, like printed? Dead wood backup? The ancients had amazing tech that we no longer can replicate, must be because they had help from aliens.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
When I was in high school in the early 70s, we had a terminal (teletype) connect to a HP3000F through a 110 baud, acoustic coupled, modem. It ran HP time-shared BASIC. There was 4 or 5 of us that figured out how to make it work. In '74 they offered a "Computer Science" class. In the 1st 6 weeks of the class we had 5 teachers and none of them new squat about a computer. We had to teach them how to work the terminal. Easy A though. ;-)
Of course we had to walk 10 miles to school, in the snow, up hill, both ways.........
But do they actually improve teaching and learning? Fair call that slashdot posters are chiefly concerned with technologies, but in terms of learning and teaching you've got to ask if there are pedagogical improvements brought about by introducing the technology. Otherwise it's just a waste of money.
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Sorry, I respectfully have to disagree here. Computers are a powerhouse for education. I believe the problem is that the optimal teaching styles are far different though.
(Begin Accent) Back in their day, huge swaths of primary instructional conversations sunk the minute the teacher didn't know an answer, and even more student-student conversations sunk even faster because the students knew far less. The best scenario was that the answer could be dug up in a week by scheduling a visit to that Librarian Who Knew Everything. (Dying breed, those. Ever met one? Knows six languages cold and could swear in three more, knew the equivalent of four bachelor's degrees under the radar, and then became a rebel and went into Library Science.)
Now, for the spot questions, *anyone* can shut down the silly squabbles. Done right, that should free the teacher for the really tough questions.
I've learned more in the last 5 years lurking on the net than I did for 20 years prior. Memes aside, here on The Dot we get monopolistic theory of markets, civics updates on the dumber things lawmakers keep trying to push through, technological implementation with counter horror stories, etc.
The new distractions that come with tech like texting are red herrings.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
What about the Express editions of Visual Studio?
UK, end of the 60's, start of the 70's.
First computer I saw was an ex-Shell Oil system. Huge and green with valve memory. Teletype output only. I also seem to remember systems where you wound a tape from a round cassette around a series of rollers.
There was a screen with a series of numbered buttons running down the right-hand side.
The tape would display stop images and depending on the pupils response/button press, move on to the next.
The system recorded the input and prepared some kind of report.
Anyone remember what these were called?
Thanks!
And get off my lawn....
That means turning it over to our tame racing driver, the sig.
When I was in high school in the 1990s, most of the students had TI-85 / TI-89 / TI-92 graphing calculators.
They used the calculators for not only doing two-digit arithmetic (that they couldn't do in their head), but also for taking derivatives, solving quadratic equations, etc...
They would also use the calculator's abilities for storing physics notes (basically cheating) or had simple programs that did physics problems for them...
Anyone with a plain scientific calculator was at a bit of a disadvantage...
We did have a computer lab, but it was filled with mostly 386s (SX,not DX), and a few 486s (which were ancient even then!)... We used the lab for only learning programming (compiling a 'hello world' PASCAL program in DOS took several seconds). For grading, we printed out our programs on an old dot-matrix printer that printed about 1 page per minute...
Needless to say, learning PASCAL programming was an non-required elective...
To garner social and investor support for their new media inventions, inventors almost always tout "educational applications" whether these materialize or not. This is how Thomas Edison promoted his phonograph and motion picture projector. Usually the public is enthralled by the new media and spends excessive money on it. Then the old media condemns the new media as "idle entertainment". On the dark side, porn is often an early adapter of new media, e.g. ecommerce and net streaming. The debate continues into this year, 140 years after the phonograph, as some people condemn the movie Avatar (which may be the "breakthrough 3D movie") as an expensive time-waster.
...until textbooks are all available in electronic form.
Now (at least in the US) most are not, due to textbook publisher's concerns over pirating. They offer supplementary material, and sometimes even material or quizzes that they host and manage on their own servers (but that is password-locked, and only valid for one course's length, so EVERY student MUST buy a new textbook & CD, just to get a valid online password). But the whole contents of the textbook are never available, and it's no mistake.
Why are kids still hefting around bookbags, when all this shit will fit on a single 16gb SD card?
I'm not usually a fan of government interference, but this is one place I think really could benefit from it: make a federal laws that says textbook publishers either put out 100% electronic versions, or their books cannot be used at any school that is accredited by the Dept of Education at all.
~
Back in the early 80's, we'd rotary dial into the university computer, slap the phone down into the modem and play Wombat. What a breakthrough in adolescent education.
I don't remember doing anything else in school besides sneaking away to play Wombat and combing around the university computer system finding out all sorts of tricks, new games, etc. It was great - it was unregulated - it was unprotected - it was all wide open. Truly an open system that hadn't been comprimised by those with malicious intent or those trying to sell you crap that you didn't need.
Then, in high school, I was expected to be able to find a date for the Prom? Forget it. I'd rather play with computers.
Going on this, getting my parents to invest in computers (Mircosoft) and majoring in CS and Engineering, my parents and I are now sitting on a heap of cash.
Lesson leared? Yes. Design truly open systems. Harden them down to prevent malicious usage. Get rid of all the other BS involved. Above all, find something that you love to do and pursue it and don't let anyone get in your way. Computers did that for me. Hopefully they'll help someone else out in the same way if those in charge get their act together and make good use out of what computers have to offer.
I have a drinking problem: Two hands and one mouth.
Unless "softwear" was an acceptable alternative at the time.
Sorry, these things just jump out at me.
Did you just say " The Dot " ? With capitals? sheesh
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Does Visual Studio Express come installed with the OS, or included as an option on the Windows disc?
The author's point was that Apple an Atari and Commodore bundled and *promoted* these things as reasons for owning a computer. You missed that point.
You can point out that VSE is abailable somewhere on Microsoft.com... but nobody knows or cares.
The key is corroboration. This is also much faster today than in 1980.
I find myself feeling pretty confident in the accuracy of acquired information pretty quickly, in spite of the inaccurate information out there.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
More than promoted; the early computers practically begged you to program, throwing you instantly into the BASIC interpreter when you turn on the machine (without a cartridge). With the prompt "READY." and that flashing cursor-- who wouldn't be tempted to try a little programming when it's so easy to start?