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Believe it or not when the School opened there were no computers available for the students. ICT was just a dream.
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Important historical and local events over the life of West Kirby Grammar school to the backdrop of ICT developments.
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West Kirby staff and students put on a production of twelfth night.
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One of the earliest known picture of the staff of West Kirby High School for girls c.1920
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"Who invented the computer?" is not a question with a simple answer. The real answer is that many inventors contributed to the history of computers and that a computer is a complex piece of machinery made up of many parts, each of which can be considered a separate invention.
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Earliest know photo of school trip to Wembley.
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Miss Layne became headmistress in January, 1930, following Miss Wallis’s retirement. As headmistress of the County High School, as it was then known, Miss Layne is remembered by staff and girls for her quiet dignity, humour, and ready sympathy. She could enter into activities at a Guide camp with as much zest as her pupils, yet she could be a stern disciplinarian when the occasion arose. She was held in high regard by all who knew her. Miss Layne left West Kirby in June, 1940.
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Mrs. Layne composes school song
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First freely programmable computer.
1935-1938: Konrad Zuse builds Z1, world's first program-controlled computer. Despite certain mechanical engineering problems it had all the basic ingredients of modern machines, using the binary system and today's standard separation of storage and control. Zuse's 1936 patent application (Z23139/GMD Nr. 005/021) also suggests a von Neumann architecture (re-invented in 1945) with program and data modifiable in storage. -
Mrs Furniss one of the founders of the OGA was a govenor of the school for nearly half a century.
Chair of Govenors 1965-1974 & 1982-2001
Founder of the old Girls' Association 1937 -
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1941: Zuse completes Z3, world's first fully functional programmable computer.
1945: Zuse describes Plankalkuel, world's first higher-level programming language, containing many standard features of today's programming languages. FORTRAN came almost a decade later. Zuse also used Plankalkuel to design world's first chess program.
1946: Zuse founds world's first computer startup company: the Zuse-Ingenieurbüro Hopferau. Venture capital raised through ETH Zürich and an IBM option on Zuse's p -
New building extension started 7 form rooms, assembly hall and gym (small hall) and library started in 1939 finished in 1941 and opened and dedicated July 22 1942.
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John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain, were all scientists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. They were researching the behavior of germanium crystals as semi-conductors in an attempt to replace vacuum tubes as mechanical relays in telecommunications.
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Morgan Sparks American scientist and engineer who helped develop the microwatt bipolar junction transistor in 1951, which was a critical step in making transistors usable for every-day electronics.
Below Modern transistors much smaller in size and much more powerful. A transistor is basically a switch as indeed is all a computer is … just lots (by lots I mean billions) -
By 1957 the number in the school was over 600. The roof of the single story was torn off and an upper floor came into exisitenceThe original gym bercame a physics lab. A new canteen , a commercialbuilding for typwriting, and a good looking wooden building (a new form room) where the hockey field used to be.
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John Backus & IBM FORTRAN was the first high-level language, using the first compiler ever developed. Prior to the development of FORTRAN computer programmers were required to program in machine/assembly code, which was an extremely difficult and time consuming task, not to mention the dreadful chore of debugging the code. The objective during it's design was to create a programming language that would be: simple to learn, suitable for a wide variety of applications, machine independent.
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The integrated circuit allowed many transistors (switches) on a single chip . The first ICC was patented by Jack Kilby (Texas Instruments) Robert Noyce (Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation). After many years of legal battle they decided to share the patents for a trillion dollar market. "What we didn't realize then was that the integrated circuit would reduce the cost of electronic functions by a factor of a million to one, nothing had ever done that for anything before" - Jack Kilby
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West Kirby celebrate 50 years of excellent education.
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In 1964, the first prototype computer mouse was made to use with a graphical user interface (GUI), 'windows'. Engelbart received a patent for the wooden shell with two metal wheels. It was nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end," His version of windows was not considered patentable (no software patents were issued at that time).
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Miss Keay (left) was head for the majority of this time with Mrs Rowland (right) stepping in as caretaker head for a couple of terms in 1977-8.
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ARPAnet
The original Internet. -
Intel 1103 Computer Memory
The world's first available dynamic RAM chip. -
Alan Shugart &IBMThe "Floppy" Disk Nicknamed the "Floppy" for its flexibility.
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The first hand-held mobile phone was demonstrated by John F. Mitchell and Dr Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing around 2.2 pounds (1 kg). In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first to be commercially available. From 1990 to 2011, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew from 12.4 million to over 6 billion, penetrating about 87% of the global population and reaching the bottom of the economic pyramid.
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Robert Metcalfe & Xerox
The Ethernet Computer Networking -
WKGS Celebrates 60 years of excellent education
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Paul Allen and Bill Gates established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as the CEO. Allen came up with the original name of "Micro-Soft," the combination of the words microcomputer and software.
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Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair & IBM 5100 Computers
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On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple Computer. Wozniak quit his job at Hewlett-Packard and became the vice president in charge of research and development at Apple. Wozniak's first personal computer, the Apple I, was similar to the Altair 8800, the first commercially available microcomputer, except it had no provision for internal expansion cards. With the addition of expansion cards, the Altair could be attached to a computer terminal and could be programmed in BASIC.
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Commodore Pet Computers
More first consumer computers. -
Dan Bricklin & Bob FrankstonVisiCalc Spreadsheet Software Any product that pays for itself in two weeks is a surefire winner.
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Mrs Dorothy Cheesley pictured’receiving farewell gifts from deputy Headteachers,Miss Rosemary Wood (left) and Miss Barbara Waddington.
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Seymour Rubenstein & Rob BarnabyWordStar Software Word Processors.
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1981 when Sinclair produced the Sinclair ZX81 - a tiny machine which connected to a TV and cost just under £70, DA Haynes persuaded the Head to purchase one for “evaluation”. We had great fun although the machine was very temperamental - one wobble and your program was lost.
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WKGS purchased a massive, heavy box called a Research Machines 380Z with a built in disc drive (5¼ inch discs and really floppy). Mr. DA Haynes & Mrs D Morley began teaching “O” Level Computer Studies. The 380Z was fine for demonstrating the principles, but one machine for 2 classes, each of 20 or so students, was clearly a drawback.
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The real start of Information Technology in the school was the introduction of the BBC Microcomputer (Acorn Computers Model B). They cost around £400 each (about £1200 in today’s money) and we had a whole room of these machines installed in the mid-1980s. Initially these stored data on a cassette tape so we had 20 or so very temperamental cassette players and delightful monitors which could display all 8 colours the computer could produce.
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Cassette storage was superseded by floppy disc drives (still 5¼ inch) and later by all the machines being connected to a central file server (SJ Research Econet) which allowed users to store their data on a central server and have one printer for the entire room. It was beginning to look more like the situation we now find in the school.
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In 1990, Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office. The software bundled separate office productivity applications, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. On May 22 Microsoft launched Windows 3.0 with a streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor. Both Office and Windows became dominant in their respective areas.
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Tablet computers appeared in Arthur C. Clarke's NewsPad, in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and devices depicted in Gene Roddenberry 1966 Star Trek series, all helped to promote the concept to a wider audience.
In 1994 the EU initiated the 'OMI-NewsPAD' project inspired by Clarke and Kubrick's work. Acorn Computers developed and delivered an ARM-based touch screen tablet, branded the NewsPad. The device was used at the Barcelona trial until 1997 -
Following Bill Gates's internal "Internet Tidal Wave memo" on May 26, 1995, Microsoft began to redefine its offerings and expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web. The company released Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, featuring pre-emptive multitasking, a completely new user interface with a novel start button. Windows 95 came bundled with the online service MSN, and for OEMs Internet Explorer, a web browser.
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Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed one billion for the first time. In January 2013, Google announced it had earned $50 billion in annual revenue for the year of 2012.
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Sixth Form is centered around 'Easedale' with its seminar rooms, common rooms and kitchen facilities and our new Sixth Form Centre which includes teaching rooms with interactive whiteboards, a spacious common room area and a Digital Media Suite.
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West Kirby Grammar School was awarded Specialist status as a Science College (with an equal weighting on Science and Mathematics as the lead subjects).
It is important to note that, while there is an emphasis on Science and Mathematics through the college status.
Our vision for the school as a Science College is to be a centre of excellence on the Wirral for Science and mathematics teaching and learning. The school aims to raise overall standards from an already extremely high level in Science. -
The School builds a state of the art Design & Technology block on a tennis court. Design Technology prepares pupils for life in tomorrow's world with its rapidly changing technologies.
It develops their creativity to improve the quality of life for themselves and others.
It involves developing practical skills to make products.
It makes them become discriminating users of products, considering the social, moral and environmental effects which they may have on society. -
Android was the first of today's dominating platforms for tablet computers to make it to the market. In 2008 the first plans for Android based tablet computers started appearing. The first products were released in 2009. Among them, the Archos 5 that was first released with a proprietary operating system and later (in 2009) released with Android 1.4. The first LTE Android tablet appeared late 2011
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SharePoint is a platform taht allows students and staff share documents and media with the whole world. Highlights of SharePoint... •New ways to communicate- internally & externally
•New ways to share
•New ways to learn
•New ways to manage the business
•New ways to leverage the power of technology There is no “SharePoint in a nutshell” view, because SharePoint can do so much. -
The first iPad was released on April 3, 2010.
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Microsft exchange online is made the default mail app for all students and staff. This would expand to 7GB of cloud based online storage for every student and memeber of staff through Microsoft's Skydrive.
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Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur and inventor, best known as the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields, transforming "one industry after another, from computers and smartphones to music and movies..."
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All of our IT server infrastructure was moved to a virtual environment.
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