What Technology Did Mr. R. Use When He Was Growing Up?

I loved using technology because I always seemed to be good at it.

A Speak 'n Spell was probably my first "computer." Made by a company called Texas Instruments, you could spell words using the battery-operated keypad. It would also spell words back to you using an electronic voice.

When my parents were part of the PTA (Parent Teacher Organization) at my new elementary school, they helped raise funds to purchase 16 Apple IIE computers for a computer lab. They helped teach computer classes to both parents and students at the school once a week in the evenings because many of the homes in our school community were not wealthy enough to own a computer. We played educational games like Logo (where you could learn simple computer programming and practice geometry at the same time) and helped each other learn the parts and functions of a computer. It was fun being a fifth grader that taught adults how to load a disk into a computer. It still is!

At home we had an Apple computer also. We owned Choplifter (a spelling game), Facemaker (where you could change the features of a computerized face), Oregon Trail (where you could hunt deer with a gun) Number Munchers (math), Odell Lake (fish-based food chain) Karataka (look at the tower image of the game) and Spymaster (driving a special car that you could crash into other cars along the way). I will never forget the sound of the old Dot-Matrix printer printing out book reports on accordion-folded paper.

I think that we used an IBM computer at home once the Apple IIE was worn out, but we still used a newer Dot-Matrix printer.

Whe I was in high school we got a "Nintendo" (Nintendo NES) for about $200 that had two controllers and one game (Mario Brothers?). Each of my brothers would save up our money (they were still expensive for us: $30-$50 depending on the store) or ask for games for holidays. We played Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Tetris, Super Mario Bros., Contra (ask me about a related story about this game), and Mike Tyson's Punch Out (when our buddy brought it over from his house. We weren't allowed to have that game because my mom said it was "too violent.") I later sold the Nintendo to my brothers for $50 ($25 each) with the games and contollers when I left for college. My youngest brother brought it to college with him when he moved out!

When I was in college we used mostly portable electronic typewriters (with LCD screen, disk drive, and spellcheck) and later Macintosh computers. I mainly used them to write essays, responses to text, poetry and letters to my girlfriend (who later became Mrs. R.) Sometimes other students that lived on my floor in my dormitory (dorm) would ask to borrow my typewriter overnight, so I would trade it for a few homemade cookies or a Mountain Dew. During my last year of college, every student was given an e-mail address because we now also had internet access for the first time!

When I began teaching at Ames, Mr. Smith supplied me with four Power Mac LC 570's to use in class with the fifth graders. They each had slow internet access and a bunch of CD ROM games to use. Our first class newspaper was published on one of these computers.

As you can see, the use of technology has grown as much as I have!