I have been on a nostalgia kick lately, reminiscing about grade school. In the mid 70’s when I was in school we would take special classes with the latest “high tech” equipment. One such machine was called “systems 80”. It was a boxy unit with a screen and headphones and big gray buttons you would push to answer questions heard over the headphones. It was a great way to get out of class for an hour or so, I don’t remember learning anything.
I have been trying unsuccessfully to search the web for a picture of this machine, does anyone else remember them? How about stories of 70’s “high tech” teaching machines and systems such as film strip projectors, SRA cards, metric conversion slide rules as such.
I remember using the SRA system in grade school reading classes. I think they were very effective. I raced through the available booklets like wildfire and was disappointed that there was not another set of booklets ready and waiting for me.
A few years ago when I had a job in a high school library, the librarian and I decided to thoroughly search the storage spaces and found several hundred filmstrips and several film strip projectors, old movie reels, and a projector for that, poster sets from the 1950’s and up and “other items to numerous to mention,” as they say in the auction ads around here. I suggested the school system try to sell this stuff to collectors, but, no, after we pawed through it for a while, it all went back into storage.
Sounds like a Programmed Instruction device. It asks questions which you answer. The trick is to use questions to imply future answers, so that by reading the questions and answering you are actually learning new material rather than just showing what you already know. The skillful part, for the maker of the device, is properly writing the questions, therefore. This System 80 just sounds like a high-tech box to package those questions in. In principle, all you need is a notepad with flippable pages, and a new question on every page.
When I was a kid, World Book the encyclopedia people) had a decidedly LOW-tech version of this called the Cyclo-Teacher. We had one, since my uncle was a World Book salesman:
I LOVED SRA! Oh, my god…I think I was one of the only kids in my (very small) class who got up into the pastel colors at the top. I’m pretty sure I finished them, actually. I can still actually remember visual details of the one about the monarch butterfly…
We also had sort of a math version, which I hated.
We had an Apple IIe, which was, at the time, high-tech. All I can ever remember anyone doing on it was Oregon Trail, though.
We had that in our school. I didn’t remember what it was called. I worked my way up through the highest level of the system, so that they were forced to give me something else to read while everyone else was working on their SRA cards.
No, that is not it. The Systems 80 Machine was not an electronic computer in any way, it was kind of like a filmstrip projector with sound and a projection screen all in one unit.
SRA
We were divided into reading groups and I was in the 2nd highest level, blue I think but I would sneak the highest level green cards on the sly. Don’t tell anyone.
I remember how important I felt when I went from the piddly little ordinary “green, red, blue, yellow” colors into things like “aqua” and “rose” and “silver”!
I didn’t think that I used this system until this post. There are vague memories of some kind of color-level education material being pried loose from my long term storage.
Hey, I remember that SRA thing too. Haven’t thought about it in years. Wow. I’ll ask my SIL who’s an elementary school teacher what the current use (if any) of the program is.
I also looked on eBay for the materials, not really intending to buy any of it but just out of curiosity (though if a full late 1970s set were available for $40 or something insane I might stick in a bid). I found this listing for a full SRA set, way more than what I’d want to pay for since I’m not home-schooling my kids or anything (plus it seems to be from at least the late 1980s and thus not a nostalgia trip for me), but this part caught my eye:
This auction is for a gently used SRA READING LAB 2A in excellent shape. This is complete minus 2 of the 150 lessons that were deemed inappropriate.
What could have been “deemed inappropriate” about the 2 SRA lessons? Who did the deeming, the auction lister, the school or instructor that used the lessons, the state they were sold in, what?
I probably don’t want to know as it would just depress me.
Aside from SRA, which appears to be ubiquitous in the 60’s and 70’s, some odd “high-tech” things I recall from elementary school were the tachistoscope, and its cousin - a filmstrip projector with some sort of left-to-right traveling slot that would scan across lines of text - IIRC, both were for developing speed reading.
There was also some sort of language thing that used IBM punchcard-sized cards with magnetic stripes that were run through a slot-fed player. IIRC, the card might be labeled with “My house is blue” and the audio track would be “Mi casa es azul”
A childhood friend of mine was in town this last weekend and got lunch with me and my girlfriend. She is a couple of years younger than us. We were telling her about stuff from when we were kids and somehow the subject of SRA cards came up. None of us had thought about them for years and just a few days later it shows up on the the Dope. Funny.
I remember that aqua was the first one and it ended with silver and gold.
Add me to the list of those who remember SRA (and had forgotten about it until just now). I also remember something called RFU, which I think stood for Reading For Understanding – I think it was a similar card system, though the colors weren’t as pretty. I never had a problem reading so these card systems were a waste of time. I loved SRA and hated RFU, for reasons I don’t remember (the colors?).
For me grade school technology comprised film and filmstrip projectors, ditto fluid, and – after I moved into a better district – an automatic eraser-cleaner.
In Kindergarten, the apex of tech toys for us kiddies was the glue stick. So much more fun to use than the squeeze bottle of Elmer’s Glue. Had a neat smell, too. (Better living through chemistry!)
Ooh, and our K’en had a drawing toy that was a black board thingy with a plastic stylus/scraper used to etch the surface, revealing various colors from the base underneath. (Very popular item; the kids fought over that one.) Come to think of it, I’m still not sure how that works!
We also made plaster hand casts and molded acrylic plastic flowers, with a wire stem you’d insert into the flower before the plastic hardened. Come to think about it, I can imagine a retro-themed party of 20-or-30-something urban hipsters having some not-rated-G fun with plaster-casting. If you want your casters to be relatively well-behaved and modest in their artistic ambitions, stick with the five-year-olds!
In Grades 1-5, high tech consisted largely of endless mimeographed handouts of cheap pulp paper and barely-legible purple ink, still redolent of volatile inorganic chemicals, and educational “You Are There” films. And let’s not forget lunch-box thermoses (with the top functioning as the cup!). They kept cold stuff cool, and hot stuff warm. Amazing contraptions…
I loved the SRA reading program and I got up in those high colors (coral)?
When I was in grad school, we had a reading lab with all of those programs. Plus the technicolor World Book encyclopedias. My current institution has those as well.
When I taught about 13 years ago, SRA was still going strong. I actually taught a scripted curriculum called Direct Instruction. Lots of snapping of fingers and call and response. It actually sounded like the kids were learning! (They usually did well for a few weeks, but it became boring to them.)
Speaking of old-school high tech:
Speak 'n Spell (and the less popular siblings, Speak 'n Math and Speak 'n Read). My school had a program in which you could take it home for the weekend. BEST WEEKEND EVER.
5.25 disks, but even before those: PET computers, TRS-80s, TI-994As, Atari 400s, and VIC-20s.
Teachers talking about slide rules
LED digital watches (Ooh! We don’t have to learn to tell time anymore!)
I was in High School when I discovered that concept.
But I digress. After reading the thread I remember SRAs and Cyclo Teacher. I too fondly remember how quickly I went through them, especially some speed reading thing in SRA. I wonder if it was all a trick…
