The magazine “Computer for you” is the first IT/Technology/Computer magazine in Bulgaria and the other countries of Eastern Europe at the time. It was created in 1984, when the country was still under the long and crippling rule of the communist party and a socialist satellite state of the Soviet Union.

The magazine is a kind of a computer encyclopedia for its time and enjoyed enormous authority and popularity in times when there was a lack of information and books on technological topics. The first time I heard of the magazine was when I was still in university, studying for my Computer Science bachelor’s degree. One of the professors showed it to us. I fell in love with the nostalgic graphics, the pompous and turgid language it was written in, the tips and tricks and tiny bits of BASIC code that were presented on its pages, the hot topics of newly discovered viruses and freshly released console and 8 bit games. I printed some of the issues that were uploaded online for my personal collection. I even went on and bought some actual vintage issues of the magazine from various online sellers (gooooosh, was that expensive…).

As an oldschool tech enthusiast (it’s one of my many hobbies, as you already know) I wanted my students to dive in and understand the bygone era of the first computers, viruses, programs, I wanted them to be as amazed and astonished as I was when I first discovered the magazine. That’s exactly why I spent a couple of hours reading through some issues that I had, selecting pages with topics and pictures that my students would understand. I printed some of those pages and I created the diy poster you can see on the photos below. I just taped the pages together and then I put the whole poster on the wall in my computer lab at school.

The effect of my little experiment was amazing! The kids were very impressed, some even couldn’t believe that the magazine is as old as their parents. Some of the students spent many breaks between lessons begging me to come to the computer lab to read some of the pages on the wall. Others started questioning me and opening topics that led to whole discussions during and between lessons. It was great!

I want this post to act as an inspiration for all of you teachers out there. It doesn’t need to be oldschool technology or stuff from the far past or history. Just choose a topic you are very passionate about and present it in some way to your students. I’m sure they’ll love it and really appreciate your effort. There’s also tons of other oldschool tech/computer magazines from other countries that you can research and use, if you want to reenact my whole project idea. I do understand that if you are not from Eastern Europe, the “Computer for you” magazine will not be as interesting to you or to your students as it is to me and mine (and it’s all written in Bulgarian). I’m sure there’s lots of US magazines from those times, after all, the most famous computer from those times is the American Apple II 😊

I hope I inspired you, and I hope my post was interesting to you.

Happy teaching!