Things that have Changed Since You were in School

[Thena]

I can remember my second-grade teacher fighting with a projector when we were trying to watch a movie. Then, in junior high, the music teacher tried to show us a movie on VHS, but she wasn't used to using a VCR and accidentally put the tape in backwards. The class got a good laugh at her when she had to get a library tech to help her figure out what she did wrong.

Of course, today's schools probably use DVDs. Last semester, the professor for one of my grad school classes used YouTube clips in his lectures.

Which reminds me, I graduated from college in 2000 but started taking graduate classes last year. The biggest change I've seen is a heavy use of the Internet, including online class discussions and submitting assignments online. (And the ability to Google the answers, of course, not that I do that. )

My sister teachers undergraduates, and I've heard the complaints about students checking Facebook instead of listening to the lecture. She's also had a series of emails that looked like spam. They were from an AOL account with a username she didn't recognize, no name on the email, and a bunch of attachments she was smart enough not to open. It turned out that this was a student's attempt at turning in his homework, but he waited until the end of the semester to ask her why she hadn't graded his assignments.

 

[Surfin' Santa]

On the infrequent occasions we had any sort of "media" in school it was usually in the form of 16mm film on a cart that was used to move the projector and an approximately 25 inch diagonal rear projection screen.

That's the first I've heard of schools using rear-projection screens. In my school days, most classrooms had a roll-up screen at the front of the room. If there wasn't one, we had portable screens on tripods. And in high school, I was one of those projectionist geeks on the Audio-Visual crew. It was an easy class credit, and you got to see all the films that came in every week.

Some of the more memorable -- and unintentionally funny -- school films were the anti-drug ones with titles like LSD: Insight or Insanity?

Which makes me curious about how health classes (maybe they don't even call it "health" anymore) have changed. What are kids learning these days about sex and drugs? (I mean inside the classroom.)

 

[SVD]

.... The biggest change I've seen is a heavy use of the Internet, including online class discussions and submitting assignments online. (And the ability to Google the answers, of course, not that I do that. )

Come to think of it, that's a noticeable change for me, too.

My sister teachers undergraduates ... She's also had a series of emails that looked like spam. They were from an AOL account with a username she didn't recognize, no name on the email, and a bunch of attachments she was smart enough not to open. It turned out that this was a student's attempt at turning in his homework, but he waited until the end of the semester to ask her why she hadn't graded his assignments.

What a Maroon ! Forgot one or more of the rules for Emailing homework: 1) Be sure it is a permited method of turning it in in the first place, 2) Be sure that your teacher recognises what it's for by writing your name and/or course number in the subject, and 3) Be sure it is in a file format that he/she can open.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I've never heard of this before now, and I think it's one of the most retarded thing I've ever read. No surprise that young Americans have problems learning new words and new languages.

Wong! L Com road juice time!

I have no idea what you are saying. When I read English, I recognize words, not sounds. That's one of the (many) reasons I loathe "txt speak": I can never figure out what the fuck people are trying to say when they type "ur gr8" or something similarly idiotic.

 

[Amaris]

I've never heard of this before now, and I think it's one of the most retarded thing I've ever read. No surprise that young Americans have problems learning new words and new languages.

Wong! L Com road juice time!

I have no idea what you are saying. When I read English, I recognize words, not sounds. That's one of the (many) reasons I loathe "txt speak": I can never figure out what the fuck people are trying to say when they type "ur gr8" or something similarly idiotic.

Oh, it says "Wrong! I can read just fine!". I picked words that have a similar shape. It was my cheeky little effort to agree with you in a different way than normal.

 

[Goliath]

I started elementary school in 1974. Comic books and chocolate bars were both 25 cents, and pop came in glass bottles.

Canada had just begun switching to the metric system: when we learned how to measure with a ruler in grade three, we got odd numbers, because our exercises had been designed for inches rather than centimetres.

The first time I used a networked computer was back in the 1981-82 school year. I was one of a small group of seventh graders who were allowed to use a PLATO terminal.

I remember film projectors well. I don't think I watched a videotape in class until the ninth grade.

I didn't see a personal computer until that same year, when computer literacy was offered as an option for the first time. We learned how to use an Apple II and program in BASIC.

They were still teaching typing on electric typewriters when I was in high school.

I wrote my first university term papers by hand, though I eventually graduated to a Macintosh with a dot-matrix printer. I never used a computer to do research--just books and journals. In fact, my university library was still using a card catalogue during my first few years as an undergraduate, during the late 80s.

The Soviet Union collapsed the year before I graduated with my BA.

 

[thestrangequark]

I've never heard of this before now, and I think it's one of the most retarded thing I've ever read. No surprise that young Americans have problems learning new words and new languages.

Wong! L Com road juice time!

I have no idea what you are saying. When I read English, I recognize words, not sounds. That's one of the (many) reasons I loathe "txt speak": I can never figure out what the fuck people are trying to say when they type "ur gr8" or something similarly idiotic.

Well, all fluent readers recognize words and not just their parts, that's why we so often read over the same typo again and again. There was one literacy movement, for a short time, that really focused on this. They even used these silly tools that looked as if you'd drawn a box around a word and the children were supposed to recognize the word by the shape of this box, without any letters! If I recall correctly this may have been part of the "language immersion" technique of teaching reading and writing. Of course, it didn't work well at all. Kids must learn the language phonetically, or else, as was already pointed out, they'd be at a total loss when it came to unfamiliar words.

Sight Words are important, however, in teaching literacy, and are one of the ways teachers assess students' reading levels. Sight Words are exactly what say they are: words children know on sight, without having to sound them out or even think about them. Sight words are pretty logical for the early grades, the, and, I, was, he, am, and the like. I always thought it funny, though, that one of the 2nd grade sight words is ukulele. It seems so out of place!

 

[Tribbles]

I started elementary school in the 90's, and people were beginning to get home computers. Many of us still didn't have one though, so computer lab day was a big deal. Playing The Oregon Trail was the highlight of my school week!

I remember the very first time I used the internet, as well. It was in the library, and Yahoo was the default page on the browser. I typed in "Star Wars", ran the search, and my eyes just about flew out of my head at the results it returned. And thus a lifelong internet addiction was born!...

Younger kids today just take computers as a given, something everyone has at least one of in the home, and the internet can be accessed from many devices, but I saved every penny I made babysitting just to get myself a WebTV. I was eventually able to save enough to get a real computer, thankfully.

 

[Surfin' Santa]

Well, all fluent readers recognize words and not just their parts, that's why we so often read over the same typo again and again. There was one literacy movement, for a short time, that really focused on this. They even used these silly tools that looked as if you'd drawn a box around a word and the children were supposed to recognize the word by the shape of this box, without any letters! If I recall correctly this may have been part of the “language immersion” technique of teaching reading and writing.

I believe it was also called the “whole language” approach. It was roughly equivalent to Professor Harold Hill's “Think System” for learning music, and worked just about as well.

 

[Shaytan]

The Mont Blanc's elevation was still 4807m and not 4810.45m.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Oh, it says "Wrong! I can read just fine!". I picked words that have a similar shape. It was my cheeky little effort to agree with you in a different way than normal.

Yeah, I understood what you were implying with your reply, but I really couldn't figure out what you were actually typing.

I always thought it funny, though, that one of the 2nd grade sight words is ukulele. It seems so out of place!

 

[Surfin' Santa]

The Mont Blanc's elevation was still 4807m and not 4810.45m.

How does a mountain get three-and-a-half meters taller? Hormone injections?

 

[Shaytan]

The Mont Blanc's elevation was still 4807m and not 4810.45m.

How does a mountain get three-and-a-half meters taller? Hormone injections?

Apparently, they mesure it with the ice and snow dome and those things vary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Blanc#Elevation

 

[judge alba]

since i've left school back in 1985 the things i remember changing was things like
cd's becoming cheaper
dvds coming out
vhs dieing off oh and betamax had gone as well
computers are pretty cheap
consuls were more then a Nintendo and play station one
the dreamcast had come and gone

 

[thestrangequark]

Well, all fluent readers recognize words and not just their parts, that's why we so often read over the same typo again and again. There was one literacy movement, for a short time, that really focused on this. They even used these silly tools that looked as if you'd drawn a box around a word and the children were supposed to recognize the word by the shape of this box, without any letters! If I recall correctly this may have been part of the “language immersion” technique of teaching reading and writing.

I believe it was also called the “whole language” approach. It was roughly equivalent to Professor Harold Hill's “Think System” for learning music, and worked just about as well.

Ah yes, Whole Language. That was such a load of impractical bollox!

The Mont Blanc's elevation was still 4807m and not 4810.45m.

How does a mountain get three-and-a-half meters taller? Hormone injections?

Apparently, they mesure it with the ice and snow dome and those things vary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Blanc#Elevation

Aren't all mountains growing or shrinking? Either growing through plate tectonics or volcanic activity pushing them upwards, or shrinking through erosion.

 

[Mary Ann]

Highschool...I had no internet, we were still using guilders and it was always a pain in the proverbial ass when you went shopping in Germany (I live at the border) where everything was in Deutsche Marken ofc. I do miss the rijksdaalder though. As a dutch saying goes: "On the market your guilder is worth a dollar."

My aunt gave me a 1963 rijksdaalder made into a necklace for my 18th birthday, 24 years ago. Speaking of German borders, this aunt lives in Venlo. My parents are from Roermond.

In my final year of high school ('87) I went to the Soviet Union with a group from school. It was still a communist country but Gorbachev was the leader and the words glasnost and perestroika were part of the lexicon. We made sure we always had quarters so we could use payphones. I knew people with Betamax players (suckers!). I spent time playing lemonade stand on a Commodore 64. CDs were brand new, and in Toronto it was becoming difficult to buy LPs. And we all had really, really bad hairstyles.

 

[Vanyel]

No one had actually seen the Titanic since it sank.
Home computers that are way more powerful than the one attached.
Iraq was our friend.
Saturday Morning had cartoons that were not half hour commercials.
Laser Discs.
VHS vs. Beta.

 

[Omnius]

Highschool...I had no internet, we were still using guilders and it was always a pain in the proverbial ass when you went shopping in Germany (I live at the border) where everything was in Deutsche Marken ofc. I do miss the rijksdaalder though. As a dutch saying goes: "On the market your guilder is worth a dollar."

My aunt gave me a 1963 rijksdaalder made into a necklace for my 18th birthday, 24 years ago. Speaking of German borders, this aunt lives in Venlo. My parents are from Roermond.

Cool!So you're a Limburgian, I'm from a town near Nijmegen.
Have you been back to the Netherlands since you left?

 

[Thena]

In 8th grade, my class took a three-day trip to Washington, D.C. The chaperons told us that if we wanted to call our parents, it had to be a collect call from the pay phone in the lobby. I was worried that my dad would be pissed off if I called him collect, so I didn't call.

Of course, today kids have cell phones and can call their parents as often as they want! The first real cell phones came out when I was a sophomore in high school, and initially I did not like the idea of being reachable every time my dad called. Also, they were so rare that I was worried that having a cell phone might make me stand out as the "rich" kid. In hindsight, having a cell phone might have prevented some arguments and let me go out with my friends more often, since Dad's excuse was "I won't know where to pick you up."

 

[Surfin' Santa]

consuls were more then a Nintendo and play station one
the dreamcast had come and gone

Consuls ought to be busy doing diplomatic work and helping people get passports and visas, not sitting around playing video games.