Recent trends in the use of microcomputers in geography classrooms

Abstract

In July 1986 a questionnaire on computer usage in secondary school geography classrooms was circulated on behalf of the Board of Geography Teachers of the New Zealand Geographical Society. It was sent out to all the country's secondary and area schools, some 380 altogether. The objective was to identify general trends and important concerns in the use of computers in school geography. In all, some 61 responses (compared with 186 The for Jaspers [1983]) were received. regional distribution of the responses is shown in Table 1, while Table 2 summarises the types of schools responding to the questionnaire. The spatial spread and varied nature of responding schools suggests that findings from the sample are likely to be reflective of the role of microcomputers in geographic education in 1986. All 61 schools possessed at least one machine. Fifty had at least six available, the median being 11 per school (Table 3). In 1982 14 of the 186 schools did not own a computer, 49 had only one machine and a mere 10 had 10 or more machines, the median being three. Apple IIs, mainly the Model IIe, are still the most common machine, but the versatile, more attractive BBC has quickly displaced the TRS 80 in second place (Table 4). Regrettably information was not sought on the introduction of networks, an oversight which should be 79707 rectified when the next survey is made. least 60 of the 61 schools now use disk drives and 58 have printers. This should greatly facilitate the use of photocopied 'print-out' materials. No respondent mentioned ownership At of or access to the quite-recently introduced Apple Macintosh.