MY DIGITAL TIMELINE: Learning by stealth from a pocket calculator

“When you grow up and leave school,” my headteacher Mr Stanley told me as a nine-year-old, “you’ll be using computers and you’ll have to learn how to write code.”

This was 1981. This was Leasowes Junior School, Stafford. Not Palo Alto, California. Of course he was half right but he did show me for the first time the amazing possibility computers have.

How did he do it? He showed me how to make my name march across a TV screen by writing a computer programme. My mate Nigel Adams was in the same class (he’s extreme right in the back row of this picture. I’m two to his left). He has gone onto do great things with computers in Queensland. I never wrote code again. But Mr Stanley was bang on about using computers every day at work.

A while back I heard this inspirational teacher still teaches at the school as a volunteer. Remembering his prophetic words I found myself idly tracing my life’s digital timeline. I found I could largely measure my life not in coffee spoons but the technology and the computer games and the people I played them with. That surprised me. I’m not a geek. I know them but I’m not really one.

Looking back pretty much every year I could recall something that caught my imagination. Looking at the list I’m struck by two things. The amount of games I played and the people I played them with.

My son is seven and has a laptop. I was 33 before this happens.

My learning curve started with a pocket calculator. It’s still going on.

Why is messing about important?

Because looking back the things I’ve played at and messed about with helped me learn. And what other way are Carlisle Utd going to win back-to-back European Cups?

‘Playing is learning by stealth’ is a line from the Media Snackers book ‘Zen At The Heart of Social Media.’  I rather like that.

Here’s how I learned by stealth.

16 dates from my digital timeline

1980 – Learn how to write SHELL OIL on a pocket calculator.

1981 – Nigel Adams gets a ZX 81. Mr Stanley tells us we’ll all need computers and we’ll all need to code.

1983 – Start Walton High School in Stafford. We have 10 computers amongst 900 pupils.

1986 – Play lots of Gauntlet on the BBC Micro with Mark Alden, David Bell and Ali MacCulloch.

1990 – Start University. Play lots of Kick Off 2 on the Amiga.

1994 – Play LOTS of Sega golf against Steven Pink.

1996 – Use a computer at my first journalism job.

1997 – Get a mobile phone free with something.

1999 – E-mail arrives at the Express & Star. At one screen out of 14.

2001 – Get the internet at work. Discover the Oatcake messageboard. A forum for Stoke City supporters.

2004 – Get my first computer. And the internet.

2005 – Goodbye wife. I’m playing Champ Manager for three months to lead Carlisle United to back-to-back European Cups.

2008 – Discover the social web. Join Twitter. 

2009 – Go to localgovcamp in Birmingham. It changes how I think and do. Start blogging.

2010 – Help arrange a digital unconference. Do interesting things using the internet to communicate with people to explain, listen and learn.

2011 – Do interesting things to make local government communicate better using the web. Buy my son a laptop. Son beats me at Skylanders battle mode on the Wii. Feel a bit proud.

Creative commons

Pocket calculator http://www.flickr.com/photos/boazarad/5417411624/sizes/l/in/photostream/