I don't remember exactly how old I was, but I'm pretty sure I was in middle school at the time. I got off the bus and walked into the house and in the corner of the room, I saw a brand new Dell computer all set up. I was so excited when I heard that we also bought the dial up AOL internet.
Since the dial up tied up the phone line, me and my siblings were only allowed to go on at certain times. We were each awarded one hour of internet time per day.
I didn't really have anything in mind that as to what websites I wanted to go on. AOL instant messenger and email seemed to be the coolest thing at the time.
The main thing I used it for was to send electronic greeting cards to my Grandma, who was at work. Everyone used it for a different reason, but it was rarely used for homework purposes.
After that, computers and the internet became more and more important each year, and they continue to do so.
Once I graduated from high school in 2006, I bought myself my own laptop and that's when I really started seeing what the internet could do.
I began playing around with a website I made, just seeing how nice I could make it look. Since then, I have upgraded it, and made it a much more professional looking site. It's a Buffalo Sabres website that covers the team, and I have fun with it.
At sabreshockeycentral.com, it's a place where I can write articles and build up a following. Since I am going to school for journalism, the website has already helped me get a few jobs. I've never taken a class that taught me about code or websites.
Over the past few years, I've taught myself what to do to improve the site and I've even learned some code. I know some basic PHP, CSS, and HTML just by watching what I am doing in the visual editor.
Wordpress has come up with a simple way to publish and easy to get used to.
It's amazing how important and useful the internet has become for me, and how much information is actually out in the cyber world.
Over the last couple of years, I have used social media to build up and promote my site. Facebook and Twitter have been a huge help and I never realized how useful they could becoming in promoting my own site.
The technological advances in general, have amazed me since I was a little kid. I remember going to my Grandma's and playing Oregon Trail or the pinball game that was on a CD-ROM.
Now, I use the internet on a daily basis. With the IPhone, I have internet wherever I go and can get the latest news as soon as it is posted. It's amazing and I didn't think it would impact my life in so many different ways.
Sharing a computer with a dial up connection between two other siblings is definitely tough, we used to try to kick each other off the computer or argue for more time. I thought it was funny AOL tried to have kids use it for homework purposes, I don't remember ever attempting to use the homework help feature. That's great you already know how to make a website, I am sure that makes you much more marketable in the professional world. It's important that company's utilize social media sites like you have, what a great tool to get more traffic onto your page. Hopefully your site continues to grow with the improvement in technology
ReplyDeleteI liked your blog because it was entertaining reading it made me I remember when I had dial up and it was a pain sharing with my family.
ReplyDeleteI could talk about the internet and online media as a tool for journalism all day long. Congrats on your success with your web site. Isn't it astounding how you can use things like facebook and twitter to promote yourself? It really is an incredibly efficient way of communicating with the masses, probably the most efficient way we have since a large portion of the population have regular internet access and it's great that students can use it to their advantage.
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