As we looked back at the archives of OOM, it struck us just how much the world has changed in the five years since this blog started!

The OOMers all submitted a surprising, funny, or interesting fact about what’s different then versus now:

Five years ago at Scholastic:

• No one knew what the Hunger Games were. (Jessica)
• Scholastic had never sent a Tweet or posted a Facebook status. (Morgan)

Five years ago in the tech world…

• The iPad did not exist. (Alex)
• eReading wasn’t really a thing! (Nadia)
• There was no Internet on airplanes, and Facebook hadn’t switched over to Timeline. (Lauren)
• The iPhone 3G had just been released and it’d still be another two years before Instagram was created. (Lia)
• The App Store didn’t exist. (Suzanne)
• Mobile checkout devices in stores were just being introduced. (Michael)
• The Large Hadron Collider, one of the greatest and most ambitious science experiments ever, was about to come online. (Dante)
• Flip phones were the majority ruling. I had a KRZR, the mini RAZR, and I was still cool (in my own mind). (Anne)

Five years ago in pop culture:

• George W. Bush was President and Justin Bieber was still a year away from joining Twitter. (Tyler)
• There was no Gangnam Style (thank goodness). (Michael)
• Only 1.8 million tweets were sent on Election Day (now on a normal day, hundreds of millions of tweets are sent). (Kristen)

In the education world:

• The NGA was still a year away from announcing the Common Core State Standards initiative. (Tyler)

What was different five years ago that shocks you? We’d love for you to submit your own!