George C Marshall High School - Columbian Yearbook (Falls Church, VA)

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STUDENT LIFE 15 C5

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COMPUTERS DQ 2Mn5H4LL ' 5 “Aw, the computer screwed up my schedule again,” is an often-heard complaint in Sep¬ tember, as students return to school and en¬ counter new classes and teachers. But very few students or teachers at Marshall really un¬ derstand what mechanical operations take place behind the doors of our computer room, or how the machines affect the school’s func¬ tions. In the first place, “there are no real ’com¬ puters’ at Marshall,” stated Mrs. Lirlene Garner, who operates all of the machines. “The technical group name for the sorter, in¬ terpreter, reproducer, collater, keypunch, and accounting machines that Marshall has is ’unit records.’ ” These machines are capable of performing all the necessary day-to-day tasks, like keeping attendance records, making student lists, and preparing date cards for insurance, block, and picture sales. The school’s massive summer scheduling, however, is done on a huge IMB 360 computer (a real one, this time), in the county’s Massey Building in Fairfax. The process of scheduling students and classes for the following year begins in Febru¬ ary, when course selection sheets are first filled out by all underclassmen. (The seniors won’t be around for the next year). Mrs. Garner keypunches all the selection sheet in¬ formation onto IBM cards, then feeds it into the sorting and interpreting machines to get tally lists of how many students wish to take each class Qffered. Then the administration begins working on the master schedule for all classes, teachers, and students. Using the tally lists, administrators decide how many classes of each course will be needed, and how they can best be arranged during the day so that the necessary teachers will be avail¬ able and the least possible number of students will have course conflicts. Possible master schedules are plotted on matrices and tested in the “data records” to insure that the master schedule with the fewest conflicts is chosen. Mrs. Garner prepares IBM cards for each of the approximately 2300 students, 120 teachers, and roughly 700 numbered classes offered; these cards, along with the master schedule, are taken to the great computer in Fairfax one day in August for the final scheduling. In about two and a half hours, the computer prepares daily schedules for each student and teacher, attendance rolls for each class and a grade for each class each student is taking. (Fairfax County rents two of these computers from IBM; they are both in Fairfax, and nearly all the high schools in the county use them for scheduling. The county also owns or rents all the machines in Marshall’s “computer room”.) After the final scheduling in August, all course changes are scheduled by hand. When a student’s change is approved by Guidance, Mrs. Garner makes new schedule and grade cards for him, removes his old ones, takes him off the old roll lists and adds his name to the roll for the class he wishes to take. The first weeks of school are, therefore, usually quite hectic, with all the changes that need to be made. But Marshall’s machines are not, by any means, used only for scheduling! Every day absences are coded on students’ individual cards, and a school-total absentee list is made. Monthly absentee totals must be sent to the county. English and Government elec¬ tives must be scheduled, and roll list print¬ outs made. Senior class ranks, name and address labels for PTA newsletters, changes in cards for new students or withdrawals — all are taken care of by the machines. And, of course, report cards are printed at the end of each nine weeks — using 13,000 grade cards (one for each student’s grade in each class), the master card and the absentee cards for each student. Computer print-out grade lists are sent back to each teacher so that any possible mistakes in grades may be corrected; then the cards are sent through Guidance to each student. All in all, the machines that the county has “hired” perform wonders as they speedily dispatch with the hundreds of menial tasks in¬ volved in administering a high school of 2300 students. But though they work faster and more accurately than is humanly possible, people (especially Mrs. Garner) are still vital to the completion of every job they do. As our “computer lady” sums it up, “The machines cannot think for themselves or decide what needs to be done — we have to tell them what to do.” Right: A student learns to use a “unit record.

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Above: Drum major Mike Wilson prepares to lead a warm-up piece. Upper left: Karen Anderson and Judy Peacock combine artistic efforts at a Homecoming Dance work¬ shop. Above: Tangible works express with clarity the anonymous artist’s nebulous esthesia. Upper right: Marching band members await inspection before the Vienna Halloween parade. t IT: %trmi 7 ' S, ■ ; ‘•w p MV . ' mr it j p ' iwllM h 1 | , i f • ... fraftj -»j§ IT Is . r • ; ilHB 1 A i area, Lai PSpPpM ▼T $ Sir . ■ v JE Mi Pa sjf ]i, HlLTlM ml