Computers in the Classroom

Vintage Geek Museum is dedicated to celebrating the personal computer revolution of the 20th century. With over 300 machines dating from the 1940s to the modern era, the museum boasts an extensive software library, retro games, and working classic computer systems by Atari, Apple, IBM, Commodore, and more. At Vintage Geek, I acted as the exhibit developer and designer, as well as the collection manager.

The Computers in the Classroom exhibit was developed as a functioning “mini-classroom” with four workstations, an educational software library, teacher’s desk and working TRS-80 classroom Network 2. The exhibit exclusively utilizes period-appropriate furniture, machines, and software from the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the topic of introducing computers to the classroom and encouraging computer literacy in children became central to American social and political discourse.

-

Computers in the Classroom

The 20th century was a time of rapid technological advancement, particularly in education.

At the start of the century, many schoolchildren still relied on simple slate and chalk for classroom lessons. By the dawn of the new millennium in the year 2000, people across the world were using personal computers to connect and learn in ways that had never before been possible. As classroom technology advanced, information spread more quickly, and people across the world had more opportunities to learn. The evolution of classroom staples from paper and pencils to televisions, calculators, and—eventually—microcomputers, meant that more resources than ever before were at educators’ fingertips. It also meant that teachers and students had to learn and adapt to ever-changing technologies.

Education on the Airwaves

On November 2nd, 1920 the first commercial radio signal was broadcasted. Soon, on-air classrooms took to the mainstream, offering educational radio programs to children in rural communities, who might not otherwise have access to formal schooling. Serial education programs offered half-hour lessons in history, literature, and geography, reaching a listening public of all ages. Some radio programs even mailed assignments for students to complete as they listened and learned.

Seeing is Believing

In the 1950s, television challenged radio’s hold on the American living room. The first children’s educational broadcast, Ding Dong School, aired in 1952, teaching simple crafts to preschool children. By the late 1960s, educational television boomed, with shows like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood (1968) and Sesame Street (1969) changing the landscape of early childhood education.

Mighty Micro

The 1971 invention of the microprocessor paved the way for early microcomputers, making computers smaller, faster, and cheaper. Soon after, affordable handheld calculators entered classrooms, allowing students to “compute” complex equations quickly and accurately. The popular, pocket-sized 1974 HP-65 calculator could solve problems that would previously have taken days in mere minutes.

The Big Three

In 1977, the founding trinity of microcomputers was released: the Commodore PET, the RadioShack TRS-80, and the Apple II. These affordable, user-friendly machines brought personal computers into public schools. In 1979, Apple established the Apple Education Foundation, donating computers to classrooms across the country and incentivizing developers to create educational software. Manufacturers like RadioShack hosted free workshops, teaching educators—many of whom had never used a computer themselves—how to teach computer literacy to their students. Still, classroom technology advanced faster than many public school programs could adapt.

Caption text: In 1984 an estimated 30% of K-12 classrooms had computer access. By 1994, over 90% of K-12 classrooms had at least one computer station.

[Digital Media: Select clips from “Computers in Education” Runtime 2:07]

This 1983 documentary, "Computers in Education," highlights the uncertainty of educators and parents in the early days of classroom computers. Many were concerned that computers would replace human instructors. Others feared that computer literacy programs would divert funding from other educational programs, including the arts, humanities, and trade subjects.

There were other, practical issues with the call for computer literacy courses, as highlighted by the Knoxville News Sentinel in 1984. Computer courses were seen as cutting-edge, and school districts were under pressure to add them to the curriculum. While children as young as five were beginning to take computer courses, this new technology was also new to the teachers who were expected to lead computer classes.

Networks Before the Net
Classroom Networks

In 1980, Radio Shack introduced the Network I controller, a "teacher-centric" device that allowed instructors to share software via 30 foot long cassette cables with up to 16 student computers. Programs were sent individually from the teacher's computer to a student’s computers via rotary switch. The TRS-80 Network I controller soon gave way to the TRS-80 Network 2 controller, which was faster and compatible with more computer models than the earlier system. Finally, in 1985, Radio Shack released the Network 4 Controller, which connected up to 64 computers to the instructor computer, and ran on the Corvus Systems Omninet, an early Local Area Network (LAN). By the early 1990s the world wide web had made classroom networks obsolete, but these direct-connection systems gave educators an early idea of how computers can change the way we learn.

See how software was transmitted in the TRS-80 Network 2.
Press the button to see how software transfers from the hard disk (#1) to the teacher's computer (#2), then to the TRS-80 Network 2 Controller (#3). The software is then transmitted to the student computers (#4). Later TRS-80 Networks allowed teacher and student computers to communicate individually in the Network system to send and receive assignments.

VIDEO: See the Network 2 Controller in action.

Video Games!

Software developers learned early on that interactive games could help students learn. Educational games are among the first video game genres.

The Minnesota Education Computing Consortium (MECC) was established by the state of Minnesota in 1973. Its goal was to provide computer technologies to classrooms, and the MECC soon became the first large-scale software company to focus on educational software. Early MECC games like “Oregon Trail” were originally released for bulky mainframe computers, which limited student access. After microcomputers like the Apple II exploded onto the market in 1977, the MECC soon released a series of classic video games, including “The Oregon Trail”, “Lemonade Stand”, and “Number Munchers”.