Reflections on the History of Computers in Education: Early Use of Computers and Teaching about Computing in Schools

432 Pages·2014·9.128 MB·English

by  Arthur Tatnall, Bill Davey (eds.)

IFIP AICT 424
Arthur Tatnall
Bill Davey
(Eds.)
Reflections on the History
of Computers in Education
Y
E
Early Use of Computers and
Teaching about Computing in Schools
V
R
U
123
S
IFIP Advances in Information
and Communication Technology 424
Editor-in-Chief
A.JoeTurner,Seneca,SC,USA
EditorialBoard
FoundationsofComputerScience
JacquesSakarovitch,TélécomParisTech,France
Software:TheoryandPractice
MichaelGoedicke,UniversityofDuisburg-Essen,Germany
Education
ArthurTatnall,VictoriaUniversity,Melbourne,Australia
InformationTechnologyApplications
ErichJ.Neuhold,UniversityofVienna,Austria
CommunicationSystems
AikoPras,UniversityofTwente,Enschede,TheNetherlands
SystemModelingandOptimization
FrediTröltzsch,TUBerlin,Germany
InformationSystems
JanPries-Heje,RoskildeUniversity,Denmark
ICTandSociety
DianeWhitehouse,TheCastlegateConsultancy,Malton,UK
ComputerSystemsTechnology
RicardoReis,FederalUniversityofRioGrandedoSul,PortoAlegre,Brazil
SecurityandPrivacyProtectioninInformationProcessingSystems
YukoMurayama,IwatePrefecturalUniversity,Japan
ArtificialIntelligence
TharamDillon,CurtinUniversity,Bentley,Australia
Human-ComputerInteraction
JanGulliksen,KTHRoyalInstituteofTechnology,Stockholm,Sweden
EntertainmentComputing
MatthiasRauterberg,EindhovenUniversityofTechnology,TheNetherlands
IFIP–TheInternationalFederationforInformationProcessing
IFIPwasfoundedin1960undertheauspicesofUNESCO,followingtheFirst
WorldComputerCongressheldinParisthepreviousyear.Anumbrellaorgani-
zation for societies working in information processing, IFIP’s aim is two-fold:
tosupportinformationprocessingwithinitsmembercountriesandtoencourage
technologytransfertodevelopingnations.Asitsmissionstatementclearlystates,
IFIP’s mission is to be the leading, truly international, apolitical
organizationwhichencouragesandassistsinthedevelopment,ex-
ploitationandapplicationofinformationtechnologyforthebenefit
ofallpeople.
IFIPisanon-profitmakingorganization,runalmostsolelyby2500volunteers.It
operatesthroughanumberoftechnicalcommittees,whichorganizeeventsand
publications.IFIP’seventsrangefromaninternationalcongresstolocalseminars,
butthemostimportantare:
• TheIFIPWorldComputerCongress,heldeverysecondyear;
• Openconferences;
• Workingconferences.
TheflagshipeventistheIFIPWorldComputerCongress,atwhichbothinvited
andcontributedpapersarepresented.Contributedpapersarerigorouslyrefereed
andtherejectionrateishigh.
As with the Congress, participation in the open conferences is open to all and
papersmaybeinvitedorsubmitted.Again,submittedpapersarestringentlyref-
ereed.
The working conferences are structured differently. They are usually run by a
workinggroupandattendanceissmallandbyinvitationonly.Theirpurposeis
tocreateanatmosphereconducivetoinnovationanddevelopment.Refereeingis
alsorigorousandpapersaresubjectedtoextensivegroupdiscussion.
Publications arising from IFIP events vary. The papers presented at the IFIP
WorldComputerCongressandatopenconferencesarepublishedasconference
proceedings,whiletheresultsoftheworkingconferencesareoftenpublishedas
collectionsofselectedandeditedpapers.
Anynationalsocietywhoseprimaryactivityisaboutinformationprocessingmay
applytobecomeafullmemberofIFIP,althoughfullmembershipisrestrictedto
onesocietypercountry.FullmembersareentitledtovoteattheannualGeneral
Assembly,Nationalsocietiespreferringalesscommittedinvolvementmayapply
forassociateorcorrespondingmembership.Associatemembersenjoythesame
benefitsasfullmembers,butwithoutvotingrights.Correspondingmembersare
not represented in IFIP bodies.Affiliated membership is open to non-national
societies,andindividualandhonorarymembershipschemesarealsooffered.
Arthur Tatnall Bill Davey (Eds.)
Reflections on the History
of Computers in Education
Early Use of Computers and
Teaching about Computing in Schools
1 3
VolumeEditors
ArthurTatnall
VictoriaUniversity
Melbourne,VIC,Australia
E-mail:[e-mail]
BillDavey
RMITUniversity
Melbourne,VIC,Australia
E-mail:[e-mail]
ISSN1868-4238 e-ISSN1868-422X
ISBN978-3-642-55118-5 e-ISBN978-3-642-55119-2
DOI10.1007/978-3-642-55119-2
SpringerHeidelbergNewYorkDordrechtLondon
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2014937322
©IFIPInternationalFederationforInformationProcessing2014
Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpartof
thematerialisconcerned,specificallytherightsoftranslation,reprinting,reuseofillustrations,recitation,
broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway,andtransmissionorinformation
storageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology
nowknownorhereafterdeveloped.Exemptedfromthislegalreservationarebriefexcerptsinconnection
withreviewsorscholarlyanalysisormaterialsuppliedspecificallyforthepurposeofbeingenteredand
executedonacomputersystem,forexclusiveusebythepurchaserofthework.Duplicationofthispublication
orpartsthereofispermittedonlyundertheprovisionsoftheCopyrightLawofthePublisher’slocation,
inistcurrentversion,andpermissionforusemustalwaysbeobtainedfromSpringer.Permissionsforuse
maybeobtainedthroughRightsLinkattheCopyrightClearanceCenter.Violationsareliabletoprosecution
undertherespectiveCopyrightLaw.
Theuseofgeneraldescriptivenames,registerednames,trademarks,servicemarks,etc.inthispublication
doesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfromtherelevant
protectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse.
Whiletheadviceandinformationinthisbookarebelievedtobetrueandaccurateatthedateofpublication,
neithertheauthorsnortheeditorsnorthepublishercanacceptanylegalresponsibilityforanyerrorsor
omissionsthatmaybemade.Thepublishermakesnowarranty,expressorimplied,withrespecttothe
materialcontainedherein.
Typesetting:Camera-readybyauthor,dataconversionbyScientificPublishingServices,Chennai,India
Printedonacid-freepaper
SpringerispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia(www.springer.com)
Preface
Manypeopleconsiderhistorytobeaboutthingsthathappenedalongtimeago:
that it is about wars, kings, politics, nations, and such like. One could then ask
why a study of the history of computers in education is important when it is a
comparatively recent phenomenon beginning only in the 1970s.
This book deals with personal reflections on the history of computers in
school education, rather than providing listings of names, dates, hardware and
software details, and curriculum applications, and the authors of the chapters
are not professional historians but rather people who as teachers, students, or
researcherswere involvedin this history. They narrate their history from a per-
sonal perspective and offer fascinating stories not just of what happened, but
alsoofhowitaffectedthem,withtheirchaptersrepresentingreflectionsontheir
experiences of this time.
As these stories have been told by witnesses who were involved at the time,
their value lies not simply in the facts described, but rather in their mature
reflections of events in this period. The book chapters are quite different to
what would have been written by academic historians, and in any case few
historians have exactly the same view or personal experience of past events. In
many ways these chapters present a social history of the introduction and early
use of computers in schools.
They cover the history of computers in education from the 1970s up to only
about the mid-1990s, before the widespread use in education of the Internet,
Google, Wikipedia, iPads and smart phones. Many changes have occurredsince
the mid-1990s, but they are a story for another time.
The chaptersinthis book dealwith the introductionofcomputersinschools
in many countries around the world: Norway, South Africa, UK, Canada, Aus-
tralia, USA, Finland, Chile, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Ireland, Is-
rael, and Poland. All the papers were peer reviewed before final acceptance.
Perhapsafterreadingallthecontributionsyoumightliketoreflectonwhether
the introduction and use of computers in schools really resulted in significant
changes to education in the way that many of us at the time thought that it
would.Wehopethatyouwillenjoyreadingthesefascinatingstoriesandperhaps
find some commonalityin howand why computerswere introducedinto schools
around the world.
March 2014 Arthur Tatnall
Bill Davey
Table of Contents
Lessons from the Great Underground Empire: Pedagogy, Computers
and False Dawn.................................................. 1
Stewart Martin
No One Is Born a Global Citizen: Using New Technologies to Bring
‘Other Stories’ into the Classroom ................................. 26
Alnaaz Kassam
Learning Along with Your Students: Projects from the Graduate
Diploma of Computer Education................................... 48
John S. Murnane
Introduction of Computers in Primary Schools in Norway – From
Experiments to Implementation.................................... 71
Sindre Røsvik
Information Literacy in the Netherlands: Rise, Fall and Revival........ 83
Joke Voogt and Alfons ten Brummelhuis
From Student Geek to Teacher Geek Chic – Reflections on How
Computers Were Used while as a Student and then as a Teacher ....... 94
Therese Keane
Whatever You Do . . . . Don’t Put the Computer Room Near
the Maths Department! or, I Was an Early Adopter, an Enthusiastic
Disseminator, But Now . . . ....................................... 110
David Demant
The Beginnings of Computer Use in Primary and Secondary Education
in Spain ........................................................ 121
Javier Osorio and Julia Nieves
Early Uses of Computers in Schools in the United Kingdom: Shaping
Factors and Influencing Directions ................................. 131
Don Passey
Theoretical and Epistemological Foundations of Integrating Digital
Technologies in Education in the Second Half of the 20th Century ...... 150
Eva Dakich
The Introduction of Computers in Irish Schools...................... 164
Denise Leahy and Dudley Dolan
VIII Table of Contents
The Rise of Information and Communication Technology Era
in the Israeli Educational System .................................. 174
Ben-Zion Barta, Liora Shapiro, Daniel Millin, and Ephraim Engel
The Hopes and Realities of the Computer as a School Administration
and School Management Tool ..................................... 197
Rory Butler and Adrie Visscher
Computers in Schools in the USA: A Social History .................. 203
Kevin R. Parker and Bill Davey
The Dutch Situation: An Ever Continuing Story ..................... 212
Bert Zwaneveld and Victor Schmidt
Computers in Education in Finland ................................ 239
Jari Koivisto
Schools, Students, Computers and Curriculum in Victoria in the 1970s
and 1980s....................................................... 246
Arthur Tatnall
The First 25 Years of Computers in Education in Poland:
1965 – 1990 ..................................................... 266
Maciej M. Sysl(cid:2)o
Catching the Bug: Pupils and Punched Cards in South Africa
in the Late 1970s ................................................ 291
Martin S. Olivier
From Mathematics Teacher to Computer Assisted Learning
Researcher ...................................................... 302
Richard Millwood
The Victorian State Computer Education Committee’s Seeding Pair
In-Service Program: Two Case Studies.............................. 310
William F. Keane
The Historical Relationship between Affective Variables and ICT
Based Learning and Instruction and Achievement in the Israeli School
System ......................................................... 324
Yaacov J. Katz
Predicting the Future of Computers in Schools – A Reflection Paper?... 339
Richard Taylor
Experiences as a Student in Chile with only Pre-computer
Technologies .................................................... 347
Fernando Toro
Table of Contents IX
Reflections on Computers in Education 1984 – 2001: The Logo
Continuum...................................................... 365
Martin Chambers
From Learning to Use Towards Learning to Code: Twenty-Five Years
of Computing in Dutch Schools .................................... 373
Jan Lepeltak
Pioneering the Internet in the Nineties – An Innovative Project
Involving UK and Australian Schools............................... 384
Angela Lecomber
The Educational Programming Language Logo: Its Nature and Its Use
in Australia ..................................................... 394
Anne McDougall, John S. Murnane, and Sandra Wills
My Work among the Keyboards: Remembering the Early Use
of Computers in the Classroom .................................... 408
Michael Hammond
Reflections on the Beginnings of an Educational Revolution (?) ........ 417
Arthur Tatnall and Bill Davey
Author Index.................................................. 423
Lessons from the Great Underground Empire:
Pedagogy, Computers and False Dawn
Stewart Martin
Faculty of Education, University of Hull, UK
[e-mail]
Abstract. The educational use of computers in the UK coincided with growing
tensions between educators and government policy. This led to the imposition
of a National Curriculum and policy that took scant account of research
evidence or the views of professional educators. As a result of this unhappy
coincidence, the UK failed to take early advantage of the educational benefits
offered by this technology. The exploitation of the unique affordances of
computers have seen a false dawn and dashed hopes but, slowly, a body of
research has emerged that is now starting to identify where we should look and
what we should do. However, the necessary changes would fundamentally alter
the roles of teacher and learner within the educational system as well as
government policy and this may go some way to explain government reluctance
and the systemic inertia in the UK and elsewhere.
Keywords: computers, education, teaching, pedagogy, computer games,
government policy, cognitive load theory, learning styles.
1 Introduction
West of House.
You are standing in an open field west of a white
house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

Although many people today will never have heard of it, this is the opening text of
what is arguably one of the most iconic pieces of interactive computer software ever
written - and is the place where my journey into the use of computers in education
began.
The software in question is the computer-based adventure-game trilogy Zork!,
which was written in 1977 on a ‘mainframe’ computer by Tim Anderson, Marc
Blank, Bruce Daniels and Dave Lebling, who were members of the Dynamic
Modelling Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [1]. Published in 1980
by the American software company Infocom, Zork! was part of a genre of digital
interactive fiction which ran on the then emerging market of commercial computers
aimed at the home. Unlike today’s computer software which depends upon powerful
A. Tatnall and B. Davey (Eds.): History of Computers in Education, IFIP AICT 424, pp. 1–25, 2014.
© IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2014