In 1984, my elementary school was one of just a few in the nation that was selected to participate in a program called the Apple Classroom of Tomorrow, a.k.a ACOT.

ACOT was an experimental program initiated by Apple to put an Apple //e computer on every desk in elementary classrooms, with one of the first being in Blue Earth, Minnesota.

We even started the school year two weeks earlier than everyone else so we could learn keyboarding.  We spent two hot weeks at the end of our summer vacation finding the little raised dots on the “F” and “J” keys defining the home-row and pounding away on a game called Tut’s Typer. 

When school officially started, we used the computers for everything.  Keep in mind this was in the mid-80s.  There were no electronic textbooks, web sites, or any of the things kids in school today are doing with 1-to-1 technology initiatives where every student gets a “personal learning device”. 

We used early “office” applications like AppleWorks which had a word processor, spreadsheet and database program.  As a fourth grader, I had no idea what any of that meant.

AppleWorks even included a clipboard (cut/copy/paste) and spell checker.  These were really incredible features in 1984!

We wrote many papers using the word processor and even worked with a few basic spreadsheets and database files.  We did some “programming” using the LOGO turtle, typing commands to make the turtle move across the screen and create drawings.

This is also where we taught ourselves what real programming – and hacking was all about, but that’s a story for another post.

In addition to the computers for every student, there were many other differences in our classroom that year.

Along with our main teacher, we had a full time assistant teacher in the room at all times.  Again, this may not be all that unusual these days, but in 1984 this was something new.

There was a tech office staffed by a “computer guy”, although I think his title was probably consultant at that time.  And, there was a person whose job, I believe, was to act as a sort of liaison to the Apple corporate office to keep them posted on how the experiment was going. 

Even though it was so long ago, I still remember these people well.  I remember being in that tech office and seeing Jay Koutavas’s desk covered with computers with the covers off and all the things he had plugged into them.  It looked awesome.  I remember he was a cool guy, but we could make him mad when he’d find our pirated software disks. I connected with Jay on LinkedIn a few years ago and hope we can maybe meet in person again someday.

The other person I remember was Susan Solie, she was the “liaison” to Apple.  I haven’t been able to locate her and don’t know where she went after the ACOT program, but I’ll never forget her telling us that because we were in this program there would be jobs waiting for us if we wanted them at Apple headquarters in Cupertino when we graduated from college.  She was also the first one to tell me that “the job you’ll have when you graduate probably doesn’t even exist yet”.

Another big difference in our classroom was the constant stream of visitors.  Since this was such a new and novel idea, we had people from all over visiting to see what we were up to.  I remember it being almost a weekly routine, like having to clean the house before company comes over.  We had the Governor of Minnesota, US Senators, US Congressmen and many others throughout the year.

A picture of me with US Senator Dave Durenberger hangs in my home office, near my still-functioning Apple //e computer.

The kids in the classroom moved on, as a cohort, to a similar classroom in fifth grade.  It was different room, because they started a new crop of fourth graders in our old room.  This year in addition to the Apple //e on our desks, we were each given an Apple //c to take home and use for homework throughout the year.

The balloon deflated in sixth grade as we were put back in the general population and back in regular classrooms with regular desks doing most of our work with paper and pencil.  There were computer labs popping up in the school and classes would us them from time to time, but it was not the same as having one on your desk all day.

Around 2010 I made a few random calls into the Apple office in Cupertino.  I was going to be out in that area for a work trip and was looking for a way I might be able to get in the door to see what the place was like.  I did some digging and found a phone number for a manager in their education department.  When I finally got a call back, she said they don’t really talk about ACOT any more, and everything to do with it now falls under a guy who worked out of his house in Texas. 

For me, the ACOT experience was a memorable one and was really the start of the IT journey that I’m still on today.