The Beginnings of Government Support for Computers in Schools – The State Computer Education Centre of Victoria in the 1980s

Part 3: FuturesInternational audienceThe 1980s saw the introduction into education of a new technology – the microcomputer – that many of us saw as an enabling technology that could offer new educational opportunities and potentially change the nature of schools. Discussion of events at this time is very much a socio-technical history of a technological innovation that involved both the computers and the people who managed them, supported them, taught with them and used them. Support structures were introduced to assist with the use of computers in schools and to provide teachers with professional development in order to understand their benefits, to evaluate software, to suggest curriculum applications and to evaluate computer systems for school use. The goal was to offer schools and teachers choice in how they handled this innovation rather than coercion in an attempt to force adoption. Due to the large number of low-cost microcomputers bursting onto the marked in the 1980s computer systems evaluation was especially important. This paper concerns the historical purpose, formation and development of the State Computer Education Centre of Victoria