It’s Day 4 of the #atozchallenge so it’s the turn of the letter D. My chosen word is ‘Digital’ and I thought I’d tell you about my introduction to digital media many moons ago. I had been teaching English in a comprehensive school in the UK and getting itchy feet, I applied for a teaching job in a nearby sixth form college teaching English and Media studies. It was September 2000 and the AS Levels had just been introduced so students were taking one or two extra subjects for the first year of their A Levels. Media Studies turned out to be one of the most popular AS levels so teachers were in short supply. I ended up teaching mostly Media and Communication Studies and only one group of English!
It was somewhat of a baptism of fire for me as I had very little knowledge of editing and even less of new technologies, being somewhat of a luddite at the time. Well, I still am, to an extent! Of course, I tended up teaching New Technologies focusing on their effects on us as societies, whether TiVo was going to take off, how the global village was forming, the Playstation had just been launched and as has been the case since, the study of new technologies was really interesting. Of course, this was before the days of blogging and twitter and I never imagined I would end up embracing them with so much enthusiasm.
I first started using social media myself in January 2008. I had started a new business and having heard that blogging was a good way to get traffic to my new website, I decided to get my web developers to add a blog. I loved writing and connecting with other interior design bloggers. I didn’t know anything about hyperlinks or calls to action and it was a case of learning as I went along but when my business was featured on a national newspaper because a journalist contacted me having found my blog, I was sold! Social media was going to save me wondering where to find the money for an advertising budget! Twitter followed in March 2009 and I set up a facebook page during the summer.
What about you? When did you embrace digital technology and social media?
