Remembering CompuServe

Remembering CompuServe

My memories of online adventures goes back to the beginning almost.  It is hard to believe that the Internet is not that old really and it had its beginnings in Arpanet which was part of the American military operations. The idea was, of course, to link research facilities on various campuses and allow the sharing of ideas for defence but also for research. I am an inveterate reader so I learned about what was called the World Wide Web far sooner than a lot of others. I remember learning about America Online and CompuServe and making the case for the school to buy a membership in CompuServe.  I was at a K to 8 school and I was working in the library. I had paid for the link to CompuServe at home as a way to experiment and explore and so I wanted the same thing at the school. I successfully negotiated for the expense because the students were already going early research into a variety of different topics.  It was fun to find things and to share them with the students and the staff but it was soooo expensive. I  had to be very careful because although the principal was generous with me and gave me the freedom to explore because it meant new horizons were opening up for the students and  the administrators I was working with could see the writing on the wall, but still and all, it was a huge expense.  It was not too long after that the board I worked for started to move from Windows for Work Groups 3.11 to Local Area Networks that were using Netscape as a browser and starting to take advantage of lines for Internet access.  Those were the dark days when we moved from W. W. W.. to Internet, from text only to Java-enabled web pages that were interactive and then we were into things like students agreements on acceptable use of the Internet and safe sites for students.  It has to be pointed out that there have always been reasons why it would have been easier not to even bother with any of these things but those same things are the reasons why, now, technology is ever-present and students need to know how to capitalize on its advantages.