Danielle Nicole DeVoss, "A Brief and Very Biased History of the Internet, Part 1"

This is the first in a set of four videos I created and narrated for students in an online graduate seminar I taught, called “Teaching with Technology.” Early in the course, we talked about the emergence and development of the Internet, and analyzed and contextualized this space for a better scaffolding for thinking about how we can use the Internet as it is today in our teaching.

One of my favorite pieces in the series appears at the end of the second video into the third. My brother lived in Silicon Valley during the web boom and bust, and shared some amazing stories of what the digital world (and its analog counterpart) was like in this particular moment.

Seeing the early computers, understanding the motivations of the initial development of the Internet, and tracing the boom and evolution of the web provides a rich backdrop for understanding the Internet of today.