Computers in grade school/high school?

[MHaensel]

PC Mag talks about the TRS-80 model III being "an appealing and sturdy all-in-one machine that found its way into many school computer labs across the United States."

 

I grew up in small town in North Dakota, USA. Schools in rural ND were Apple II from one side to the other. My particular school may have had a Model II in the front office, but that's the only exception I remember.

 

What computers were in your school? Did you have the same kind at home?

[+OLD CS1]

Fellow NoDak, here.  In elementary we had Apple IIs and the special ed class had a TI-99/4.  Junior High had Atari 800XLs and 1200XLs.  The teacher who ran the computer lab was also the president of the local TI users group so the lab also had a couple of TI-99/4As.  My first high school had Apple IIs and Macs.  My next high school had an Apple II lab which was being decommissioned, and an active Mac and IBM PS/2 lab.  There I also found evidence of a former small Commodore setup in the form of some Commodore networking devices which allowed the computers to share printers and disk drives.  My last high school had only PS/2s.

 

Up through high school all I had at home was a TI-99/4A.  Around 10th grade I moved to the Commodore 64.

[BydoEmpire]

My grade school, junior high and high school had Apple 2's, although the high school electronics lab had a Commodore.  I think it was a Vic 20, I don't recall, but we hooked it up to a remote control car or something as a project.

 

My mom worked in a community college teaching English as a second language, and my first real introduction to computers was going to work with her when I was 10 (couldn't find a babysitter or something).  Her lab had some kind of TRS 80, as well as a bunch of Apple II+ machines.  My brother showed me a few BASIC commands, and I wrote some simple stuff on the Apples.  That was my first programming.  I don't know how I got it, but remember having a disk of Castle Wolfenstein and playing that; but I couldn't figure out how to turn off the volume, so I had to just power off the machine because the voices were disturbing the actual students in the lab  

 

Schools all had Apple 2s, but my friends mostly had Commodores.  A couple Apples and Ataris here and there.  That TRS 80 in the community college was the only one I ever saw outside of Radio Shack.

[ClausB]

My progressive high school teacher in 1976 got two Altair 8800a S100 boxes with 16K and cassette interfaces. One on a Teletype with paper tape and one on a video terminal. We learned BASIC and had fun.

[newtmonkey]

My elementary school computer lab was stocked with Model IIIs.  We used them mostly for typing, playing educational games, and dabbling in BASIC.

[ed1475]

When I was in 5th grade my school got Atari 400's and Atari 800's with 810 disk drives.  I remember playing a Civil War simulation game in BASIC.  In high school, we had Apple II's. 

[The Usotsuki]

Well into the 1990s it was Apple //es almost universally where I went.

[TeddyBear89]

I always enjoy these types of threads (especially for those of us that were teenagers in the 1980's) and fondly recall the high school computer lab filled with Apple IIes.

 

Equally memorable was stealing more than a few DOS boot disks from this lab so that a friend could make me a copy of the latest Commodore 64 games that he obtained.  Those disks were like a dollar each and to an unemployed 16 year old wanting a copy of the 4th and Inches game that his buddy raved about it..... this theft seemed like a no-brainer decision.

 

The teacher finally noticed that she was missing several boot disks and started having us sign them in and out.  Yes, I know now that stealing is wrong and I am sorry.

[Casey]

I grew up in central Iowa.  My grade school had Apple IIs (1 per classroom by 1984).  Mostly IIes but some II+s (and one Bell & Howell II+).  Junior high and high school - each room had an Apple IIe (there was 1 IIgs).  By my 10th grade year (1990), a handful of classrooms had Macintosh Classics instead of Apple IIes. The computer lab had a room full of Apple IIes that were placed with Compaq 386 PCs my senior year.  The writing classroom had about 8 or so PCs of various types (IBM PC XTs, and Hyundai 386s I believe) and 8 Xerox CP/M machines.

[1980gamer]

Didn't have a computer in a class until High School.

We had TRS-80's Model iii and iv.  I remember when we upgraded from TRS-DOS to L-DOS and a small hard drive. Connected via RS-232 twisted pair.

I used those freshman year.

 

The next 3 years, I used a DEC PDP -11/23  Very similar basic to the TI.  Bonus for me!  LOL

 

We also had a Honeywell mini-computer and maybe 10 stations local but it was a wan to 4 other schools.  Feel bad for those remote users!    This had Pascal available.

 

Yes, I remember switching to the C=64 in 84-85 and trading games.  Good times.  The Final Cart III was so awesome! 

 

But I stopped using the C=64 in 1991-ish  and have not used one since.  But, the TI is still getting love.  I guess you never forget your first love!

[+OLD CS1]

I forgot.  My high school in New Mexico had two IBM System/34s in our computer lab.  From what I recall, the building used to be the district's central office and the lab was its computer center before they upgraded technology and moved.  We did some BASIC, but also learned COBOL and RPG-II on the system.  I went a little further and learned OCL and menu programming, and how to run some of the system as a kind-of teacher's aide.  I still have the 8" disk with my personal library (essentially a directory) on it.

 

@TeddyBear89  Yeah, I have some skeletons in my closet, as well.  I found a stash of old Apple disks and manuals which were packed up to be tossed, and I snagged at least one of each to read, learn, and have in my repertoire.  Not to mention the copies of Turbo Pascal and RM*COBOL I made for home use.

[+chue]

Grade school was all Apple II. Junior high had mostly Apple IIs, as well as a Trs 80 model III lab. I have fond memories of a programming course using those Trs 80s.  In high school we started using PCs and I recall seeing some Macs as well. 

[Keatah]

In grade school I hauled in my Apple II+ and did a presentation on what a computer was. We also had a Bell & Howell on loan or something.

 

In high school most of us were not allowed into the computer lab if math grades weren't in the top 20 or 30 or whatever criteria they used. Talk about a backward school district!

 

They had a dumb-ass "data processing" course available. Something to appease the "losers". Spent the entire semester learning about input and output and storage.

 

 

[+5-11under]

There was one electric typewriter in high school. Does that count?

[wierd_w]

Up until middle/highschool, my school system used Apple II/e and 68k & early PPC Macs. (everything from cheap LCs to G2s)  They later switched to PCs, and all the teachers suffered serious "mac user syndrome" trying to adapt to it.

 

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

My background growing up was not exactly typical, so experiences of which computers were in the classroom are a bit odd.

 

In the US, the elementary schools had Apple ][s.  The //e is the one that really stands out in my mind, but I also recall at least one ][+ being in use.

 

Outside of the US, the primary school (elementary equivalent) I went to had a couple of Commodore PETs.  We never really had a chance to spend a lot of time on them, but I do remember that they were the later models with the non-calculator-style keyboards.

 

Didn't attend school in the US past that point, so in secondary school we started out with Apple ][+ clones.  Cannot remember which specific ones they were, but they were in a PC-style off-white desktop case with keyboards attached by coiled cables similar to how a phone handset connects to the base.  Monochrome green displays; dual 5.25" disk drives.

 

They were replaced with Atari STs in my second-to-last year.  Quite honestly, by that stage, girls were a lot more interesting to me so I wasn't paying a great deal of attention to the school's computers.  Bearing in mind that this was a boarding school and I had an ST at home, it was just something to indulge in at the weekend, though it was absolutely awesome to be able to use the eight or ten STs in the computer lab to duplicate illicitly-obtained software in bulk for further distribution.

 

There was also a single Apple //c (complete with small monochrome green Apple CRT and C-shaped stand for it) in the room used for religious education.  Although donated by a parent who was an exec with Apple in Cork, it never saw much use.

 

University was sort of more of the same, but differently.  That's outside of the scope of this thread, however.

Edited December 6, 2020 by x=usr(1536)

[RobertB]

In 1984, I brought my personal C64 and off-brand cassette deck into the classroom.  In 1985, that was replaced by a SX-64.  Later in 1985, I bought a flat C128 and 1571 so I could do my grades at home.

 

Meanwhile, the middle school had a lab of Apple IIe's where students would go for their elective in programming.  Of course, I always thought the C64 was superior.  ;)  I remember the principal coming up to me one day and asking me whether a Mockingbird board would be good to have in the Apple.  I just couldn't tell him that the C64 already had synthesized speech capabilities (heh, BB Talker word processor which the students used... but usually to make the C64 say very naughty words!).

 

The science teacher in the other building had several Apples in his classroom.  We had a friendly competition.  Eventually, I made room for up to three C64 set-ups in my classroom, even when the first Windows 95 desktop computer showed up in my room in 1997.

The school's computer lab was eventually moved to the library, and the Apples were replaced by Dell desktops with Windows XP.  By then, there was a Dell Windows XP was in my classroom, but I still had one C64 set-up on one side of the room.  However in 2004, the last C64 straw was when the principal at that time wanted about 15 Dells desktops in my classroom.  That left no room for the C64!

 

In the last years, the Dells were replaced with iPads, Chromebooks, and Macbooks.  But on the last day of the school year, I would bring a C64 or an Amiga and let the students use some real computing!  :)

 

Truly,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan

[mr_me]

Southern Ontario in the early 1980s, the high school computer lab had commodore PET.  Several computers shared dual floppy disk drive units and dot matrix printers.

 

Around 1985 they were replaced with Icon computers running qnx.  Wikipedia describes these as thin client computers but I'm pretty sure software was running on local cpu and ram.  These were nice computers with built in trackballs and speech synthesis.  Three of them had colour monitors.  There was a central server at the teacher's desk with a hard disk, I assume.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICON_(microcomputer)

Edited December 6, 2020 by mr_me

[potatohead]

Grade school, when I went through, had only one Atari machine.  Was used by the educators.

 

That changed right after I was through, and they used Apple 2 computers from the High School.

 

I had those Apples in High School.  Two big labs full of them.  Was a mix of Plus through Platinum machines.  I loved, and ended up with a Platinum I use today.

 

As I was graduating, High School got a couple Mac computers, and replaced one Apple lab with IBM PC's running monochrome displays and adapters.

 

With that came a shift too.

 

With the exception of some students, myself included, who were interested in more than just using the computer and basic literacy, the focus became job training basically.  The result of that was people in the know hung out in the Apple lab.  Games, programming, graphics, all happened there.

 

The IBM machines ended up like the typing room, until graphics were added.  Hercules + QBASIC brought a lot of the fun back into computing in that lab, and I was out the door right as it all happened.

 

The Mac was treated like a super computer, BTW.  Mere mortals were not allowed to touch it.  Programming on it?  ARE YOU HIGH!  THIS IS A REAL COMPUTER!

 

Yeah.  I graduated at exactly the right time.

 

 

 

[7800Knight]

In the 1980s, we used Apple II or Commodore 64 computers in New York City public schools.  It was one of those as I remember playing the edutainment game Dragon's Keep on there; I know the game was available on both platforms.

 

In the 1990s, we used IBM PCs in my typing class when we weren't using electronic typewriters.  (Yes, that shows my age - we had typing classes in those days.)

[JeremyR]

Both my elementary and high school has Apple IIes. I had a TRS-80 at home at first, then got a C-64.

 

My college (this was 1989-94) used SX-64s for certain labs that needed a portable computer.

[Cebus Capucinis]

I think we had a couple //e machines but in middle school we had pretty much exclusively 8088s. Very strange compared to everyone else's answers!

[Arnuphis]

In my UK school in the early 80's we had a Research Machines 380z locked away in an office. Had to be a part of the computer club to get access to it. My Technology teacher had a Commodore Pet and there was a BBC Micro that got wheeled around on a trolley into various classes. When I went to college it was all BBC machines and a big Cobol mainframe.

[zzip]

I was in grade school when we first got computers,  it was a bunch of TRS-80s,  probably model III's, but I'm not 100% certain on that.

 

I took a BASIC class one summer in a local middle school,  and they had a bunch of Commodore PETs networked to a single floppy drive unit.

 

In high school it was all Apple II's in the labs, where they taught BASIC and Pascal courses.   Some lucky classrooms also had a single Apple II in them.   What was funny is those classroom Apple IIs went unused most of the time.  And when they were used,  it was for some non-education purpose, like the annual Valentine's Day matchmaking event, or sorting a mailing list.

[zzip]

On 12/5/2020 at 5:58 PM, Keatah said:

In high school most of us were not allowed into the computer lab if math grades weren't in the top 20 or 30 or whatever criteria they used. Talk about a backward school district!

I remember how destructive high school kids could be.   The school probably wanted to make sure the expensive equipment wasn't damaged or destroyed so they were filtering out the serious students.