Turning Points in Computer Education - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 164

education. Because of his history of teaching computing in schools the teacher was
encouraged to apply for a grant to obtain one of the new microcomputers coming out
of America from the Apple Corporation. The grant application was successful and, in
his capacity as a member of the secondary math committee, the teacher travelled
around Victoria demonstrating how the computer could be used in schools. By 1980
the school in which he was teaching had installed two microcomputer labs, a univer-
sity entrance subject was available in computer science, and the whole idea of a two-
day gap between writing a program and seeing the results was difficult to imagine. By
1989 when the Australian moved to the university sector the prevailing computing
equipment was dumb terminals attached to a mainframe computer. Within two years
of commencing that appointment almost all of the undergraduate computing was done
on microcomputers. By 1991 the degree program in which he taught was called “In-
formation Systems” and involved some programming, but included also the new dis-
ciplines of systems analysis and design, usability, and web delivery. The computer
was no longer studied for its own sake, but as a tool for business purposes.
The American took a similar path. While working as a programmer/analyst in early
1984, two local higher educational institutions, his old junior college and a local pri-
vate university, enlisted his aid to teach programming courses at night. At one institu-
tion he taught Pascal on a DEC minicomputer, and at the other taught Pascal on Apple
microcomputers. He did this for a year, and then he accepted a full time position at
the junior college as a computer science instructor. He was also placed in charge of
the relatively new microcomputer lab, which had a conglomeration of IBM, Apple,
Radio Shack, and other brands of microcomputers. In addition to teaching the usual
courses dealing with fundamental computer science and information systems con-
cepts, programming languages and techniques, and advanced data structures, he also
taught microcomputer operating systems and usage, and developed the first courses in
using spreadsheets (VisiCalc, then Lotus 1-2-3), word processing (WordStar, fol-
lowed by WordPerfect), and databases (various versions of dBase by Ashton-Tate).
Less than four years later he then decided that he needed to pursue an advanced
degree, and returned to college for a Master's degree in Computer Science (1991) and
a doctorate in Information Systems (1995). He has been teaching Information Sys-
tems at the university level since graduation.
The microcomputer enabled interactive computing for everyone. Interactive lan-
guages and development environments were first seen as a better place for people to
learn programming, but rapidly a wider view of the computer emerged. Information
Systems had become more central than the hardware itself. Microcomputer applica-
tions like word processing, spreadsheet, and database software became essential
components of most businesses. Both narratives see this change as being due to the
sudden impact of personal computers with their enormous power/price advantages
over time share systems.
7 Using a Computer
The final turning point grows out of the ubiquity of the microprocessor and the crea-
tion of the Internet. One could claim that the Internet started in September 1969 when
the first host computer was connected at UCLA. It could also be argued that the