I got my first computer around the time that N1S, who is now 23, was about two years old. Oh, I had wanted one for a long time before that, but they were really pricey back then, and we just couldn't see spending the money. Besides, back then, pretty much all you could do with them was word processing and databases- unless of course you were a more skilled user. I was not.

There were no computers at Holmes High School when I graduated- not even in the office. They didn't exist. They had them in some departments at SWTSU, but I never came in contact with one. Even registration was done by hand with cards and forms you filled out and collected stickers on. Those stickers must have been printed somehow, but I wasn't privy to the behind the scenes happenings.

The second year that I was teaching in Waelder, the school put three Apple II computers in the counselors office. They sat there for a few weeks until the principal, social studies teacher, and I decided to play around with them. We didn't have any software at all. Nothing. All we had was the Apple operating system. I bought a book in San Antonio that had some programs in that you could type in and make it do things. I remember that we had a good time doing it, but don't remember anything else about it.

When I went to Edgewood, they had some Apple IIe computers for special education. We had some software on those big old floppy disks that someone had copied for us. There were no instructions, and, since there was no hard drive to speak of, you had to load the software everytime you used it, pull the disk out, and put another one in to record your data. I think one of the programs was called Apple Works, but I wouldn't swear on it. I remember doing a database of our materials and typing my papers for my OLLU master's program on it.

I kind of got more interested when Edgewood hired Mark Gabehart as technology director. He started pushing the concept of educational technology, and I took workshops and embracd using computers with kids. The computers were now Macintoshes of some kind and were capable of a lot more interesting things such as Hyperstudio.

Somewhere during this time, I reached the end of the road for my master's. I needed one more class. The only one I could take was called Children of Divorce. I didn't want to take that, so I met with the Dean to get permission for an independent study. She was thrilled to give me permission. She had a hidden agenda. She asked me to study what schools were doing with technology, how they trained and supported them, and how universities could prepare future teachers to meet the technologies in the schools. My paper was very good, if I may say so myself. Dr. Alexander said, "With just a little work, you could turn this into a master's thesis." I believed her. Trust me, it was more than a little work.

I decided that, if I were going to develop a technology training plan for OLLU education majors, I needed to learn as much as I could about educational technology. I signed up for everything and anything technology related at Region 20. One of the classes was for Tenet. It was a state provided Internet network that most of us had never even heard of. The training I attended was held in NISD. When I got there, I was told to sit at a computer with a modem. I had no idea what that meant. I just stood there for awhile until I figured out that some computers had little boxes next to them, and people were sitting at them.

What happened in that training blew my mind! I was sending messages to Laurie Stevens, a friend of mine and fellow Loma Park teacher, over the network! Yes, she was sitting two feet away from me, but I was still amazed. Then the instructor showed us how to see news feeds. The Olympics were going on across the world. I was seeing all the news about them hours before it would ever be on TV in San Antonio. I was thrilled by everything I was exposed to that day.

I went home and announced to Rachel that I was buying a computer. Within a week, she was tired of hearing me nagging and told me to go get one. I don't remember much about it. I know it had the MSDos operating system, a tiny hard drive, and the modem I bought for it took about thirty minutes to download anything. There was no Internet as we know it today. It was all white words on a black background.

Soon websites with graphics and color were sprouting up. I had a software program called SlipNot that downloaded the entire sites so I could see them. It took about 90 minutes to download them. I loved it, but it wasn't very fun waiting all the time.

After I got my master's, OLLU hired me to create and run a technology training lab where students completed my Technology Modules Program, which was a graduation requirement in the School of Education. We designed the lab to have half Apple computers and half Windows. The entire university was switching over to Windows, but my computer couldn't handle it. I was invited to purchase a new one at the cost the University had negotiated. It was about 1/4 the cost of my first one, so I did. The installed Windows on it, so I updated the modules course to include it. I even gave some of the university staff one on one lessons using it.

Well, I guess my story stops here. I have had several more computers since that first one. I know I will probably have several more in the future. The one thing that continues to blow my mind is how fast computers are changing. My new laptop demonstrated that to me. I plugged it in, turned it on, told it my name, and it totally set it self up. It even found and installed my wireless printer with no input from me. The different programs that I installed on it last night took about ten minutes each to download and install from the Internet. On my original machine, the few programs I had required the use of about five floppy disks and at least an hour of work switching them out and inputing data. Someday, they will deliver themselves to your house. Who knows!