An examination of Bank Street Writer on the Apple 2

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This time Stone Tools investigates Bank Street Writer on the Apple 2, published by Broderbund. I did VisiCalc about 6 weeks ago, and didn’t intend to revisit the Apple 2 so soon, but this software sucked me in and I had to see it through.

Personally, I was never exposed to it as a child, but I friends and colleagues have warm memories of that program. I needed to finally try it for myself and see why it wasn’t just kids who loved using it. I also put a little research into the “Bank Street” of the title, and that led into a little research on the 80s’ push for “computers in the classroom.”

Thanks always to the community for the support and reading. I know this program holds a fond spot in many hearts, so I hope I did it justice.

What is Stone Tools?
Stone Tools is a retro-enthusiast blog devoted to productivity software; no games, just work. I spend weeks learning each program and give my candid, playful read on how it was seen, how it works, and what we can learn from it today.

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Fun read. Where did you find the software? I’d like to give it a whirl in Virtual][.

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Thanks for reading and I’m glad you enjoyed it. archive.org supplied the software. Just look for “Bank Street Writer Plus”

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I remember using the original BSW when I was in Jr. high school. It felt confusing at first, because I thought it should behave more or less like a typewriter, which it didn’t. I ended up taking a computer course my school offered, where I learned how to use Apple Writer, VisiCalc, and a database program. I used BSW some after that, but I think I remember preferring Apple Writer. I used the word processor in AppleWorks when I got into high school.

Re. the value of computers in school, this became a topic I spent some time on many years ago, when I came upon a Ph.D thesis by John Maxwell, called, “Tracing the Dynabook”. He focused on the Logo programming language, and talked about why schools stopped teaching programming in the 1990s, which was something I had questions about. He talked about educational research that showed the same conclusion you talked about, though on programming: There was no measurable benefit to teaching students programming, in terms of cognitive benefits that transferred to other subjects. This result came up repeatedly, and so schools dropped their programming courses. The popularity of Logo died out with that. The thing was, as both Alan Kay and Seymour Papert lamented, schools missed the point on Logo. Schools thought it was useful, because it was an easy-to-learn programming tool that was not intimidating, that could be used to teach programming as a skill. They largely ignored the fact that Papert came up with it to teach kids math.

Maxwell insisted that there must be some academic benefit of computers, but that schools had just missed it, which I find completely plausible. While I was doing my research, I found an article by Fred D’Ignazio in Compute! Magazine that echoed the same sentiment, that sure, kids got more excited about being at school, because computers were there, but what were they really learning from them? He talked about how, like you said, teachers didn’t know much about them. So, they couldn’t provide any guidance on what activities would provide a rich learning experience. Computers were just “neat” to have around.

Alan Kay’s research at the Open Charter School in Los Angeles seemed to show a benefit, but it required a very different pedagogy than was being used in the broader school system. It wasn’t about developing programming as a skill for its own sake, but in the context of exploring ideas about math and science.

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