These were the days before personal computers (the PC hadn't quite been invented), mobile phones and the world wide web. The internet must have been in its infancy but I knew nothing of it. In the early 1980's the BBC started a computer literacy project centred on an Acorn computer which became know as the BBC Micro, and I just had to have one. It was 1982 and I was in my final year at uni when I eventually managed to afford a BBC Model A - a 6502 processor with 16k of RAM which used a standard cassette tape recorder storage and a normal TV as a monitor - those were the days!
I was aware of Sinclair having developed the ZX80 and ZX81 computers and I think I had toyed with the idea of getting one - however they seemed so flimsy compared to the BBC Micro with its hard case, proper typewriter keyboard and expansion possibilities that they were never really in the running for me. However it wasn't long before I yearned for the Model B computer which had 32k of RAM and more expansion possibilities, such as a 'user port' and 'disk interface'. Fortunately, the BBC Micro was designed with upgrading in mind, and so I managed to get it upgraded at one of the many new computer fairs that were springing up around the country.
This was the era of Space Invaders, Pacman and Breakout and although I enjoyed playing computer games, it was being able to program the computer that really interested me. I subscribed to Beebug magazine, Acorn User and BBC Micro User and every month would avidly type in some of the program listings in BBC Basic (which were often full of typos) to make my computer do lots of different tasks. I also started to write my own simple programs' which gave me a great deal of satisfaction, especially after long debugging sessions eventually produced a program that worked! It was doing these activities that taught me the basics of computer programming and which stood me in good stead throughout my later teaching career, although even now I am by no means a thoroughly competent programmer.
On leaving Manchester University I became a teacher and in spite of my subject being Geography and Geology, having some knowledge of the BBC Micro definitely helped me get my first job, as this was the computer being put into to schools as part of a nationwide initiative in computer literacy. My first Head of Department was very keen to use computers in Geography and Geology lessons and so I got the job. The same was true in my next teaching post, where I wrote several geography programs which were used in our lessons. Later at this school I also started teaching pupils part of the GCSE Computing course and CLAIT to adult learners.
By now I had realised that my teaching career wasn't going to progress very quickly or easily in Geography and Geology as there were lots of teachers for these subjects - but computing and ICT as it was becoming known was a rapidly growing area which most people in education knew nothing about. School ICT teachers were mainly from Business Studies due to the office-based applications being taught or from Maths and Science because computers were seen as number-crunchers and technical things. And so while in my next position as Head of Geology and Teacher i/c of ICT, I decided to get some sort of qualification in ICT to help become a properly qualified ICT Teacher.
I did a part-time course at the then Preston Polytechnic (now the University of Central Lancashire) which was becoming known as a centre of excellence for computing. And low and behold, I soon secured a post of Head of ICT in what was to become my final school and a place where I remained for 23 years until I took early retirement from my post of Head of Learning (ICT Faculty) in August 2011.
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Here I went through all the curriculum changes from TVEI, CLAIT and CSE through various GCSE syallabi to A level, AS and A2 level, AVCE, Applied GCE, OCR Nationals, BTEC Level 3 etc. I suffered the introduction of the 'impossible to deliver' KS3 National Curriculum ICT in all its guises and revisions as ICT expanded from a small 'extraction' subject to a foundation subject and major player in the school curriculum.
BBC Micros with disk drives and colour inkjet printers
Archimedes Computers
Atari ST
First laser printer
Windows 3.1 RM Network
Windows 95 / 98
CD ROMs and CD server
Mesozoic Park with Smart Control boxes with sensors
Early Internet and e-mail with modems
ISDN and routers
Lego Mindstorms
Network technicians!
Windows XP
Digital photography and scanning
Digital video and audio recording
Website, blogs and VLEs
Wireless networking, laptops, SIMs, Interactive Whiteboards and projectors
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Early retirement and the Raspberry Pi - rekindled the love of programming and control - I can feel that the spirit of the BBC Micro is in this project and in the maker and hacker movement which is rapidly growing across the whole world. I just wish I was 30 years younger!
Martyn Jones
October 2012
