As a student: my earliest memory of a computer in a classroom was when I was in grade 10, in perhaps 1983. It was our science teacher own huge clunky IBM and we all crowded around it in our his class. During class (and for hours outside of class) we would type in basic commands like 010 PRINT “HELLO” 020 goto//red INPUT and so on. We would make coloured lines make patterns across the screen, and cheesy pretend conversations with the computer, and it was glorious!
Reflections: I never needed that skill set again! and, it wasmostly boys who thought it was cool.
As a teacher: the earliest use of technology in class was on a geometry project when I had the students making 3D models of regular and irregular polyhedrons. The program was a simple animation of what the solids looked like unassembled (net) and assembled. It was a useful program, but with a decreased focus on geometry in the curriculum now, it is somewhat less useful now. More recently, for fun I have used TI-83 graphing calculators and the temperature gauge to generate basic data for graphing with boiling water and rate of cooling. The resulting equations gave students some reinforcement of basic concepts and allowed them to manipulate technology and experiment in the math class.
Question: Does the packed curriculum really allow us another hour for these kinds of experiments/fun/reinforcing skill sets?