Often directly, irrespective of whatever phone call or meeting the principal might have happened to have at the time. Not known for being a shrinking violet, my Mum made her displeasure known. That assistance often involved pulling my brother out of classes - and occasionally myself - for literal infant tech support. The principal needed help learning how to use word documents and, I imagine, assistance producing anything that might justify the investment. So the school principal turned to the only resource available - which happened to be someone in Year 3, a child fortunate enough to have been taught assembly language from the age of 6. I imagine they didn’t mind, though: the bigger battle was winning the fight to get the budget in the first place.īut with that done, it wasn’t enough to have a hulky, beige box hanging around doing nothing. But without any supporting infrastructure, the teachers and executive couldn’t make use of it. That universal validation, perhaps, was why Myst found itself into so many schools. Just firing up Myst on a screen blew people away mainstream newspapers like the New York Times heralded Mystas the birth of a new artistic medium. Critics, gamers, passing observers all thought they were looking into a photorealistic future. It relied upon pre-rendered vistas that really demonstrated the power of the CD-ROM over the previous era. Those with access to deeper IT budgets trialled early coding programs, powered by Apple Logo.īut Myst was on another level entirely. Savvier schools had played around with Carmen Sandiego, a series beloved to this day. Myst wasn’t the first game to dabble as edutainment. The original Myst found a place in many schools, with the game becoming one of the first adopted by teachers looking to experiment with new forms of learning. Resigned, she gave up and turned to one of the students instead. I remember watching a teacher fire up Myst, not really knowing what it was exactly, and struggling to work out what to do on the opening screen. The Mac itself probably cost more than whatever was allocated to the entirety of knowledge inside.īut it was also priceless. It was located in what we generously called a school library - about three rows of hand-me-down books cobbled together with what I imagine was the most shoestring of budgets. Possibly a Centris 610 with CD-ROM support, although I don’t remember the exact model. It was one of the pre-iMac, boxy-era Macintosh computers. Even in the ’90s, dealing with kids in school is exhausting enough without adding “unpaid IT support” to their neverending list of unofficial, thankless duties.) (Or, as I suspect is the case, the staff that did know were smart enough to not put their hand up. So when our primary school got a computer, that was it: they literally got one solitary computer, despite the fact that literally nobody on staff seemed to know how to operate it. We weren’t fortunate enough to live in an especially affluent diocese or a suburb where schools were bequeathed with generous donations. My brother and I were of that age when computers - Macs mostly, but computers more generally - started to find their way into classrooms. It was for my mother it was a copy of Myst 3: Exile. This time was a little different: they bought a gift. But Mum was like that: if a kid was in need, she put any complaints aside to make sure they were looked after.Īfter a few years of holidays that typically involved late nights, pass-and-play gaming, the frustrations with too many kids in too small a space and an increasingly pissed off mother who kept losing sleep to the sounds of old mechanical keyboards and mice clicking at hours way too late for small children, the family friend stopped by again to stay for another few weeks. I never really found out why the family was going on holiday without their son, or why we were taking them in for a period. I remember being in primary school I remember being told we’d have a friend stay with us for a little while. Growing up, we used to have a family friend stay with us for a few weeks at a time, maybe a month or more. I can’t even remember the exact circumstances. “The idea that someone may be linking into my study, reading all of my books, disturbs me.”
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