At The Start, Computers were not an Individual Tool
When I first heard about computers being something that individuals could have, it was a little monitor and you had to know dos or some programming language to make the computer do anything – even add 1 + 1.
TIMES HAVE CHANGED
Working in a family business as a teenager, I remember using the 14 column spreadsheet to manually enter the sales and taxes and adding the columns again and again until the numbers worked out. Do you remember those days? Adding machines would maybe have printed papers but only the numbers.
Then in college I had the opportunity to use computers that required punch cards. Okay, stop laughing or go ahead and Google it. I hated it, one typo and the card was no good, if you dropped the stack of cards, that was BADDDDD!!!
Later, Improvements Made it Possible to
Teach thousands without them going to
a classroom together.
When I served on the National Board for ABWA, American Business Womens Association, I saw the value of placing some of the chapter/league info online and training the officers (at least the ones willing to try – despite the dialup slowness of the internet then).
Quietly, I slipped a CD with a really basic concept – much like a powerpoint – but I built it in FLASH. The goal was to allow not only the President of the chapters to receive the leadership manual but the Treasurers, Secretaries and Vice Presidents could begin to learn whether the piece of papers were in their hands or not.
Little did I know that a project for online training in a much larger format and scale began at the National headquarters. They launched Women’s Instructional Network as the first rendition. It gave members a chance to learn important topics without ever having to leave home and brought a great boost to the value of membership.
