Many schools are wondering what computers are the best for teaching first timers. The T/S-1000 and ZX-81 is usually at the top of the list because of price. The drawbacks, however, fall mainly into two catagories:
A – The Sinclair machines are not taken seriously because of their size and the membrane keyboard. The competition has propagated the myth that they are just toys and the users will soon outgrow their capabilities.
B – They do not have many of the frills their more expensive counterparts have, such as color, high resolution graphics and sound, all of which are important to the development of user’s computer literacy.
Bunk – nothing could be further from the truth! The size and membrane keyboard is actually an advantage in that the computer is less susceptible to damage from key contacts being exposed to the atomosphere, dirt and spillage such as in the non-membrane competitors. If damage does occur, the repair or replacement bill will be much smaller than for the competitor’s models.
The frills such as sound, color and high-resolution graphics have little place in the real world, except in arcade games and maybe fancy business graphs.
This little computer is actually a very powerful and dynamite little machine.
But putting all that aside, one area that has been almost completely overlooked is the teaching of computer science to that age group that should be the youngest to be exposed to it, mainly the 5th thru 8th grades of grammer school.
This group has been demonstrated to have problems with certain motor responses, that is, hand to eye co-ordination using a typewriter keyboard more so than their older peers. It has been shown that when groups of the same age level were given the use of Sinclair computers versus other more expensive and elaborate computers with all the bells and whistles, the Sinclair group of users learned faster and retained more EVEN IF THEY HAD TAKEN A PREVIOUS CLASS WITH THE OTHER COMPUTERS.
Why? What was this magic that Uncle Clive was able to weave?
Think of it logically. What is the one thing that the T/S-1000 and the ZX-81 have, that the competition doesn’t?
Single key-stroke command input! That’s right. Put yourself in the place of a 10 or 11 year old. You probably never touched a typewriter before for any serious reason and now you are placed in front of a computer and expected to type in programs. You are constantly reading a list of program lines, hunting for the proper keys to press and then checking the screen to see if the input was correct. Heaven help you if it didn’t. You would have to backspace, again the eyes constantly flitting between the screen and the keyboard while the fingers are trying to do the right thing.
To put in a command such as PRINT requires 5 keystrokes. The same with the command INPUT. On the Sinclair machines it only requires 1 keystroke, not just for these commands but all commands, functions and logical operators. The end result is that the youngster has less to do and is rewarded sooner for his or her efforts. This means that impressions are made in the child’s mind within a shorter time from the initiation of the effort to the keyboard and the attention span time required is shorter.
The child retains more of what’s happening.
Isn’t this our goal, whether we be a responsible parent or teacher? Would not the same principles apply to the teaching of adults?
When Radio Shack first introduced the TRS-80, it had a short-hand BASIC language that abbreviated almost all of the commands. It was a simple language to understand and could accomplish many things.
They later introduced their Level II BASIC conversion kit, which promised to turn that computer into a very powerful machine – which it did. This language even today in my opinion is still the most powerful BASIC language there is.
The only problem was that the difference between the two languages was like night and day. It was like graduating from grammer school and going directly into a university.
The manual that came with the kit wasn’t much help to the uninitiated, either. There was no index. Some people even made money simply by writing an index for the manual and selling it through classified ads.
The manual was termed a User’s Manual. This meant that users were expected to read it cover to cover and correlate the information to previously learned languages from other computers.
The buying public that converted their machines was for the most part unaware of what they were in store for. Many of them wanted the old ROMs put back in the computers or simply sold them.
Many, though, were irreversibly bitten by the computer bug and trudged on, forcing themselves to learn the new language through trial and error, not to mention excessive phone calls to the more learned and/or purchase of anything they could get their hands on that would help their cause.
In those days there was very little help. Thank God those days are behind us now. Books, publications, places to call, etc. all exist now, at least more so than they did then, and we’re only talking 6 years ago. The Sinclair computer’s BASIC language is very similiar to the TRS-80’s.
I have used and taught programming classes on almost all the popular computers until 1981 and I firmly believe the quickest way to achieve computer literacy is on a machine that has single keystroke entry of all the multi-character commands, functions and logical operaters and the only computers that I am aware of that have these features are the ones from Uncle Clive.