On Thu, Aug 18, 2005 at 01:24:40PM +0800, Dale Hill wrote: > My two boys were the only ones in school that could operate both > systems.
When I was in middle school, we were still using Apple II computers even though the 386 was drawing to a close. I have always been a firm believer that this was a good thing, since schools should be teaching us general computer skills rather than how to use a particular product. And teaching us general skills is what they did, because there was no pretense that AppleWorks or Applesoft BASIC was used in the "real world". They covered everything from word processing, databases, and spreadsheets; to computer programming. Since that time, I have been able to adapt those skills to several platforms. Yet I have heard criticism, from the mid-1990s onwards, that kids are graduating with computer skills which they are unable to adapt to different applications. Indeed, it is probably safe to say that my mother benefitted from this when she went back to school to upgrade her skills and become a secretary. While many students were in there learning Microsoft Office, mom was just applying pre-existing skills to a new application. That is because she had been using computers at home since buying an 8-bit computer in the early 1980s. Not only did that make her more successful in school, but it meant that she was better qualified when she graduated and better able to snag a job (her employer used WordPerfect). > My son and his cousin learned to read like a pro, by playing Dark > Casle and Bug Hunt. Now days, a kid doesn't have to read a darn > thing to play a game. In the late 1990, I started to become disenchanged with computers. Some of it was because the industry switched into a "progress for progress' state" mode. This is something which I realised when you had the ability to embed videos in word processing documents. (How do you print that, or even exchange the bloated document on a floppy disk?). That opinion was strengthinged when I saw a company advertising the "strategy" required to play a first person shooter on the Computer Chronicles. For what it's worth, that strategy involved flipping every switch in a particular room. Highly intellectual stuff. Particularly compared to a game of chess, or blackjack for that matter. (Yes, I am being sarcastic.) While Apple II games were rarely more intellectually involved than that switch flipping one, at least they had an excuse: the limited RAM, disk, and processing capacity made it difficult to create intricate games. Then again, it is probably safe to assume that the ratio or educational and puzzle games to pure entertainment games was much more healthy back then. Then there was a whole genre of games where reading was the norm. I'm not sure what they called them back then, but it is called interactive fantasy these days. Commercially, that segment of the market has been decimated. Thankfully, there are still people writing the stuff as a hobby: http://baf.wurb.com/if/ (Some of these games will even run on an Apple IIgs, with the appropriate software.) As an added bonus, many of these games are better than the classics from Infocom and the like. But I have heard of another phenomena relating to computers in education. Apparently people think that kids are computer whizes because they use computers all of the time. I ran into an article a couple of years back which suggested otherwise. High-school computer instructors were suggesting that kids had fewer computer skills today than they had a decade earlier, and that it is only their ability to spend hours at a time on instant messenging services which is convincing their parents otherwise. I attribute the lack of competent kids to another phenomena: the lack of easy to use programming languages which are bundled with computers. One of the things which I found appealing about the Apple II (to the point of neglecting my 386 at home) was the ability to program the thing. I would spend hours in computer labs trying to make something which was comparable to the software of the day, simply because the tools were there and the goal was practical. Today, neither case is true. A kid isn't going to have the patience to create the millions of lines of code to make a program which even remotely compares to the commercial stuff. Heck, it usually takes dozens of lines of code to make a "hello world" type program and hundreds of lines of code to make a remotely interesting toy-program. Not only that, but the programming languages bundled with computer operating systems are not kid-friendly: AppleScript doesn't give you access to any interesting capabilities, while Xcode is far too complex. Never mind the more rudimentary tools shipped with the world's most popular operating system. Oh well, maybe I should stop rambling for a bit. ;) Byron. -- Apple2list is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... / Buy books, CDs, videos, and more from Amazon.com \ / <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/lowendmac> \ Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Apple2list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/apple2.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[email protected]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/apple2list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
