What were computer lessons like when you were at school?

[OneUmberJoker]

Full of PowerPoint and Excel

Didn't do anything at school - late 70s/early 80s. There was a computer room by the time I left but you'd have had to choose Computing or IT or something. I would never have chosen that. Did do some simple coding when a student but didn't really know what I was doing or how what we were doing would be useful. Didn't get access to laptops at work until the early 90s and then only a few per team so you had to book them. Own laptops for remote working - about 15 years ago.

I did touch typing at night school in the 80s.

As an aside, my son didn't have computer lessons either and he went to school between 2012 and 2020, as the school had just stopped doing the ECL but didn't have a teacher to teach computer science GCSE, so none of his peer group got any computing lessons. A couple of years after he started, the new intake started being taught it again but they didn't start GCSE teaching until he was in year 11 which was too late to choose it. They likewise only started offering A level two years after the first GCSE cohort, so he missed that too.

He had done some basics at primary school, but ultimately he taught himself Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc - subject teachers were happy for pupils to use desktop apps, which were available on computers in the classrooms, but they didn't do any "teaching" - the kids either taught themselves or didn't use them basically.

It's a shame because he'd have been interesting in doing a degree involving computing but didn't have the confidence to choose it as he'd never formally studied it, even though most of the Uni open days he went to said that prior computer studies wasn't a requirement for computer related degrees. He ended up choosing a module of programming and using "R" whatever that is as part of his Maths degree and got a really good test mark in it and now uses "R" as part of his job in financial services so it's been very useful.

So I think it's still very much hit and miss even today depending on what equipment and what teachers the school have.

Same as you op at GCSE learning excel and PowerPoints. Still don’t get Excel

a-level loads of database creations and video editing

We had a bbc computer on my primary school around 1989 ish, it had massive floppy disks and I can't remember anything it did. I think there were some games and it was on a massive trolly.

In my secondary school we had a computer room with some old computer I think used MS DOS and we could type stuff up in our English lessons. They had monitors that were either black and green or black and orange.

By the time I was doing my gcses we had pj's running windows and they introduced some IT lessons. I think we learnt how to email. But that point we also had a PC at home and dial up Internet. By the time I was in my second year of of Uni I had my own PC as well as my first mobile phone. We had lots of IT classes as part of my degree...for some reason they taught us how to build a data base....Still not sure what that has to do with my geography degree.

When I began teaching we still had TV's on trolleys, old school projectors with acetates and paper registers. There was one PC in a shared office we could use to type things and do data stuff but I didn't use it. I'm not sure when it changed but within a year or two they had introduced laptops for teachers and that was it, they way we taught changed dramatically! Death by PowerPoint ever since.

We had to do one term of computer lessons at sixth form. We had to create a document and a table in whatever came before word and excel.

Uni was when I started regularly using one via the computer suite. Some of the tutors allowed you to type up your essays and print them out, but most had to be submitted handwritten.

Two words: Mavis Beacon.

We didn’t have a computer in the entire school. We were just shown pictures of them. We learnt one programming language, basic I think it was called, (I programmed my mates BFs computer in basic to write “mates BF Is a twat” on a loop and couldn’t work out to get it to stop 😂) and we learnt binary and binary charts, and that was it.

We were given a task to do on Powerpoint or Excel, and then the teacher mostly ignored us for the rest of the lesson. Memorably, he didn't notice when someone set his eyebrows on fire (deodorant can and a lighter), and then a porn site flashed up on the interactive whiteboard behind him 😳

I had computer studies in my secondary shool in the early 80s, resulting in a CSE grade one in 1984
I didn’t start that school until the second year, and it was an option so would have been from the third year at the earliest

The first thing we covered was writing programs on a form that was sent away until the next week when we received it on a print out
This was called CESIL Computer Education in Schools Integrated Learning
What I didn’t realise at the time was it a form of assembly language. (When in college I had the idea of writing a CECIL interpreter, but then realised that the commands IN, OUT, LOAD, PRINT directly aligned as English language words compared to shorter assembly instructions)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CESIL

After the CESIL introduction we went to BASIC

Content included watching the BBC TV programme:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOtimvwAoYtnCtLiLspq_Gnng1XusYwPU&si=8BGEU6bycVARKgJR

It was at that time that the BBC micro was developed and released. They didn’t make it to my school in my time.

For computers over the years we had one Commodore Pet (and you could book it to take home for the weekend, which I did a couple of times)
In later years the school office had a Research Machines 380Z, and goody goodies like me were allowed to go to use it at certain times

At home I had a ZX81 then Spectrum, my mate had an Acorn which was similar to the BBC micro

In college I can’t remember what we had, but something networked and the printer at the back of the room.
(One day the media course were coming in to film for a college promo, but they walked in as we had hit print on the largest program ever, which stalled our screen with a dot matrix at the back rattling away. So their film was of three of us looking up and down pointing at the screen and stacks of paper)

Vi command line anyone?

Still alive and well in the world of unix/linux. I use it frequently.

We had a single BBC Micro, which only the A-level maths students used. I used a computer at my Saturday job in the local lending library, to check books out and in, and to enter user details for new readers. I took typing lessons as a 6th form extra.

At uni, I did a history and computing module, which was mostly querying a census database. I also remember being unimpressed that the wordprocessor did not recognise the word bombazine (for an essay on Victorian death practices.)

After uni, I got a job in a uni library and was given an email address, so I could help students use email. I thought it brilliant- like letters, but quicker. I had a boyfriend who worked in IT, so I could email him in the day! In my next job, I had to do a certain amount of personal development, which could be any course offered to staff offered by London universities. So I went off to Imperial and fid a one day course on Unix, and one on C programming, mostly to get a better idea of what my boyfriend dud. And from there, I did an MSc conversion in comp Sci, and 30 years later, I'm still working as a Unix sys admin.

There was one computer in a room in the basement. You could only look at it if you joined the computer club. We learnt how to type in instructions but didn’t get very far!

They tried to teach me that but it went in one ear and out the other.

touch typing in the computer room

I sat my GCSE's in 1993, there where only 2 girls in my year who took GCSE's computer science. I was very happy to be one of them, we also both took GCSE electronics. I have always been a geek 🤓.

We had 086 PC's at school, my school was actually quite advanced compared to other local high schools. By the time I left there where 3 computer rooms, we where allowed to use one of them at lunchtime if you where doing work on them. Windows just existed but nobody used it as it would literally take 30 minutes to load on a PC at the time. It was nicknamed Fatware not software for being to memory hungry.

I was also in one of a few flats at University who had a PC in our own rooms and full access to the Internet. That was 1995, it was awful when I went home and had to deal with dialup. Probably didn't have as good an access to the Internet again until we got broadband.

I left school in 1979, I think there was a computer club, but it was for the very clever top stream maths boys, not the home economics, not thought to be academic girls, such as I.

I’m very old. We had to write out flow charts, the teacher took them at the end of the day, and went to a local business which had a computer. The business converted our flow charts into punch cards, which went into the computer. The answers came out via a printer onto a very long roll of paper. Teacher collected this a few days later, and gave it all out in the next lesson. We thought it was the last word in modern 😂😂😂😂😂😂

As a newly qualified teacher I had to learn how to programme acorn 3000s as that's what the schools had.

At high school I'd learnt BASIC to code some very simple things.

I was later in charge of ICT at the primary and had to teach the kids how to use paint and word. And how not to use caps lock every time they want a capital letter!

30 of us crowded round a maybe 15 inch screen. The writing was sort of square, and green. I couldn’t tell you what we learnt because I was under 5’, so couldn’t see.

I left 5th form or year 11 for you youngsters in 1992 and we did not have a single computing lesson, we did have a typing class room but I don't remember ever having a typing lesson so it must it have being phased out.

Oh and we had one computer for a class of 30 and a list where they took it in turns to do whatever the task was.

Now we have 30 chromebook and ipads galore.

There weren’t any. 80’s 😁

I learnt how to lean over a chair while the computer nerd boy (it was as if only boys were allowed to touch the keyboard) hogged the BBC computer for hours in the computer room. They didn't explain what they were doing or did say in a way that was entirely un illuminating.

You weren't really supposed to be that bothered by computers unless you were doing physics or maths and the rest of us had access to the computer room about one lesson a term.

Vi has gone with me from Unix to the things I now also do on Windows in vscode. You can't beat it. That and learning to touch type, first at school and then in a temping job, have both saved me so much time over the years!

BBC computers. Very basic. You could print off from them on reels of paper that had dotted perforations on the side of them. Not A4 like today. No internet.

No such thing when I was at school. We did a couple of word processing lessons in the second year of my secretarial course (early 80s) but the teacher didn’t know much more than us students.