We just started back to school on Tuesday. We watched the code.org video and had a class discussion about changes brought by computer science.
The fascinating thing is this group of teens is the last to remember BEFORE the internet.
Seriously, find a teenager and ask if they remember the first time they went online. My own 5th and 7th graders can't, the Internet has just always been there. My students, just a few years older can remember a before and after.
I am really intrigued by this. Such an odd moment.
So I am curious, when did you first go online?
Yes, truly odd. I hadn't thought of it in these terms before.
ReplyDeleteI remember overhearing some girls talking about typing to strangers in Australia when I was about 14. I had no idea what they were talking about. A few days later, my Math teacher had me in for a some remedial class time and let me use her computer to work out some problems. When her back was turned, I hopped onto AOL and started chatting with a stranger. It was surreal! This was my first jump into the world of the internet and social media.
What was yours?
I had a friend in high school whose father worked at NASA (literally a rocket scientist). They had a subscription to Prodigy. This was back in 1989. I also remember typing back and forth with someone - it was amazing to be talking to someone we'd never seen.
ReplyDeleteSo strange to think that you used to have to visit the Internet - that it was an event to go online.
My first Internet connection was somewhat surreptitious. I was a latchkey kid during the summers, and between the my 9th and 10th grade years (or maybe it was 10th and 11th, I'm a little hazy). A friend of mine and I ran a phone cable across the living room from the telephone jack in the kitchen and plugged it into the computer's modem. We then dialed into a FreedomNet BBS, which gave us access to a free Internet email account, and the ability to do Gopher searches. I was too nervous to try Prodigy, because the computer was supposed to be off limits when my parents weren't home, they didn't know that I'd cracked the password protection they set up to keep me from doing as I pleased, and I didn't have access to a credit card to create an account.
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