Your school experience with computers

[aka Cthulhu]

Just something I thought about. In your generation, were computers a part of school life?

Like, for my experience, it was there but it wasn't a big part of the curriculum. Computer class was essentially, learn to use Word and Excel, make a Powerpoint being the last thing as I recall. Don't think the OS was even XP at that point in my life, even though it was already the 2000s. This was in high school by the way. Like many kids in that time, a lot of experience with a computer was through "internet" cafes, quotation marks used as most would use it for Counterstrike, Diablo 2, Ragnarok Online, and other games.

High school did have a computer room in the library. You either had lunch or skipped it to use the computer room, considering the lines. Of course, lots of stuff was blocked but they didn't really block Newgrounds. No speakers for the computers or headphones, so you just learned from each other on what was fun enough to do without sound.

Also remember that I joined the computer club. Learning how to make email and make a webpage. Couple of weeks in decided to skip it, as skipping the hour in the club meant an hour headstart on Friday to get to the one of the various internet cafes before they get flooded.

And there were diskettes! Diskettes! School provided you one if you don't have one, added to the bill.

[Feyrhausen]

It seems I am older than you. I took my first computer class in 7th grade learning to program in BASIC on TRS 80. Learned PASCAL the next year. High school started the same with slightly better computers. I quit taking the courses after 9th so I dont know if they got into anything more involved.

[tirtefaa]

Because computers were pretty rare until I got to high school, only the top 2 or 3 kids in the class got to use them.

I remember the ones we mostly used were Apple 2s and Macintosh if we were lucky.

Here's a few things I remember;



Number Munchers...an all time classic. Unfortunately, we only had 2 computers in 2!_ grade for 2 classrooms, so I maybe got to play this twice.



I loved this game since you could draw and do other little things, granted the drawing on a Macintosh mouse was next to impossible.



Kids Typing with Spooky; when you missed a letter, Spooky would say the incorrect letter out loud, but you couldn't "spell out" swear words.



I actually owned Oregon Trail but in middle school it was a welcome distraction from the dumb typing programs we had to do.

[YAKMAN is ICHIBAN]

For reference I graduated from high school in 2004. I went to two different private Catholic schools, one a K-8 and then another for high school.


K-8 was very limited. There was 1 computer class at one grade level that involved some BASIC on I think an Apple IIgs WELL after the Apple IIgs was obsolete.

In maybe 6th or 7th grade they upgraded the computers. But I don't recall doing anything on them other than playing Civilization II in a computer club. I don't think there was an actual computer class.



High school I had 1 typing class where we just did Mavis Beacon typing or something like it. That's it. We mostly blitzed through the typing software then played card games or minesweeper for the rest of the time.

[Push R Truth]

AppleIIe Oregon Trail was the shit.

[BorneAgain]

This is my earliest memory with school computers.

[Hurbster]

Basically sitting in a cupboard playing Leaderboard.

[Fade is a CodyCryBaby]

Yeah..in kindergarten we had those old Macintosh’s I think? The f***ing green shit. Middle school computer science was a joke. Mainly playing old pc games and typing. Same with HS comp too. I remember learning about Google ‘round then.

So they were there but in the background, as it would be, in the 90s, early aughts.

[James Fabiano]

Where do we begin?

Well I mostly remember high school computer classes; by then, we had the Macs, and they had shareware games on there. Guess what we did instead of learning?

I remember in particular...we had WITWICS? as well as Pac-Man with the original Japanese names in attract mode. That bomb puzzle game, only it was called "Saddam's Revenge" (this was the early '90s). And most infamously...FRED ROGERS, TERRORIST. Same one with like one website devoted to it, and that's just to download the game.

Otherwise...this was also where I was introduced to The Grouch app that you put over the trash can icon. You threw things out, Oscar would appear and sing "I Love Trash."

I also got in trouble for using my printer skills to write and print inappropriate things.

Before then? Apple II and IBM, and the like. Doing tricks with BASIC (mostly to have some sentence appear infinitely with "20 GOTO 10"). Using the "turtle" to draw pictures.

[Mr PONYMANIA Mr Jenzie]

bbc b micro and even used a zx spectrum in the last year
otherwise it was all pencils ... to wind my zx tapes

learned all my superior personal computer skills afterwards

i also learned COBOL and UNIX in college

[Ultimo Gallos]

I started school in 1980. And my elementary school was the school in that district they tested out the first computer lab on. Was Apple IIe machines IIRC.

There was no computer classes offered until I hit 10t grade,so the 89/90 school year. The intro to computers class they offered was still using the same Apple IIe computers. By this time at home I had a much better computer at home. After 2 weeks the teacher realized I knew what she was teaching that year. So that class became one where I showed up did my work then got a pass to leave.

By my senior year there waas a computer in each class room. All networked together.

But AFAIK there wasn't any internet or anything like that at my old school until 95.

[Ishmeal Loves Kaseyhausen]

Graduated in 2002. I remember the classroom first having a computer in 2nd or 3rd grade, but only really remember starting to use them in middle school. Our typing teacher was an old man who fell asleep and his dentures would fall out. He would read the same monotone instructions. "A A A space. A A A space. S S S space" and so on. Of course Oregon Trail was played. I won the 7th grade Oregon Trail contest after we concluded the unit on said subject!

In 2000 we received a slew of iMac's for our high school's computer lab and those things were the shit!

[Paul]

I remember I really loved the Kid Pix paint program on the Mac.



And I still play the Apple IIe version of Oregon Trail every once in awhile.

[saneiac]

We had a "computer room" in primary school which was a converted janitor's closet with 2 Apple IIes and a couple chairs crammed into it. My first computer class in that room was 30 minutes of a substitute teacher/volunteer trying to figure out how to connect an external floppy drive and get it to read a disk. He never came back. Other than that, they were only used for some basic math programs for the younger kids.

High school, starting 1988, was still Apple IIes. I took a PASCAL class, although the teacher again didn't know much about computers, and she had the supremely annoying requirement that we had to fully hand-write every program for her to review before we could type any of it (because, according to her, that's how real programmers do it). I tried to write a Scott Adams style text adventure that year, but had to give up when it got too big for the computer's memory to handle. The computers weren't ever updated while I was there.

In both cases, the school was very strict about ensuring no one used the computers to play games.

[Von Wagner's Brownies]

I can't remember if I played this in elementary or middle school, but I remember really enjoying it.

[tirtefaa]

There was another game I played in middle school on a very outdated Apple III computer called Catch a Falling Star (starring Micro!), a 1983 math game where you have to solve problems before a star hit the ground. This was very frustrating since there was a delay with any input you did, so no matter how fast you were, you could easily lose.

This game must have been so terrible that I can't find any existing screenshots of it.

[burtreynolds]

WTF is a computer, I took a typing class in high school...on a typewriter.

[fg]

I loved playing Oregon Trail. That was a fun game.

During my last semester in college, I took a night class at college. It only met once a week but it was technically 4 hours. I say technically because it was split into two sessions. The first two hours was a lecture and the last two hours was a lab but if you finished the lab early, you can leave early. The class met from 6p-10:19p. It was called Microsoft Works. The professor was teaching about Excel. I already did my lab way early in advance so I was planning on leaving at 8p. During the lecture, there was one lady in the class who after the teacher did one thing, she kept on interrupting the lecture by saying: “How did you do that?” She did those MANY times. So much so, I (along with other people were losing patience). I kept on asking myself: “Couldn’t she just ask these questions during the lab so she wouldn’t waste all of our time? There are people who want to leave ASAP.” She did this so much that by the time the lecture was over, it was already 10:19p and we all had to leave. Needless to say, the professor and all of us was upset.

I understand that there are people who aren’t computer literate and all though.

There was also one student who was a friend of mine whom in high school asked me how to do things and I helped him out. He says he needed help following instructions even though they were in plain English. I didn’t mind that so much.

[Celexa Bliss 54]

I attended a computer club in elementary school for a few years. We basically got to try out different games, like Number Munchers, Oregon Trail and this cool Ninja game that had a bad guy with a parrot. In third grade, my principal made me take typing lessons with him, because my handwriting was so bad, and they ended up putting a computer in my classroom for me to use. This carried over to fourth grade, as well. Yet they still expected me to learn cursive lol

We had a computer class as part of "Unified Arts" in middle school, where we would switch off between that, Art and Health in a cycle throughout the year. I remember doing typing drills and playing Carmen San Diego lol I took a summer school computer class one year, which is where I discovered the internet and wrestling websites. I had a computer class in grade 8, then I was actually banned from most of the computer rooms because I made the teachers hate me so bad lol my Senior year, I did take a computer class, but we weren't allowed to go online, only do typing exercises or work on out Senior Book projects. We did have laptops for research in my Journalism and English classes, though. Somehow, I never caught looking up porn lol

EDIT: oh, I lied. My junior year, my geometry class was all on a computer the second half of the year.

[Deleted]

Ya had to be there to understand both how awesome this was and the absoloute struggle lol.