computers in education :: essays research papers

It is now about fifteen years since microcomputers and therefore educational figure began to appear in schools. Since that clipping there has been much excitement with see to the role that these machines would take over on education in our schools. During that fifteen years, we have seen many examples of uses of computers in school. Teachers experimented with this technology in their teaching. These instructors spent many hours of their let time coming to grips with this technology and setting up activities. As time has progessed, so has the emphasis bug outd on educational computing. These changes of emphasis are the result of many changes in computers like, change magnitude power and capabilities of hardware and software, increased availability of the technology in schools, advances in other technologies such as communications technologies.The introduction of computers into schools has non significantly changed the way teachers teach. Some affirmable reasons for this wo uld include High school students using computers as part of their studies began in the early - mid 1970s. In most cases this took the form of students and teachers accessing remotely and centrally located mainframe computers in manoeuvrely (through specially marked cards send in via post). The students took elementary computer programming exercises in a terminology like Fortran to run on the machine.. Generally there was no direct access to a computer in their school. The role of the traditional teacher in these circumstances was hardly affected. At the same time teachers in at least one state could request printouts of randomly generated sets of arithmetical problems, together with answers. These were then duplicated for the class to work through. Other types of activities like mazes and spell games such as jumbled words and wordmazes were also available. Teachers from both special and secondary schools availed themselves of this service. The role of the teacher continued to be o ne of selecting the resources take for use within their teaching just as it would have been had computers not been around. Towards the end of the 1970s, microcomputers began to appear on the market. Machines like the Apple II, Tandy TRS-80 and Commodore PET and BBC model B began to gain popularity. Education Department had purchased some computers which were loaned to schools for short periods of time. The fountain of the 1980s saw the first awakenings that computers may well have a place within schools themselves. Suddenly there was available a relatively low gear cost, small, yet powerful computer which did not need the progamming skills of the computers of earlier.