Remember when . . .

I remember one of my last classes before receiving my Professional Diploma (the University of Hawaii's version of a teaching certificate) was a class in education technology. That was the spring of 1988. I barely remember any of the content (I know that I barely went to the class because I was so done by then--it was my seventh year of college), but I know the professor introduced us to the Apple IIgs.

At the time I kind of remember that there were some educational programs but for me it just seemed like a really cool machine to replace that Royal typewriter that I had lugged to college with me. Granted I did make some good beer money from typing papers for other coeds, but I was hooked, I knew then that I wanted my own computer. My girlfriend (eventually my fiancee then my wife) and I did some house-sitting back then and one of the couples we house-sat for had a Macintosh II. Whoa. That was like a $3000 computer at the time. It had the coolest NFL football game on it and I remember staying up all night playing it. After graduating and teaching for three years back on the Big Island, we moved to Utah (1991). My mom was teaching elementary school and they had a brand new lab full of Apple IIGSs' and so she bought one to have at home to learn the programs her kids in 2nd grade would be using. I created quite a few English worksheets on that one to use in my 9th grade classes, but that was it.

In my M.Ed program (1992-1994) we used the University of Utah's computer lab quite a few times and even took our comprehensive exams on a networked computer. After receiving my administrative certificate and getting my first assistant principal job, I had my own office with a MacIntosh computer and I remember producing the weekly newsletters for the staff and we even got e-mail from the district office. In 1998, with my first principal position, I purchased a Powerbook G3. I used it to work on documents, spreadsheets and played a few games on it. I still have it actually. At school we were now using e-mail regularly and the internet was predominantly a research tool.

In 1999 I purchased my first PC and we had dial-up internet access at home. In 2002 we purchased an iMac G4. The internet for me was still a search and read, copy and paste, e-mail experience. It is hard to believe that since then, just a few years actually, the internet has evolved to what it is now. Mind boggling!