Tips from a Photography Beginner on Choosing a New Camera

A few years ago my digital camera broke.  Being a college student at the time, I was too broke to replace it.  After starting my blog, it became obvious that my cell phone camera is awful, and I needed to replace that broken digital camera.  Unfortunately, I knew little about cameras.  Researching cameras was to no avail as I did not understand the terms that distinguished one camera from another: point-and-shoot, SLR, ISO, aperture, metering... the list goes on and on.