My First Encounter with a Computer

Although in today’s world, games like The Oregon Trail are probably forgotten about, back in elementary school “The Oregon Trail” made learning fun! Even though I probably played this game for the majority of my elementary school years, I don’t remember much about it. That’s where the internet comes into play. I was able to Google The Oregon Trail and not surprisingly found many results, from blogs posted by reminiscing young adults, Wikipedia definitions and explanations, to the fifth edition Oregon Trail that can be purchased for a mere $20 online at www.learningcompany.com. The newer version can be downloaded directly to Windows or Macintosh and includes things such as new characters, better graphics and 3D environments. You can even play out different scenarios every time!
My school didn’t just use The Oregon Trail to enhance the minds of its’ students though. I also remember, with not so much enthusiasm, the Accelerated Reader program. This involved reading regular print books but then having to log into the computer to be tested on the books read. The tests were taken online and the computer kept track of scores so that once enough points were accumulated the student received a coupon for a free pizza from Pizza Hut. This was probably the first time I ever had to use a log in name and password but I know my favorite part was having my mom take me and my friends out for our free pizzas.
The old Apple computers we used for these activities were big, bulky, and unbearably slow, yet since there wasn’t anything much better to compare it too no one seemed to care. I can even remember getting extremely excited one day because at my school if a student did something really helpful or got a good grade on a test we had the choice of checking out one of the computers from the school library. I happened to do one of these things, though I can’t remember which one now, but I jumped at the chance to bring a computer home because my family didn’t have one for our own.
My parents got our first family computer around the time I turned 11 years old. This was also around the time we moved to North Carolina from where we lived in Florida. My brother was almost done with middle school and started learning a little bit about computers so he introduced me to AOL and Instant Messaging. He also taught my about e-mail and showed me that even though we had moved several states away I could still easily keep in touch with all of the friends I had left behind in Florida. I remember thinking how crazy it was to IM a friend who lived hours away and have them respond immediately.
As I got further into middle school and started becoming more and more addicted to the computer I can remember spending my time making a website on AOL which, back then, I thought was the coolest thing ever. Now we have Myspace, Facebook, Youtube, blogging and many other sites that allow us to communicate with people or that just serve as entertainment purposes.