I've been engaged with computing since the early 1960s, initially in the world of punchcards and batch processing (1962-1964) and then (1979-80) with timeshare access and map-making. I got my first microcomputer in 1984 (a TI-Pro, with plotter and digitizing tablet --I was especially interested in making maps), and have had a succession of Macs and Windows machines ever since. I entered library school at Simmons in 1991, when the burning question was what would be the effects on libraries of the proliferation of microcomputers. I had all sorts of opportunities to explore that question and to develop my own hardware and software skills. The great revelation for me was surely hypertext, and by the time the WWW arrived I was a reference librarian at Washington & Lee University and ready to plunge headfirst into web development.
From the very beginnings of the Web at W&L, I pioneered in my own space of the W&L computing environment, building web pages to explore the teaching possibilities of the medium, and teaching faculty colleagues and undergraduates (see a brief history of the early days, and a personal chronology). Before there were blogs I was making 'logfiles' to track my discovery process in the many endeavors of a working librarian, to communicate my discoveries to colleagues, and to create examples for how hypertext and the web could be used in education. I taught students to make web pages and explicitly required that they maintain logfiles of their own. Here's a clutch of links to some examples of my own logfiles for many subject areas and purposes (linkrot abounds, but it's interesting to trace what I was thinking and finding):
History of Technology 1998 (preparing for a University Scholars course)I wanted to implement blogging at W&L when I returned from sabbatical leave in 2003, but I lacked the necessary computing skills to set up the environment myself, and couldn't wrangle the necessary support from University Computing (nobody could see the point of blogging as a complement to pedagogy). It eventually became clear that the only way to proceed was to purchase my own domain, and build whatever I wanted in that space. I set up oook.info and soon after started oookblog, in Spring of 2004, once I'd figured out how to install Movable Type on my oook.info site.GIS explorations 1998 and continued and still more and the Miley GIS project
Humanity Computing 1999 (preparing a University Scholars course)
International Education Advisory Group deliberations 1999-2001
Human Geography 2001 (preparing a University Scholars course)
Articulatorium and log for the Global Stewardship Program 2003
Five Year Plan, 2004-2009 (I retired in 2005 --see The Disgruntlement File)
others, mostly 2003-2005 and a timeline linking logfiles from 1998-2005
My own blogging has waxed and waned over the last decade, and usually I've thought of the medium primarily as a way to keep track of my own wanderings, and only secondarily as a means to communicate with an audience. There may be a dozen or so people who read my postings with any regularity, but it really doesn't matter. What's important is having my own digital real estate, to populate as I see fit. Work I've done is out there, accessible via Google, backed up in archive.org's Wayback Machine.
In late May 2013 I switched everything over to WordPress, mostly because it was easier than updating the Movable Type software and associated database. There's a lot to learn about WP, and a lot of flexibility, and I'm pleased to find that I can figure stuff out and implement features I can imagine.
And here's the takeaway: my web presence is my own summary of things I've learned, paths I've followed, stuff I've found interesting and useful. I can construct whatever I please, and send links to anybody who might be interested. My education continues.