Integrating technology in classrooms: from the microcomputer to ‘the cloud’ - Teaching with Technologies: The Essential Guide - page 7

computer use in schools, particularly, since this history had not been recorded from
those involved.
What was deeply understood in this vision was how to create innovation in prac-
tice and enable change, through collaborative knowledge building. Leask and Younie
(2001a), summarizing the outcomes of research funded by the European Union from
1997-2000 into the pedagogical applications of technologies, identified this way that
educators work with technologies as communal constructivism . Early educators used
communications technology to create and publish knowledge for, and by, one another
(Holmes et al. 2001). Previously such knowledge production had been costly and slow.
Through teachers' centres and professional associations small computer programs
were developed that teachers could use in the classroom. Teacher professional net-
works also provided assistance, which was vital as the technology would frequently
break down. In a more recent development teachers are using Twitter to provide each
other with just-in-time support within personal and professional networks.
Some of the early computers relied on programs which had to be run through tape-
recorders. It was not until the introduction of disk drives that a key shift occurred; thereby
replacing the unreliability of cassette tapes used previously for the storage of programs.
As practitioners recall, the consequences of this lack of reliability were high:
The cassette recorder turned off a whole generation of very frightened teach-
ers, because it failed so often in the classroom. They put it in even before it
was anywhere near reliable. When we got disk drives the world changed, but
you'd already lost a whole group of teachers. It was a long, long hard job get-
ting those back in again.'
(Hammond et al. 2009: 49)
Alongside advancements in the reliability of storage came important shifts in
software. The development of a graphical user interface (GUI) brought a more user-
friendly machine, for teachers and pupils alike, with Apple Macintosh and Acorn
Archimedes machines among the first to innovate with GUI (Hammond et al. 2009).
This increasing user-friendliness of the interface shifted educational computing out
of the 'specialist' domain and into the mainstream of schools.
Early educational computing had focused on programming within the context
of specialist 'computer studies' lessons usually located within Maths departments in
schools, but the introduction of the micro-computer with pre-prepared software for
use in a range of subjects shifted the use of computers to more generalized support
across the curriculum.
These developments were further supported in the 1980s by other complemen-
tary government initiatives: 1982 was designated 'Information Technology Year' by
the Government to increase national awareness of computer technology (Dawes
2001). In 1982 the BBC's Continuing Education Department 'noted the rise of the
microcomputer as a pervasive influence on society' and proposed a national cam-
paign (Millwood 2009: 10). Consequently the 'BBC Computer Literacy' project was
launched; this involved a topic, of which 60,000 copies were sold; a TV programme
that reached 300,000 people; a course on the computer programming language