Pulaski County High School - Cougar Pinnacle Yearbook (Dublin, VA)

Page 23 text:

L SWITCHING QVER CAN SOMETIMES BE MORE OF A HASSLE THAN fl HELP, BUT AFTER IT’S FINISHED, IT USUAi.LV SAUES MQNEV AMD TIME IN THE LONG RUM. When students arrived at school in August they found something that they never expected to happen. Com¬ puters had invaded and tak¬ en over the school. Every place you walked in the building there was a comput¬ er doing something. The freshmen ID cards had been computerized so they could check out books in the li¬ brary more easily. Comput¬ ers were doing anything and everything from teaching bi¬ ology to controlling the air conditioning. In 1981, the first phase of the transition began when Dr. Joy E. Colbert of the school board set up the first computer class. The class consisted of five computers and ten students with a teacher that taught class ev¬ ery other day. It ' s now grown to twenty Apple II and ten TRS 80 computers with nearly one hundred stu¬ dents enrolled in the class with three full time teachers. The craze continued to the pods as each pod re¬ ceived their own computer in order for the teachers to become more accustomed to its presence. The English pod had a program set up to go through each student ' s English choices for the se¬ mester, schedule him, and make out the individual class rolls. The social studies pod used their computer for var¬ ious things including teaching students about the presi¬ dents of the United States. The science pod teachers placed all of their grades on computers so they could give the students a weekly average of their grades. They also had programs to teach a student everything from vectors to asexual re¬ production and the periodic table. cont ' d. 19 Computers

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Helping each other out with a pro¬ gram in their computer applications class in the Vocational building, se¬ niors )on Fleenor and Chuck Smith run over what they just finished pro¬ gramming. Word processing has become one of the major qualifications of a sec¬ retary now a days. Here Mrs. Billie Farmer reads an assignment to Lori Hicks while she types it into the TRS 80 computer. Attempting to help Cindy Ross with her program, computer teacher Mrs. Louisa Davis wonders what might be wrong with it. 18 Computers

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CQNT’D. SKUTCHJMG The math pod, which housed the computer classes, had different needs for the computer. Mr. Fran Shelton who oversaw the student parking lots, decided to computerize the parking places so that students kept the same places their junior and senior year to save on paper work. Probably the biggest switch over came in the IMC (Instructional Media Center). The librarians started in the spring of ' 83 with a new li¬ brary computer system that checked out and checked in books faster than the manual way. By the time school opened, the system was just about debugged and ready for the students to use. Student ID ' s were taken up and computer bar codes placed on them. When a stu¬ dent or teacher wanted to check-out a book they just ran a light wand over the book title and your ID and you were on your way. The system enabled the li¬ brary to search, locate and print out overdue book no¬ tices faster than by hand. Mrs. Eleanor Hullinger stated, At the beginning it was a new program that hadn ' t ever been used and as the company debugged it we received an updated pro¬ gram. It took about six months to get everything in order and working correctly. Now, we can do everything about ten times faster than it was manually and it ' s a lot more accurate than going by handwritten book cards and check-out lists. The first two months of school, students had to put up with missing ceiling tiles and drilling, while mainte¬ nance men installed the new air conditioning system. The new system was controlled by a computer that moni¬ tored the atmosphere inside and outside of the school with the help of sensors in various locations. The sys¬ tem turned everything on 20 Computers Mr. Milton Aust fine tunes the con¬ trols of a new air-conditioning sys¬ tem, making sure that the tempera¬ ture is |ust right for everyone to keep their cool. Reading over his computer pro¬ gram, U. S. History teacher Mickey Hickman checks to see if his presi¬ dent program is written correctly. and off before and after school to help save an esti¬ mated $30,000 a year. The vocational depart¬ ment kept up to date and computers popped up ev¬ erywhere, from the printing department to the auto-me- chanics department. There were computers for type setting, graphics, word pro¬ cessing, and analyzing a car. The yearbook staff comput¬ erized their index and also used the computer to set copy to save on paper. One thing was for sure, computers were here to stay and whether they were used for business or fun they were changing our everyday lives.