College/school days without a computer:written on behalf of a student who had no computer in his early college years

Now.O now I am learning new stuff on the internet.And this contrasting picture takes me back to my student days when there was only the name of the computer on the far off horizons.We did not know what we were missing.Now I do.And it makes me think, what if I were back to my interscience days, and my College was fully computerized and well connected with the internet?Do I know what would I have liked then?Yes I think so.
I know that I would have liked my lessons augmented and made very interesting with multi media projection on screen.History, social studies, English and Urdu textbooks;maths made easy, maths made challenging;then of course science!That is simply beautiful through the computer.And things like Physio, physics laws, circuits, how machines work, chemical experiments;everything would have had my eyes, ears and attention glued to the screen!If I were the monitor of the class I would have used my influence to have the last hour,fixed for doing assignments on one’ s class computer.
Then when, I went home I would have liked to be readily connected still, to the school/ college computer systems .At home, I would check my homework and notes with the teacher’ s notes online, and check the typos and missing words.I would check all the diagrams and labelling in all the subjects and read the day’s work, and prepare for the next day’s lesson all prim.Of course by reading from the correct prescribed textbook online.
Unlike my poor photocopied version, obtained because no textbook was available(out of s t o c k,wait- mind you- in turn, till available) or in the meantime get a ‘flea bitten one secondhand."”
After that I would go to campus gossip online.And with clever privacy settings join my group, for a day’ s gossip session;discussing home work assignments; complaining” why did you do so well in tests, why did I not, when we had studied the same thing together”.School programs and outside programs, and much more.Even show the fresh cartoons drawn during class today, and funny comments written;even though the lessons were not so boring with the pc around.
Then I am sure a few teachers will be around who encourage students to ask questions online, regarding their classwork,and so we would have a good enlightening discussion and problem solving time with them online.They could also advise the students taking part in the annual drama;say how to correctly deliver their lines.
I would really like to see historical movies(from school video library) and also google’ s live view of the oceans and the giants of the deep.I would like to see videos of sports events, of our school team selected for out of station competitions;also if I could not go on a college excursion trip, I would love to see those action pictures via the school/college network.
Of course I know that the dictating of notes to a class is outdated in a modern fully computer equipped class in this millenium;but I was talking of the days when classes were doing without computers; and how computer assisted learning could have overcome the deficiences as they existed.
There is much more, I could go on and on, but before I get reduced to a ‘Rose is rose (cartoon series) dimunitive retrogression;I better come back and be alive to the fact that I do have a pc and I can start dreaming of what I want to do on the internet now and today,unlike the public sector schools in Pakistan many of which do not even have a single computer to their credit.Also the many slum areas where NGOs want to teach, there are bright children who want to learn, but there is no place available and there is a shortage of teachers.Here i think mobiles (vans) equipped with computers and few teachers could make the rounds of each small township and teach a handful of kids daily.