I was a social studies teacher who hated typing. Mainly because if you made a mistake it was a big hassle to make corrections. For many years as PC's were first being developed I feigned hate for them. Mainly because they seemed difficult to learn, didn't do anything that seemed to be of real value and were expensive. My future wife had worked for an early typing service here in Austin in 1981 that trained her on Wordstar which at the time was the cutting edge word processor but she would complain how difficult it was to actually use. She much prefered just typing things on a typewriter.
It wasn't until about 1984 that things changed dramatically for me. By that time schools started introducing PC's into labs. My school, W.R. Robbins here in Austin was a small alternative high school and we had two IBM PC's in our Business class that I vowed I would never touch. Then one day we had an inservice in the district's computer lab which was actually in the same building as Robbins. The lab had Apple II's and some Commodore 64's. We were there to get training on word processing which I already had a jaundiced view of since my now wife's bad experience with Word Star a few years back.
It was there in that cramped lab, at the age of 31 that my life changed. That brief encounter with a word processor showed me how I could change the way I worked as a teacher. I realized that now I could type without fear of messing up and having to re-type an entire page or even several pages. I could compose and edit on the fly without fear. I could save my work and come back to it. It could copy and paste. Everything that we take for granted now came to my realization after that short two hour introduction.
After that I knew that I had to learn more. I started to go to our schools business classroom after school and teaching myself Word Star which was much better than the version my wife had used in 81. I knew that I would have to get my own computer but which one? I was a poor school teacher who now had to convince my skeptical wife that we needed to spend $2,000 on a PC in our home. I committed myself to finding the right computer for us and would spend hours reading up on computers, going to computer stores and trying out every cheap PC I could find. I tried IBM Pc Jr, the Osborne, Kaypro, and the Holy Grail of new users like me the newly introduced Macintosh. The Mac had the ease of use, WYSIWYG word processing, graphical interface and a mouse for gosh sakes! Only problem was it was new and with just a few programs written for it and no real guarantee that it would catch on.
Although I lusted after the Macintosh I settled on a Apple IIe with duo disk drives. Fortunately by 1985 when I bought my first Apple PC, Apple had introduced AppleWorks which was a game changer for me. It was an integrated application that included a WYSIWYG word Processor, a spreadsheet and data base. AppleWorks allowed me to learn to use a spreadsheet that I would use to do my grades on and the data base where I could organize student info.
After that first purchase I became a full blow advocate for using technology for teachers. I even bought a case that I could cart fit my entire system in and carry it to school with me every day. As the years progressed I would continually upgrade and self teach myself new skills and applications. Eventually by 1998 I left the social studies classroom and became a full time Technology Specialist which I did off and on for over 15 years. What a weird strange trip it's been.
It wasn't until about 1984 that things changed dramatically for me. By that time schools started introducing PC's into labs. My school, W.R. Robbins here in Austin was a small alternative high school and we had two IBM PC's in our Business class that I vowed I would never touch. Then one day we had an inservice in the district's computer lab which was actually in the same building as Robbins. The lab had Apple II's and some Commodore 64's. We were there to get training on word processing which I already had a jaundiced view of since my now wife's bad experience with Word Star a few years back.
It was there in that cramped lab, at the age of 31 that my life changed. That brief encounter with a word processor showed me how I could change the way I worked as a teacher. I realized that now I could type without fear of messing up and having to re-type an entire page or even several pages. I could compose and edit on the fly without fear. I could save my work and come back to it. It could copy and paste. Everything that we take for granted now came to my realization after that short two hour introduction.
After that I knew that I had to learn more. I started to go to our schools business classroom after school and teaching myself Word Star which was much better than the version my wife had used in 81. I knew that I would have to get my own computer but which one? I was a poor school teacher who now had to convince my skeptical wife that we needed to spend $2,000 on a PC in our home. I committed myself to finding the right computer for us and would spend hours reading up on computers, going to computer stores and trying out every cheap PC I could find. I tried IBM Pc Jr, the Osborne, Kaypro, and the Holy Grail of new users like me the newly introduced Macintosh. The Mac had the ease of use, WYSIWYG word processing, graphical interface and a mouse for gosh sakes! Only problem was it was new and with just a few programs written for it and no real guarantee that it would catch on.
Although I lusted after the Macintosh I settled on a Apple IIe with duo disk drives. Fortunately by 1985 when I bought my first Apple PC, Apple had introduced AppleWorks which was a game changer for me. It was an integrated application that included a WYSIWYG word Processor, a spreadsheet and data base. AppleWorks allowed me to learn to use a spreadsheet that I would use to do my grades on and the data base where I could organize student info.
After that first purchase I became a full blow advocate for using technology for teachers. I even bought a case that I could cart fit my entire system in and carry it to school with me every day. As the years progressed I would continually upgrade and self teach myself new skills and applications. Eventually by 1998 I left the social studies classroom and became a full time Technology Specialist which I did off and on for over 15 years. What a weird strange trip it's been.
