My love for online learning goes back to when I was a youngin’. It was a time when we had slow dial-up connections and a ton of potential for the “information superhighway,” also known as the World Wide Web. I know I’m showing my age but, in some way, I am proud that I was around for the time when this all became mainstream. The early iterations of the internet had a wealth of information and activities for a young mind like mine, and I used this ocean of data to learn how to do everything that interested me.
If I wanted an art gallery, I’d head over to a search engine and look for examples of DIY online photo galleries and homepages. If I liked a particular website, I’d learn how to use photoshop and build websites through tutorials on DeviantArt and HTMLGoodies.com, respectively. To give you an idea of what we were dealing with there, I felt it fitting to include a throwback image of what these types of websites looked like (Power Rangers Geocities website?! Cue nostalgia memories).
Despite their basic formatting and features and early 90’s visual appeal, they were the first examples of self-taught material that you could find online. These websites put creativity in the hands of the ordinary person and gave them a way to build communities.
I remember the first three communities that I obtained a membership for were Neopets, Vexels.net, and DeviantArt (which is an art community that I still have a profile for today). All of them housed entertainment, art, engaging activities and, most importantly, communities of people with similar interests. We held contests, taught each other skills related to the site, formed relationships and learned from each other. Some of us collaborated to make artwork by exchanging Photoshop files back and forth and submitted them to the site for comments and “likes.” These online resources and communities hit their prime well before the days of Facebook, MySpace, Lynda or Khan Academy. Back then, if you wanted to learn something not offered by a school or degree program, you had to learn from friends or stumble upon a book on it in the library. These communities effectively brought this all together and kept us coming back for more. Combining my love for art and digital art tutorials at my fingertips, I spent all my spare time soaking up information that I would eventually use to build my career as an adult freelance vector artist in NYC.
The remarkable part about this is that today, I still use the internet to learn in the same way. The only difference now is that the internet is more robust than it’s ever been. Currently, I am an instructional designer at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies, where I develop online, face-to-face and blended courses for graduate students in various programs. I use online resources exclusively to get up to speed on a variety of topics, from professional development to content knowledge needed for my job that remain outside of my expertise. Online learning communities have been my one-stop-shops for how-tos, news, events and much more and I cannot wait to see how it all develops from here. These are exciting times.
Finally, for those who noticed all the internal hyperlinking, please note that this was intentional. I enjoy adding multimedia to my posts that provide some background or a touch of humor. I think it adds to the conversation while allowing people to click around and interact with the blog. It gives everyone some extra content and encourages readers to go down their own rabbit holes if interested in further research 🙂
To wrap up, I’ll leave you with this little goodie from my childhood: