What were computer lessons like when you were at school?

[OneUmberJoker]

Full of PowerPoint and Excel

No such thing.
Heard tell of a calculator in last year but never saw or used one at School.

Non existent

4 BBC B computers in a room made by boxing off a space under the stairs. No real ‘lessons’ just a club at break times where we learned to programme in early Basic and wrote short programmes that made geometric patterns (they looked like the early screensavers). Then at Uni a very early version of email using JANET (Joint Academic Network).

I learned to use WordStar then the first version of Office when I started work & went from there.

When I started school in 1958 my infant school was still using slates and chalk for the reception class. People don't believe I learnt to write on a slate but it's true!

I was a primary school teacher in the mid 1980s and taught children to use Acorn computers, mainly for word processing and simple programmes. I used to bring one home at weekends so my own children could play 'Granny's Garden'.

I took GCSE computing in 1988. We learnt how to program - first of all Ceefax type pictures and then maths games and the like.

We had two acorns at primary school and we used to have lessons on touch typing.

computers came in just as I was leaving and only the clever kids were chosen to use them so that excluded me

No such thing!

Non existent- I am old

My junior school got one ZX81 for the whole school when I was in fourth year (now y6). It lived in a cubbyhole on a corridor. The fourth years were allowed out in pairs to have 20 minutes of "computer time", I think we were able to type our name and make it repeat over the screen, and play some sort of times table repeating game.

I don't remember any use of computers at my secondary school, we were given log tables booklets for maths.

There was a business studies option in 6th form but I think they had typewriters rather than word processors.

And at uni we could do book/research paper searches in the library on a very slow computer and the results would print out in very faint type on a long strip of paper with perforated edges that you could tear off.

In 1982 we had no computers but we learned to write simple BASIC programs which would be sent to the local Polytechnic where the students would run them and send us the printout. First time we had ever seen continuous paper. Then I got a ZX Spectrum and learned to program enough that I could make simple games. We did word processing for one lesson a week at secretarial college. It was exciting, at the time.

It wasn't, but within 2 year's in the workplace, thrown books to learn the systems and off I went! Amipro, Wordperfect, Multimate, Lotus 123 and Notes, dedicated systems, Microsoft suites, running cables, diagnostics and the occasional fight with printers .... I'm the generation that learnt on the hoof and very tech savvy as a result! At home an early user of a Sinclair and in one role involved in the PR for Commodore computers.

There was a room with a dozen RM 480Z computers connected over a network to an RM 380Z with a couple of 5.25" disk drives to load files from.

I did computing as an O-level, most of which was theory, but I do remember doing some basic database stuff (maybe dBase?) and learning the Logo programming language.

B.A.S.I.C
Played a worm game. Drew pictures on what was essentially a electric etch-a-sketch. You could make it play tunes.
At college we had some fancy new Mac computers. Unfortunately there was no member of staff who knew how to use them.

We were the very first year for whom computing was on an exam specification - maths included BASIC programming, written out by hand, of course. During the year, we each laboriously wrote out a simple program, and they were sent across the road to a bank that had a mainframe in the basement. Someone at the bank copied our code on to punch cards and then ran the programs and printed out the results. These printouts were then delivered back to the school a week later. I think I was one of only two in the class whose program produced a meaningful output. We only did it once.

I took one of the first Computer Science O levels, self taught basic in lunchhour on zx spectrum and bbc micro. By the time I started work we had mainframe computers with a remote centre and printouts on continuous paper with holes down the side sent by taxi every week to head office!

I knew nothing of computers at school. When I started work in the mid 70s at a very large scientific business, there was a computer suite which the people that worked in there inputted data on punchcards and gave you the reams of green stripy computer paper with the data on a few days later. The computer room was a place of mystery. In our office we had a large shared plug in calculator.

Non existent.

mid 80s for me. I only remember doing computing about once a year! We did something like learn how to turn it on and off, and write one line of code that did something very boring, like print 'hello'. The computer was huge, I remember.

I did gcse in computers in 1988, got an E. I remember some BBC B computers and trying to learn ( and failing) programming . We also did some sort of word processing so for a project I designed a tour programme for Simple Minds. My teacher wasn’t impressed.

Granny’s Garden anyone?! I was at primary school in the 80’s. We had a BBC computer that came out on a trolley and the school secretary would sit and type your stories up for you and print it off on dot matrix paper.

I was in y6 of primary school (then called y4 juniors!) when the school got its first computer.

Until my mum went storming down to the school to complain in the strongest possible terms, computer lessons consisted of the boys using the computer while the girls watched and took notes - “because that’s what’s you’ll be doing at work when you’re adults.”

This was 1990, btw. Not that long ago really!

We had one bbc computer between 3 …….

There weren’t any computer lessons, or any computers.

There was one (PC?) which remained unused under a dust cover the entire time I was there. Have no idea what it was.

Even back in the dark ages I felt at a disadvantage at university because of this - many of my classmates had been at better resourced city schools.