One of the biggest inventions

As I'm nearly 57 years young, I've seen many things change throughout the course of my life.

When I was a little kid in the 1950's, there was nobody in our street who had a telephone (remember those black ones, with horn and dial?). But at home we had a TV set, a Loewe Opta with black and white screen. That was really something already. We played records on an old turntable and the records were LP's and Singles. Those old records must now somewhere up my attic.

Becoming a teenager, we all wanted a 'pick-up' - a portable record player. I had one on batteries, so that I could take it up to my room, as my dad did not want to listen to Alice Cooper or Slade. My sister, who was 4 years younger, already had a cassette-player. Quite an invention!

And somewhere in the 1970's we changed our black-and-white TV for one with color. If it was playing, a queue formed in the street of people who wanted to take a look through our window, and we were quite popular girls to visit. Because those who visited got to watch the wonder of color TV (Top of the Pops was our popular program) AND were treated to chocolate milk by our grandma.

We got our first telephone when I started at Uni. My mother thought I could need it to keep in contact with my friends there, as I had to come home every day. My father was very strict and said that Ghent was only 20 minutes by train, so I could easily attend the courses and return home every afternoon. Student life? Not for me!

Then in the course of the 1980's we got the first computers. Well, computers... More like a better typewriter, as it only was good for text writing. But the advantages were you could edit texts without having to use that dirty pink corrector and you could print those texts.

What I personally think is the biggest change ever is the coming of the internet. It really changed the way we think and act. Nowadays we buy items on the net, book our trips, look up the info we need. That was just unthinkable when I was a little kid.

And it's not stopping. Computers are being replaced by tablets. Books by Ebooks. What's coming next? I've always adapted to the new ways of communicating, so I'm not afraid of the changes to come.

But when I tell this in my classroom, those young ones are quite amazed, as they never experienced those changes we went through.