How this blog got its start

IT'S been nearly 15 years since I received my first e-mail. But I still remember
the thrill of seeing the note from Cathy Madison that day when I opened my
electronic mailbox. At that time, I was a subscriber to a service called
Prodigy, originally a joint venture of IBM and Sears.

When I returned to Minneapolis in 1993, I introduced e-mail to students at the
high school where I was teaching. I thought it could be a way to stimulate
writing. Students were assigned a "correspondent" somewhere in the US and were
to write every week or so. These correspondents were friends of mine who had
agreed to participate in the project.

The students dove into the project. Every morning they would rush to the
computer to check their e-mail box.

Students also found other people to write to in addition to the "official"
correspondents. I recall that two students even found an e-mail address for my
daughter Molly who was then away at college. They e-mailed questions to her
asking what I was really like.

Shortly after that, we started experimenting with an electronic newspaper.

What were then innovations gradually became commonplace. Now e-mail and the World Wide Web are a part of school at every level.

THIS SAME electronic evolution has occurred in workplaces, too. I was working
at the Milpitas POST newspaper when we started getting e-mail in 1992. I think
our first message was a list of soccer scores.

Here, too, it took several years for e-mail to become a regular part of life at
newspapers. Now it's an essential tool and many papers include the e-mail
addresses of reporters at the end of every story.

E-mail newsletters were still something new when the Bill's Coffeeshop
Newsletter started in 2000. Now many coffeeshops and other businesses have
newsletters like this one.

This "Abilities Awareness" weblog began as a supplement to the educational mission of Bil's Coffeeshop. It has also become a discussion forum for students enrolled in "Disabilities" classes.