With classroom calculators that have more computing power than the 1960s Apollo space missions and PowerPoint presentations becoming the norm in a growing number of classes, Redwood has been showing significant progress in technology since the early ’90s, when the Computer Proficiency Test was implemented.

Classroom experiences at Redwood are vastly different from that of Redwood’s early generations. The depth of available research wasn’t limited by the number of sites let through Lightspeed, but by how many books there were in the library.
But what was Redwood like in the infancy of the “Cyber Age” of teaching technology?
While TI-84 calculators are now a staple of the math hall, they caused quite the uproar at Redwood in the mid ‘70s.
According to former Redwood math and science teacher Doug Basham, the teachers began by checking to make sure no student had a calculator during tests, and eventually had to formulate test questions for which students couldn’t simply copy numbers down from a calculator.
According to Basham, the major debate over the use of calculators in the classroom lay in the teachers’ worry that the lower-level math students would not learn how to check their work because they’d be relying too much on the technology.
Subbing in a science classroom recently, Basham said that he was astounded with the cutting-edge equipment that Redwood now has compared to when he taught science.
“The advances in science are phenomenal,” he said. “I would say that from the time when I first started, the students now are at the level they were in college in that time.”
He explained that the technology in our current science classrooms lend to students’ deeper understanding of subject matter. 
Marilee Rogers, a member of Redwood’s first graduating class and a former Redwood history and Social Issues teacher, also thinks that all of the expensive technology lends to a students’ greater accessibility of information. But Rogers emphasized that it’s not without a price.
When she was a Redwood student, Rogers explained, Xerox machines weren’t around, and if she wanted to take information home, she had to copy it down by hand. She said that this seemingly laborious act was beneficial.
“Taking notes and writing stuff down is one of the main processes of learning,” she said. “Now when you can just push a button and have it at your fingertips, you don’t really process it the same way.”
Being a teacher in the period of time bridging the introduction to more technological teaching tools like computers and email, Rogers said that she found the main issue with the advances in technology regarded a greater waste of the teachers’ time.
But regardless of teachers’ longer preparation hours, the advances in teaching technology naturally have benefits and detriments. In the science classrooms, students can perform college-level labs — unprecedented by previous Redwood generations.
Through all of the pros and cons, the big question remains as to how current and future advances in technology will affect the students of an elder Redwood.
“I can easily see in 50 years that people aren’t carrying around textbooks,” said Dave Goldsmith, the Applied Technology chairman. “I can see, for instance, that the teachers in the front of the classroom do something on the board, type something, write something, or maybe speak something and it appears right on the students’ [desks].”
Goldsmith said that Redwood’s teaching technology certainly has evolved, but nonetheless, only in its equipment.
“Sure, teachers wrote on blackboards, but lets face it, the structure’s still the same — there’s still somebody there conveying information,” he said. “I think it’s just really the tools that change.”
To Redwood students 50 years ago, our TI-84 calculators would look like alien technology. With newer and greater technologies potentially transforming the modern classroom, all we can do is hold on and wait to see what’ll look alien to us in another 50 years.