Computer History for Ann Perry - 510 W1

So I was enrolled in a Catholic grade school in Milwaukee and there was a special permission slip that went home. For a small fee (I don't remember what it was...) students could sign up to participate in computer training. It was the early 1980's and once a week a semi trailer would be parked next to the school and about 15 of us would walk up the makeshift stairs and thus I entered a computer lab for the very first time. I'm guessing that the computers were early Apples and I spent plenty of time with basic creating blocks of color that spelled out my name. Once we had that down, our final project was to plan and program a full screen picture. We had paper similar to graph paper that we used to do our planning and from there we spent our time on the trailer writing the script that would result in our picture. If I'm sounding vague it's because I really don't recall the details all that well nor do I know the correct terms.
I do however recall our first computer in the house. My mother was a teacher and got a special school deal on a home purchase. It was an Apple II GS with a dot matrix printer. I primarily used it for school work and word processing and it was the computer that went to college with me. I still have pieces and assignments in some of my files that were printed on that special track-edged paper and I remember having to print before quiet hours in the dorms because of the racket created when printing.
The thing that amazed me most about using a computer was the ability to change and edit on the screen without having to worry. When using a typewriter, making a spelling mistake was a huge problem, with the little slips of paper (correctype?), backing up a space, finding a place on the correcting paper that wasn't used, striking the same letter again to get it to erase..... at that point White Out was a big technological advance. And remember having to spool the ribbon when the typing started to fade? Computing for me in high school involved a different freedom as I didn't worry about all of those details - but I was still afraid of making a mistake. I thought I might break the computer!