Yesterday’s post was kind of fun. Going back and playing around with KidPix reminded me of a time when we were “young” in the game of technology in the classroom. The software was the best of breed at the time and who could expect more from block graphics?!
There were a couple of other programs that we from the time of KidPix that went over well in the elementary school classroom and I’ll admit my secondary school computer science students during lunch time in the computer lab.
Now, I’ll admit. As a Canadian educator, we didn’t go out and purchase this product for our classroom. Instead, it typically came bundled with a number of other pieces of software when you purchased a computer.
You could probably have made a loose tie to the Ontario Curriculum with this piece of software. The premise was to learn about the challenges of being a pioneer and exploring the US west.
Of course, there is YouTube coverage.
Now, this one was a little more connected to the Ontario Curriculum. The concept here was that you were a trucker and your job was to take orders and make deliveries of various products from one Canadian location to another.
The infamous message if you try to get ahead of yourself.
Other than refereeing studenst on computer, my fondest memory here was that this was an MS-DOS program that we were able to run on the Icon computers (running QNX) using a DOS emulator.
I found it interesting to play each of these for a little bit of time (links to each above) and to reminisce about how we thought we were effectively using technology at the time. The titles even made it into Additional Qualification courses!
We’ve come a long way.
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.