CHAPTER 1 ENTRY

• My memory was jogged on page one when I was reminded that "in 1993 with the development of the Mosaic Web browser...Seemingly overnight, the Internet went from a text numbers-based research tool for the few to a colorful, graphical world of information for the masses."

In 1993 I went from my junior to senior year in high school. I remember hearing about the Internet, but I don't remember getting online before college. I absolutely hated it. I thought this was just another tool for making my life more complicated and would end-up making my college work load worse. I could not imagine the potential the Internet had for research and did not discover this for years to come. When this "information" became available "for the masses" I was not a happy camper.

• I rarely visit YouTube, although, I have used it to look for videos that will enhance lessons. I'm not really into YouTube for personal entertainment, but I know the students I taught this past semester loved it! Reading about the "YouTube Campaign" (3) really made me think about how wide spread and powerful this site actually is.

• "Traditional media outlets such as The Washington Post, the BBC, and others are scrambling to respond to this trend, creating interactive spaces for readers, buying on-the-spot news photos from people with camera phones, and running amateur video of news events.

Being a former member of the media I struggled with online media because the small newspapers did not seem to benefit from online readers. The sites are free and advertising is kept to a minimum. So why do papers keep these sites? I really do not understand how this works. I remember sitting in on a meeting at a small paper where the publisher was really excited about making the papers site better and wanted us to spend more time on this. As soon as the publisher left the room the editor told us how minimal the online profits were; that this was causing the paper to loose money because people were cancelling subscriptions because they were reading online. Basically, we were then told not to worry about working on the Web site.

As far as the amateur video and cell phone photography goes--I love this. Giving the readers authorship is awesome, but it makes me wonder how the financial system will support this. I was a newspaper photographer. It was a great profession.

• I marked sections on pages 15-16 under "Blogging Terms and Conditions" and plan on using some of it for a blogging contract in my classroom in the future. It is a thorough list.