I am so glad that I prepared for eLearning and Digital Cultures by visiting the Wayback Machine and putting together a timeline of my history as an educator using the Web! I had just been hired as adjunct instructor of a physics lab when the Web arrived on campus. After my first glimpse of Netscape Navigator in Fall 1995, I knew that I just had to be a part of it. I was happy to discover that HTML was relatively easy to learn, so I set about creating webpages to support my courses. But that simple part was just the beginning! It got more and more complicated as the years went by.
I enjoyed rereading Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky. We realized in 1995 that the Web was an accelerating train that was already moving so fast that we had to start running so we could catch up and jump on before we missed it. Now I am wondering if we were starting to restructure our brains to accommodate to the new world we were entering? If so I think this would be an example of technological determination. If we had been warned ahead of time that using the Web might change the structure of our brains, would we have dared to press on?
Live & Learn! 