Students in the U.S. probably take it for granted that there are computers in each classroom, if not a computing device assigned to each student. That wasn’t always the case.
I attended a different elementary school in the fifth grade, so I am unsure if some district-wide change happened over the summer, or if it had more to do with the school and/or class I was in. Nevertheless, on the first day of fifth grade, I walked into class and saw them: not one or two, but three computers IN the back of the classroom!
The computers in our classroom were an Apple IIe, an Apple IIgs, and a Macintosh LC. They were arranged as if someone purposefully put them in chronological order.
I was immediately drawn to the Macintosh, though I'm not sure why. Perhaps because it was the newest of the three. Perhaps because the fancy GUI made it look hi-tech.
Perhaps it was just because you didn't need a floppy to run the installed software, which meant the floppy drive couldn't make loud, evil grinding noises.
I was also drawn to the Apple IIgs, because it was familiar and, like the LC, had a color monitor.
The Apple IIe wasn't so attractive. It looked old. It had a monochrome screen. It looked like it could do less than the Apple IIgs. But it was easier to get time to use it. Perhaps that's because all of the aforementioned reasons made it less attractive to most everyone else.
Yes, I realize that an Apple IIgs is more capable than an Apple IIe. But the school system had not licensed software capable of using its advanced features, at least not for the elementary school classroom.
But after one fortuitous trip to the public library, my opinions on the three computers in my classroom changed...