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.