In 1989 Barry Sutton allowed me to start as Head of a new department running computing in the School, so I left running the Physics Department in the tender & capable hands of a new teacher called Trevor Hill- of whom more elsewhere!- and shifted a motley collection of BBC & Atari machines to an unconverted Art Room in the Loveday block. It was to keep its painted floor for 8 years more...
The Archimedes again led development & we slowly built up to a stage where we had a room full by 1997, but it was never networked. All work was floppy-disk based & to print a good copy you had to save to disk & take it to the one laser-printer equipped machine. Most printing was dot-matrix with one slow printer switchable between two or three adjacent machines, File security based on floppies was a nightmare, but we tried to implement a whole-school cross-curricular use of computers and Third & Fourth forms had to fill in a log of all use of the machines.
Taunton Prep School was formed from amalgamation of TJBS & TJGS & Kindergarten, & were equppped with a more up-to-date network of Acorn machimes. They also had various BBC & Atari machines getting good use. Music were using synthesisers by now, and we were experimenting with modems & Prestel
In the early 90's CD Roms became affordable & we were one of the earliest schools using them in a big way for Careers Guidance under Ian Payne and as encyclopaedia reference in IT lessons.
On line services led to us making increasing use of modem /telephone remote access to services like UCCAS and PRESTEL & Minitel- at first at 1200/75 baud, then at the fat 2400 baud. ( In 1998 we are using megabit access rates)
By now the Office was using PC-type micros in a big way, & they were able to buy much equipment & network it.
© Taunton School IT Dep't.