Literacy Corrected

In regards to question three I think my educational experience will have to be altered due to future that lies ahead.  When I was growing up I only remember being read to or reading I was never on a computer until the later years in school, they just were not something a lot of people owned.  However, now mostly everything is done through computers and I do not feel comfortable with my competence level.  Therefore, I think I will need to either takes courses on computers or learn by practice.  By the time I am in my career the literacy of computers will only be expanding, and I believe it will be required by most employers to keep up with the updates.

The blog that I would most like to monitor would be the ones that are talking about the 2008 elections.  I am really interested in the coverage of Obama and Clinton, already they seem to be the most talked about officals that are wanting to run for office.  The site is www.thepoliticalwasteland.com

How Literate Are We?

I find that the article was very representative of the majority of everyone I know that is familiar with computers.  For myself I became literate in Kindergarten, as soon as I entered school computers became the place we as students typed out our assingments and even played games on them.  And honestly I could tell that soon I would become more literate in the many uses of computer programs than many of my teachers.  I believe that computers have transformed the way that we as students communicate with professors and even peers which is really not a bad thing.  Computer usage has allowed for immediate access to everything that may be of interest and even help with homework. 

Future of Literacy

In response to our blog prompts, I thought it wise to choose question number one. I have had contact and use of computers since I was in 5th grade when my dad bought an old, and I mean old, Apple. I’ve always been artistic, but using this computer to elaborate on my talent was simply not going to happen. The keyboard was attached to the computer, the screen was the simple black with green type, and we used floppy disks to play our games. Later on, into eighth grade, we upgraded to a newer PC, with a color screen and CD-ROM drive. On there I played games, chatted online with my friends, and even made a simple, one-page website that my friend and I played around with. My story, that I seem to be dancing around, has to be of my experience using the Mac to create my first newspaper spread for my highschool newspaper. I was new in my Journalism class and my teacher’s final project for our class was to create our own paper design. I had never realized how difficult it was to create an article, let alone set it in finished form onto a page along with seven other stories. My teacher helped explain to the class the importance of knowing how to work with computers and how this technology would vastly improve our careers as we become older. During my experience, we had learned to shape the paper, use pica to appropriately set our articles into place, and alter our letter and font sizes to allow for space but still draw attention to the stories. We also had to learn how to format our photos so they, too, could be included on our pages. This experience was fun to me and the turning point in deciding what career path I was going to lead myself down. I enjoyed use of the computers in class and jumped onto one at any opportunity I could find.

Re: Future of Lit.

I have been around computers and technology for as long as I can remember.  I had early exposure in elementry school and after that it was more by choice than anything else.  What I mean by that is my computer literacy is what it is now because of the classes I chose to take in middle and high school.  It is because of this that it is hard to pin point one specific event that contributed greatly to my computer literacy.  I mean, sure, I was one of those kids playing Doom and learned about .mpeg, .jpeg, etc. at an early age but that is very minor stuff.  I would have to say that my classes in high school contributed the most because it was there that I learned all those hidden tricks that you can do with windows.  But like I said it was by choice meaning for those students that I went to school with who chose not to take computer courses more than likely don’t know as much about computers as someone like me who did unless they had exposure somewhere else.  Though I feel like I know a lot about computers and feel very comfortable with either a mac or a windows computer I still feel like there is so much I still have yet to learn.  I feel like computers are one thing that no one person can master because the literacy of computers changes so fast.

Level of Computer Literacy

The event that really changed my knowledge and know how of computers was when I took an English class last semester. This class used computers to teach the technical side of writing and using technology in the professional world. In the class I had my first experience with blogging. After learning how many hundreds of people use blogs as a form of communication, I really felt like I was missing out on a major use of technology. The class also tough me how to make a webpage, which was something I never really even thought about doing before the class. The class was so useful that after the semester was over, I was asked to design a website for a major company in California. Being able to set down and work with a new technology really helped me strengthen my knowledge of computers, the internet, and computer technology.

The Future of Literacy

I think getting a computer to myself was the single thing that has fueled computer literacy. I recieved my own computer in 2000 when I recieved the family computer as a hand me down. Having it to myself gave me the freedom to experiment with different settings, being responsible for its care, and installing all of my own hardware. Eventually we got DSL in 2001, and along with that a router. Being the most tech savy in the family, it was up to me to set up that router. I spent many sleepless nights trying to figure out how to get that router to work correctly. I’ve come along way in my computer literacy from Windows 98 and a router. Today I use my computer literacy every day; I work as a GeekSquad agent.

“The Future of Literacy” Response

Well I kind of already talked about my fun experience this summer with being on a 12 person production team that produced a music video. The field production summer class was so fun and really helped me become very familiar with editing film on the computer.