What were computer lessons like when you were at school?

[OneUmberJoker]

Full of PowerPoint and Excel

Computers?
The most advanced thing we had was a cardboard clock with red plastic hands, which 'Miss' moved about and challenged us to "tell the time".
But they were happy times, there, at Magdalen College.

There weren’t any!

No such thing mid 80s at my school.
I never touched one until they were introduced at work about 1993.

In primary school it was WordArt and PowerPoints. In secondary, we had to build a website, excel sheets and drop downs etc.

I was at school in the late 70s/early 80s and completely missed out on any computer lessons at all. They started offering it as an O level option the year after I chose mine. I was devastated. But at least I managed to wangle my way into the after school computer club so got my hands on the one and only Commodore PET a few times to play games, but it was those taking O level lessons who dominated the after school club and did the programming etc.

I self taught programming on a ZX80 the year they came out, then upgraded to a ZX81, then a Spectrum. By 1983, I started work and they had a couple of Commodore PETS so I jumped every chance I got to get my hands on it to work on it, creating spreadsheets and databases, for other staff, but I was always limited due to not having any formal teaching.

Lots of excel, word and touch typing so grateful for touch typing skills!

In what would be now yr 6 we were super excited that the school got a PC and we learnt punch card programming. I can't remember any computing lessons at secondary school, but my mums school had a BBC and she'd bring it home in the holidays.
When I did my physics degree we learnt to program in BASIC, but still had to make an analog computer by my masters though I got a Pegasys email then which was super exciting even though I only had one person to email

Thankfully, my mother was a typing teacher and taught me typing in the school holidays one Summer. My school didn't teach typing either!

No idea, only the top set in maths got to use (play) with them

In school they happened within Maths lessons and the teacher wheeled out the one computer between 30 of us. Can't remember any of it. I then went to college at 16 and did computing as part of my btec and we learned to program using err punch cards and parsing. I then went to Uni and did more programming and we had a WAN which we could all use email on and chat or a kind. I must have been one of the first on line daters and met up with him only afterwards - I think he knew who I was and I hoped it was who I thought it was. We used to use the AppleMacs that had the tiny 3.5 disc drive in the front and the small screens - we were allowed to borrow them and take them home.

I learnt more at home from my Dad who bought a BBC (must have been a months salary which when you have 6 kids was a big sacrifice) he did maths and computing at UNI in the late 60s and continued to be fascinated by them. He taught us to play all the games, word process and spreadsheets, but also basic programming. I am 57 now and was 11 when he bought it. I now work with data Centres and we are dealing with emersed compute, compute powered by light and direct to chip cooling all of which are likely to feature in AI data centres in some way. So a long way to come in a little time. IT isn't even my main bag, nor am I an engineer or a mathmatician

No computers. The nerds joined a club where they punched holes in pieces of cardboard, sent them off to a computer centre by post and either got back a printout saying "hello world" or nothing, which meant there was an error in the code.

The first calculators started to appear just before my O level year - Sinclair Scientific which required "reverse Polish notation", AFAIR it means you had to put your sums in backwards.

At uni I studied chemistry and we did a lot of computer simulation in my last year, you had to learn BASIC.

And first job in about 1983 we started to get computers - Lotus 123, WordPerfect etc. A portable computer was about the size of a small suitcase and weighed about 20kg. Floppy disks (5.25") with 360kb capacity and 64kb RAM. Made by Compaq.

@bowchicawowwowcame onto this thread to see if anyone had said Granny’s Garden! Only thing I remember from computing, apart from the idea of spreadsheets which remain incomprehensible to me

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"
20 GOTO 10
RUN
HELLO WORLD!
HELLO WORLD!
HELLO WORLD!
HELLO WORLD!
HELLO WORLD!
HELLO WORLD!
HELLO WORLD!
HELLO WORLD!
HELLO WORLD!
HELLO WORLD!

Oh yeah typing - my Dad had private lessons to learn to type and I remember him on a sit up and beg style typewriter practicing away - he always killed keyboards. When I went to college they offered typing wed afternoon instead of sports....guess what I did - lol

Then work wise I started in 92 and the first computer (outside of the flextime system) came to the office and it came to me as the only one with any experience of one, I then taught most of the typing pool to use a word processing package - can't even recall if it was word but we def used Lotus 123 so it was probably wordperfect. I was the default help desk!

We didn’t have any at school, although I opted to do a course at a local college which was for 1 afternoon a week during the lower sixth form (school organised it and a group of us went over to the college each week). We learned to program in BBC basic. After that, I didn’t touch a computer again until I was a postgraduate.

bbc i think or something,
full of boys hogging the computer
i failed

A computer, just the one, came into my school for students when I was about 15 in 1977. We were not allowed near it. I first used a computer when doing my degree thesis in 1987. Had to teach myself everything really. Oddly one of my job roles for ten years was teaching IT.

Infant school had one computer on a trolley which got wheeled into the classroom occasionally, I remember a maths game where you had to count passengers at a train station. Ceefax type graphics.

Non existent in junior school.

Secondary had a computer room where we messed about with WordArt and asked the paperclip assistant thing stupid questions. We were taught basic excel functions. The computer room wasn’t connected to the internet, we had Microsoft Encarta.

I started secondary school in 1997.

It was a glorified typewriter, no actual computer lessons, just a single machine with a green screen kept in a cupboard, no idea what it was actually used for

We did typing at school and shorthand, about a day a week was spent on it iirc, this was around 1972/3. This was a girls secondary school.

it was the late 80s and I went to a school with good resources. We learned spreadsheets and word processing, but mostly we learned to write code.

I was in secondary school 2001-2006 and we never had lessons in how to use a computer. TBH I don’t think any of the teachers would have had the skills to teach us anything and we were a generation who seemed to just sort of work things out for ourselves. My secondary school had one ‘computer room’ which we would use occasionally to do things like type up work, ‘do research’ or use some programmes such as making music. I think there was an option to do ICT as a GCSE but I didn’t choose it so I’m not sure what it would have entailed. The kids who did do this option didn’t seem to be any more competent at using the computers as far as I could tell! I’d be interested to know what computer lessons look like nowadays as I would say my peers and I are all pretty computer literate having never had any formal lessons.

At primary school in the 1982 ish we had a computer in our junior year 3/4 class. All the children had an opportunity to get their ‘license’ so they could play an educational game on it. The only one I remember was a recycling type game. Not much computing in secondary school however in 1990 I chose to do a computing A’level. (2 girls and 4 boys). I learnt assembly language, binary, basic and I think python. There was computing rooms, computers in some classrooms and two computers in the library. I seem to remember Windows was quite a new thing!

We didn’t have computer lessons! There was one computer bought when I was in 5th year. (1984) I remember them showing it to us, and the teacher playing a game on it and it looked amazing. I then got a home computer in 2001 and taught myself to use it.

Nonexistent! We had 1 computer in the school and 1000 pupils and I didn't get to go on it.