![]() As I think about possible concepts for my digital literacy narrative, a couple ideas first come to mind. The first idea that I think about when looking back at a literacy-related experience that has changed me as a child/pre-teen is the instant messaging application (also known as AIM). AIM was first developed and skyrocketed into the internet world in the late 1990s/early 2000's. At this time in my life I was about seven years old. It is crazy to think that I was involved in technology at such a young age, but AIM truly taught me some major lessons at that age, as well as morphed me into the adult that I am today. AIM was the first form of text messaging, except it was on computers. Text messaging wasn't as popular during this time, so AIM was the go to messaging system to communicate with your peers. My very embarrassing AIM address was - [email protected]. This is so embarrassing as I say it out loud today, however I am sure my viewers will find it amusing. Almost all of my friends and I had funny or weird AIM names. I suppose that was just the thing to do at the time. I literacy aspect of AIM comes into play being that the words/sentences/phrases that we used were completely different from the correct English language. We used words like "U instead of you," "Waz Up instead of What's Up," "R instead of are," "Iz instead of is," and so on. These were simply used as a type of AIM "Slang." The entire world of AIM knew of these types of slang words that were always used when talking back and forth with your friends; and all of your friends knew exactly what you were saying in return. I remember coming home from school and immediately talking to my friends on AIM. This was so much fun at the time that it was almost addicting! However, with every new piece of digital literacy, there can come a few problems. For example, writing in school for me became very challenging. I found myself struggling with writing correctly being that I was so used to talking in slang throughout AIM. I found myself re-reading passages and pieces of text because I wanted to make sure that I didn't mis-spell a word or two. This was a huge adjustment for me during my literacy practices in school. Although AIM messaging helped me in some ways with my speaking and writing, it affected me in other ways like during school when I had no chose but to write the proper way when analyzing a text. The second idea that comes to mind when thinking about my digital literacy narrative is my first cell phone! I got my first cell phone when I was in 6th grade-about 11 years old. This was a hot pink flip-Razor phone, and I was absolutely obsessed with it. I got it on Christmas morning during my winter break, and I couldn't have been more excited on that day. However, my family limited my phone to only texting and calling, nothing else. The only contacts that I was allowed to have were my mom and dads, my grand mom and grand pops, and a few of my closest friends from school. My mom also checked my phone and messages every now and then to make sure that everything was moving smoothly. Overall, my first flip phone was a life-changing experience. Even just being able to text my mom and dad to come pick me up from a friends house was super easy. I didn't have to worry about doing things in which I felt uncomfortable doing being that I had a cell phone to contact all of my loved ones with the tough of a button. Overall, having this phone at the age of 11 truly morphed me into the young adult that I am today. I believe it gave me practice with literacy, as well as communication with friends and family. The feeling of excitement is something that I will never forget when I first opened that box on Christmas morning. I will never forget owning my own phone, and finally feeling like I was growing up. Finally, the last piece of knowledge that I would like to share about a possible digital literacy narrative is the story of listening to my first audio book. When I was younger, I struggled with reading a lot. I was pulled out in reading groups throughout my school day up until about third grade when I finally started getting the hand of it. However, flash back to Kindergarten and First-Grade - I did not know how to read at all. I was super behind on my instructional level, and I couldn't recognize worlds in the way that my other classmates could. That is, until my teacher introduced me to audio books. Being that I was considered a struggling reader in my early education years, my teacher decided to let me listen to the books I was reading through an audio recorder and headphones instead of simply reading the text and struggling even more. This was something that truly changed my life forever, and I will always be grateful for the teacher that came up with this idea for myself. Simply listening to the words in a text helped me comprehend the story and the vocabulary. Of course this didn't help much with recognizing and visualizing words, but it did help me when I began to reread those books. After listening to a book via audio, my teacher then allowed me to reread the book, except this time I would read quietly to her. Knowing what the story was about already, and recognizing some of the words and sounds from the pictures truly helped me prosper as a young struggling reader. Eventually, in fourth grade I was reading all by myself without the help of audio recorders! This aspect of digital literacy helped me so much in the educational world of reading; and I will be forever thankful for that.
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AuthorMy name is Kayla Horan, here are my blog posts for Writing with Technologies. Hope you enjoy!! Archives
April 2018
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