ABSTRACT
From 1984 to 1986 the author worked in Dammam for the Saudi Arabian Language Institutes, and purchased an IBM-compatible computer for the office. In 1987 he returned to work in comprehensive schools in West Yorkshire. The Local Education Authority had chosen to equip all schools with Acorn microcomputers. Students would use computers to learn how to produce grid references in Geography; to calculate the nutritional composition of meals in Food Technology or for word prediction in English using cloze exercises. By 1990 the situation changed when a significant minority of students started to have access to computers at home that ran industry-standard software and which had printers. These computers were significantly different from those which students used for games playing or programming. When computers were introduced in schools in the United Kingdom the computers to which children had access at home were often either machines used for generating programs, or dedicated games machines.
