Timeline of literacy technologies

I decided to create a timeline and record the literacy technologies that I have used until now.

1978 – I was born on May 19

1979-1981 - I spent 3 years in a kindergarten where I mostly used colored pencils and blank paper, training my fine motor skills.

1982 – I start primary school in my hometown. At that time pupils had to write with fountain pens and use lined notebooks. I was not allowed to write with a pen. The teacher said that we could use pens starting grade 5 only, after we had learned the correct way to form letters.
- Soon after I started grade 1 I was taught how to use the phone we had in our apartment. My parents wanted me to know how to dial a number in case of an emergency and answer the phone if it rang.

1986 – My father had two typewriters in his room. He used them almost every day to write his articles for the newspaper he was working at. Me and my brother were not allowed to use them, so when my parents were not at home we often sneaked into their room, took the typewriters out, and played around with them. As my country was still under a strict communist regime, all typewriters were registered at the police station together with a copy of all the letters, hence my parents’ reluctance to let me use the typewriter.

1987 – My parents bought a record player on which I listened for hours and hours stories for children and classical music. It was my parents’ first investment in modern technology!

Before 1989 – My family had one black and white TV, but only 2 hours of entertainment programs were broadcasted by the government. The rest was all propaganda.

1990 - After the 1989 revolution, when the communist regime was overthrown, my father received from a friend, but only for a couple of days, an electric typewriter which he let me use for the short period of time it was in our apartment. I was 12 years old at that time, and compared to the old typewriters we had, the electronic one was like magic. I remember that I was particularly fascinated by the delete button.

1991 – My parent bought a colored TV and we got cable TV too. This was a major event in our family, with tens of channels to choose from and the possibility to watch TV at any time of the day.

1992 – I was already in junior high school when my parents bought for me and my brother a Spectrum computer. It had a word processor which I used to type up short compositions. I also learned how to write simple programs in BASIC.

1995 – My father started his own newspaper and it was at his office where I first saw a fax machine. Later on we had one in our apartment too. I rarely used it to send faxes, but I often used it to make copies of different papers for school.

1996 – Me and my brother bought our own PC which I used for typing texts for money and play games.

2000 – I was a sophomore when we connected our computer to the internet and used for the first time electronic mail. I remember clearly that for a few months I spent hours and hours in front of the computer surfing the internet. The abundance of information was more that I could take. For a while I tried to copy and paste all the texts that interested me and read them later on, but when I realized I could find them online at any time I soon stopped doing that.
- In the same year I bought my fist mobile phone, I think an Erickson the size of a brick. As talking was quite expensive, I mostly used it to send text messages and sometimes play games.
- Working part time as a typist, mostly typing articles and books for my father’s business, I saved up some money and bought a stereo (tape recorder and CD player included) and a VCR.
- About this time I bought my first interactive encyclopedia (Encarta), which came on 6 CDs.

2002 – After two years playing around with the internet I became a proficient internet researcher which greatly helped me in writing my BA thesis. It was through the internet that I found a vacancy at my first school in Thailand. If it hadn’t been for the internet, I would probably still be teaching in my hometown. Internet definitely changed my life (into the better).

2006 – I used my wife’s mini recorder to make an interview with my country's ambassador in Thailand. After the interview I had to do the transcription by listening to the tape and writing in Word the questions and answers.