Stories from the Archives – 1982 – The Challenge of the Computer
Our School’s incredible history has many wonderful stories that our community is deeply connected to. This year as we celebrate our 125th Year Anniversary, we invite you each week to step back in time through some of the many stories that make up the life at St Catherine’s School.
St Catherine’s has taken on the challenge of the rapidly growing technological age with the purchase earlier this year of a Spectrum mini computer package.
It comprises a computer with five video terminals plus a high speed card reader and a line printer. The computer allows five students to work the terminals simultaneously while others in the class use the card reader.
John Gowdie, Head of St Catherine’s Mathematics Department, is responsible for the Computer teaching program. He hopes to develop a range of Computer courses to enable maximum use of the new equipment which is even now used by two-thirds of the School’s 395 senior students.
In recent years St Catherine’s has put more emphasis on Mathematics. Students up to and including Year 10 take one Mathematics subject. And this year eighty percent of Year 11 and 12 students take one Mathematics subject or more.
Mr. Gowdie sees the computer system as having three main applications for St. Catherine’s. Its first is as an aid to teaching, especially for Mathematics. For HSC students, computing is an option in Applied and General Mathematics. Computing is also taught at Year 10 and 11.
Mr. Gowdie has designed a special course for Year 10, Consumer Mathematics, which has one section looking at a more practical approach of using the computer to solve problems. As well, Year 7, 8 and 9 students and Mathematics and Science staff are teaching introductory courses in Computer Operations and Programming.
The second application of the computer is for administrative use – compiling staff class lists, helping in time-tabling and in survey work for geography classes. The third application would be for computer-assisted instruction. There are plans to use it perhaps for remedial teaching and for language classes.
Excerpt taken from St Catherine’s News, December 1982
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