Educational software to reach $8700M by 1990

The education software market will reach $8700M by 1990, according to a report by Strategic Inc. The educa- tion market is defined in the report to include schools and colleges, industrial and business training and individual study. The report says that virtually every subject commonly taught is a candidate for computer assistance.

This is all coming about through the combination of rapidly advancing technologies, including personal com- puters, software, local area networks and video discs. Educational soft- ware, now available on low cost time- sharing systems such as Source and MicroNET, is expected to play a significant role in the interactive videotex now in development. Manu- facturers of personal computers and videodisc players, software houses, educational publishers and universities are joining in the development of new systems and programs that many believe will mark the most significant change in educational practice since the first printed text.

More than one quarter of US public schools are today using per-

sonal computers regularly in instruc- tion. Engineering students, who five years ago would have bought pro- grammable calculators, are now using personal computers to assist them in their studies. Carnegie-Mellon Univer- sity has announced its plan to give every entering freshman, no matter what his or her major, a personal computer for use in all courses.

Book-size computer

Xerox has discussed its long-range plan to create a computer - the size of a book with high resolution display and more mass storage than an individual can today envision filling. 'While it may require another ten years to realize the hardware goals of this project, the software is already well-developed,' according to Strategic's Director of Personal Computer Research, Mr Cherlin, who notes that, 'Xerox has released the specifications of its Smalltalk system to other companies that have expressed enthusiastic interests in turning it into a commer- cially available product'.

The US training market, now estP

High/ low level PLZ on the Z8000

PLZ, Zilog's high/low level combina- tion language is now available for the Z8000 16-bit microcomputer family under the type number Z8000 PLZ/ ASM. The earlier version of PLZ for the Z80 has achieved great popularity amongst programmers serving a wide range of disciplines, because it allows high-level constructs to be freely mixed with assembly language mne- monics. In this way tight and efficient program code can be produced.

The high level facilities available in PLZ include complex array and data declarations as well as procedures (subroutines), such as DO loops, IF . . . T H E N . . . ELSE, REPEAT (from start of loop) and EXIT (from loop). Execution of any of the above does not change the value of any of the CPU registers, leaving the program-

mer in full control of the situation. Another command, SELECT, allows one of several different groups of instructions to be executed depending on the value of the CPU register. With PLZ, procedures and symbol references can be declared as external or global.

A pilot production run of the powerful multiuser Z-LAB UNIX-based development system has been success- fully completed and systems have been delivered to Zilog sales offices through- out the world. This initial batch will be used for internal staff training and for sales demonstration. It was originally planned that the first cus- tomer deliveries would take place at the end of the year when the main production is under way. At the present time it looks as if this target will be met.

mated at $6000M a year, is showing the fastest growth in computerized instruction. GeneraJ Motors, for example, is now training all of its mechanics with videodiscs, and IBM now offers courses on interactive videodisc to buyers of certain com- puters to train programmers. The military, another large scale user of computer-aided instruction and inter- active videodisc, has reported that the Army is even modifying the popular arcade game Combat Zone to train tank gunners. In the home market, there ar e programs available for learning foreign languages, typing, various elementary school topics, as well as the standard videodiscs for cooking, and the like.

Videotex in Europe and USA

Trials of videotex services in Britain, Europe and USA have made clear the considerable demand for educational materials, with some 40 per cent of videotex trial users voicing their demand. Today, 10 per cent of the actual usage on various experimental systems already involves educational materials. In addition to preprogrammed courses, textbooks in mathematics and engineering are being written in APL which can double as a notation for mathematics. With such texts, every statement can be entered directly on a computer and then executed.

At still another level, the LOGO language (developed at MIT) is design- ed to be usable by elementary school children. The premise underlying LOGO, that children should learn by instructing the computer instead of having the computer teach them, is an astonishing step forward, accord- ing to Strategic's Director of US Client Services, Mr Hoye. Since a person's preferences and loyalties are largely determined by the first system he or she uses, it is more important than ever for all computer companies, not just those presently manufacturing personal computers, to evaluate this critical market of first-time computer users. (Strategic, Inc., 4320 Stevens Creek Bird, Suite 215, San Jose, CA 95129, USA. Tel: (408) 2438121)

494 microprocessors and microsystems