Purpose-Built Educational Computers in the 1980s: The Australian Experience - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 109

of school subjects; and developing a teacher force capable of using
computers to the advantage of all children in school.”
Hence the design was driven by strong principles of usability in a wide range of edu-
cational contexts. The Technical Requirement Working Party was given instruction to
be particularly forward thinking and

• “be guided by the user requirements and not restricted by available or

predicted equipment, nor be unduly influenced by the current state of
the art;

• take into account the relevant documents from the Australian States and

overseas

provide some indication of the relative priority that is attached to vari-
ous technical characteristics, at the least indicating those which are
essential, and those which are desirable but not essential.” [13 :1]
These instructions were matched by the selection of members of the Technical Re-
quirement Working Party which was assembled with “detailed experience of the
requirements of Australian states, detailed up-to-date technical expertise, and a good
understanding of the future directions of computers in education” . [13 :1]
The Working Party's recommendations, described in section 3.3 above, illustrate a
successful outcome in looking beyond the existing state of the market during the pro-
ject and separating the desirable elements of a school computer system into a set of
modular components.
However, even as the Working Party was finalising its report, new entrants to the
personal computer market were extending the state of the art and rapidly progressing
beyond the recommendations. The Amiga computer was released in the latter half of
1985 and took the expectation of colour displays and graphic capability beyond what
the Working Party had envisaged. Atari Corporation also produced a much enhanced
Atari ST computer at about this time. Nevertheless, after a quarter of a century, many
of the recommendations remain consistent with the current practices regarding
choices of equipment for educational environments.
What might have happened if the project had continued to the planned consequent
stages of Development Proposals, Australian Design Specification and finally procure-
ment? That remains an intriguing “what if” question. Not long after the release of the
recommendations in June 1986, the three year funding for the Commonwealth Schools
Commission's Computer Education Program was up and the program was discontinued.
After the funding made available in the triennium from 1984-1986 was used, no further
funding was allocated in the following years. Had further funds been available it is
likely that the project to design and built an Australian Educational Computer would
have continued. But in the longer term, would this have been a good thing?
A problem faced in Canada with the Icon computer was that after the government
had spent so much money on one particular educational computer the idea of looking
at other alternatives was not an appealing one. In a sense, no matter how good it had
been at the time, Canada was stuck until the early 1990s with what it had designed
and built in the early 1980s. This would not have been a problem if the technology
had been static or even if it had been evolving slowly, but at this time a number of
major changes occurred to the microcomputer market. While in the early 1980s there

•