[mproud]

As a kid who grew up in the public schools in Minnesota, MECC was amazing, and Apple II’s were everywhere. Each classroom had a computer, and our school had an entire computer lab. We had access to every piece of MECC software — history, math, spelling, social studies, and many other titles like Print Shop. All of the software was very, very good.

There are a few stories about Oregon Trail, one of the most popular games that was originally written by a few Carleton students for the public schools on older computer hardware that was then rewritten for the Apple II. (It’s so iconic, Xennials in America are sometimes nicknamed the “Oregon Trail Generation” because of how pervasive the game was in schools to help teach about the westward migration in the mid-19th century.) Supposedly, Apple put in a bid at the last minute with the state and won the school contract, and they had a virtual monopoly in the public schools in Minnesota.

[sleepybrett]

Hell I grew up in WA and maybe we had a similar program because every elementary classroom had at least one //e full time, several more in the library and like a dozen on carts that they could roll into any classroom. I didn't see any other type of computer in any of my schools until high school where we had a lab of PCs for 'business' a lab of apple //gs' for programming classes (pascal), and several macs in the graphics arts lab for doing layout on.

I remember playing oregon trail while studying the westward migration, I remember sitting in the classroom during lunch fiddling with turtle graphics. Either the district or the school had a turtle robot that you could hook up via serial and it would drive around on a piece of butcher paper on the floor and draw with a sharpie.

[homarp]

A lot of MECC disk images are available on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22mecc%22

[jwstarr]

> Supposedly, Apple put in a bid at the last minute with the state and won the school contract, and they had a virtual monopoly in the public schools in Minnesota.

Dale LaFrenz, who was helping administer MECC, states [1] that Apple won the bid because they filed the only compliant bid. The board was leaning towards TRS-80, but Radio Shack didn't want to bother with the state's bureaucratic bid process.

[1] https://conservancy.umn.edu/items/7f6d8e9e-0560-43e0-9050-3a...

[dhosek]

MECC software was ubiquitous outside Minnesota as well. I remember it showing up in my Illinois grade school in 1981–2.