DigRhetoricProject-Miller.mov
Enjoy!!!
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Literacy 2.0
Fifth grade marked my first exposure to computers. Growing up in an inherently poor area of the South and especially in an area where technology is reserved only for your television and gaming systems, no one owned a computer yet. We wrote letters to each other, continued to mail our bills via "snail mail", and took pictures using 35 mm film cameras. "Digital" had not found its way into our vocabulary. The only space we knew of was outer space. Cyberspace did not exist. Our televisions weren't even very far from what had originally been created in the 60s. We still had to adjust the "rabbit ears" to pick up local channels. HBO, MTV, and CNN were only letters in the alphabet at this time. But it did not take long for technology to be swept up in a whirlwind and carried beyond outer space bringing us Microsoft software and operating systems. Ironically, I moved to a different school system my 6th grade year and once in high school I learned to type properly on typewriters or word processors was the fancy name for the electric typewriters, but they were still typewriters. I hated them after growing so accustomed to computers, but loved the clickety-clack of the buttons as my fingers hit them and the loud, piercing report of the little letter hammers striking the roller bar.
I really took to computers quickly. I was one of only a few students who could operate one properly and understood how they operated (to a degree). I have always possessed a highly mechanical mind and can break down just about anything because everything humans create is a based upon existing principles. Everything in life is like a huge puzzle. It is just a matter of understanding how things are connected or linked and how they function together. Just to give you an idea of how I taught myself anything--I remember stealing the toaster from the kitchen counter as a kid (probably 7 or 8ish) and running off to my bedroom closet and taking it apart. No one noticed the M.I.A. toaster for some time, but finally my dad found me hiding in the closet crying because I could not get it back together. That moment started a long and not always prosperous relationship with mechanical things. :)
I can remember my first computer. I had to help roof my step-uncle's house and in exchange he gave me his Tandy with Windows 3.11.
It was the bomb! I could play solitaire and write papers for school. Good-bye pens and paper! Hallelujah! I didn't have internet access for many years though. I used that computer to learn how it operated. I figured out how to defrag it, delete files from the hard drive, and how all of its parts worked together. No one taught me anything. No one in my family knew how to use computers except me. Most of my knowledge came from trial and error. I knew how to "read" the different programs because the icons were basically buttons just like on an arcade game. The computer also had an on/off button just like any other machine.
I never realized, until now, that I was "reading" everything--signs, symbols, buttons, words, images, etc...just like a story book and making connections between those things. I was creating meaning through association. As I mentioned earlier, very few people owned computers in their home and the Internet was not popular yet so the type of socially constructed literacy that Lemke suggests wasn't in full-swing. I am not saying technology wasn't affected by society, I am saying society had not realized the potential of media literacy and technology at that time. Computers and gaming systems were just tools to be used and put back on the shelf once finished. Little did we know, Googling, texting, and Facebook were lurking around the corner.
Then Apple came along...
Think different is right! WTF? I had one of those Legally Blonde moments where you wake up and decide you are going to change your life right then and there (only I didn't want to be a lawyer). I walked into the Cleveland Daily Banner and made my way straight to the Assistant Editor's desk. He was a short, plump man wearing glasses with "coke bottle" lenses that made you cross-eyed when you looked at him. I can remember looking him in straight in the eyes (sheesh) and saying, "I want to write for you." He was stunned and silent for a moment. He looked me up and down, and I could tell he was thinking, "What the hell?" I had just left work and was clad in my finest mechanic's attire--long, green, hideous, men's shorts covered in grease, a ripped T-shirt that was closer to its second life as a grease rag than a piece of clothing, and a bright, red do-rag. I was absolutely the stunning vision of a female mechanic! He proceeded to ask me questions about my writing experience. I don't remember what I said, but he gave me an assignment that day to test my writing skills. I was able to visit their facility as often as I needed to use their Apple computers (they weren't referred to as Macs yet). I thought I was going to have an Office Space moment on one of those things. What happened to double-click? Wha--wha-what happened to delving deeply into file upon file upon file to locate something? OMG! I was loosing my mind. I never really got the hang of them, but I was persistent. At this point, Apple could shove "different" up their ass. I returned home to my Dell that spent more of its life in the computer hospital than on my desk.
Funny thing how life works. While Apple was polishing its well...Apple logo, I continued my journey through academia picking up tidbits here and there and staying somewhat up-to-date with technology leaving my family and friends in the dust. It wasn't until I entered UTC for the second time that I was exposed to the notion of socially constructed anything. Universities are hubs for diversity and culture where everyone comes together, learns from each other, and constructs new ideas. We were now Googling, texting, emailing, Facebooking, etc... furiously. These modes had replaced other more antiquated modes of communication sending society into a highly, visual, media addiction. This time someone did teach me how to use Macs and its subsequent technologies. Just like PCs, I picked it up quickly and became addicted too. I have always been a highly creative, right-brained individual, and I now had new tools to play with that only served to enhance my artistic needs. Artists can never be visually over-stimulated, but I found myself interpreting signs and symbols at lightning speeds. It was like feeding a junkie "super-crack." I never stopped once to consider how I learned to "read" them. Soon I was able to read web codes, HTMLs, and design graphics.
Looking back on my experiences with new media technology and literacy, Lemke is right. "Literacies are legion" (71). While each person contributes something to the construction process of media literacies, people work together as a social unit and are constantly changing meaning based on current trends, cultural differences, and historical change. In turn, "[l]iteracies are transformed in the dynamics of these larger self-organizing systems, and we--our own human perceptions, identities, and possibilities--are transformed along with them" (71). Lemke makes a good point when he discusses how people make meaning: "...by contrasting types of categories of things, events, people, and signs" (80). As mentioned earlier, I made the connection between icons on the computer desktop to buttons on arcade games. I wish I could foretell the future of computer technology and its subsequent influence by media literacy and vice-versa; It is important to understand these connections and how we make meaning in order to better understand ourselves, the world we live in, and the future that lies before us.
I really took to computers quickly. I was one of only a few students who could operate one properly and understood how they operated (to a degree). I have always possessed a highly mechanical mind and can break down just about anything because everything humans create is a based upon existing principles. Everything in life is like a huge puzzle. It is just a matter of understanding how things are connected or linked and how they function together. Just to give you an idea of how I taught myself anything--I remember stealing the toaster from the kitchen counter as a kid (probably 7 or 8ish) and running off to my bedroom closet and taking it apart. No one noticed the M.I.A. toaster for some time, but finally my dad found me hiding in the closet crying because I could not get it back together. That moment started a long and not always prosperous relationship with mechanical things. :)
I can remember my first computer. I had to help roof my step-uncle's house and in exchange he gave me his Tandy with Windows 3.11.
It was the bomb! I could play solitaire and write papers for school. Good-bye pens and paper! Hallelujah! I didn't have internet access for many years though. I used that computer to learn how it operated. I figured out how to defrag it, delete files from the hard drive, and how all of its parts worked together. No one taught me anything. No one in my family knew how to use computers except me. Most of my knowledge came from trial and error. I knew how to "read" the different programs because the icons were basically buttons just like on an arcade game. The computer also had an on/off button just like any other machine.
I never realized, until now, that I was "reading" everything--signs, symbols, buttons, words, images, etc...just like a story book and making connections between those things. I was creating meaning through association. As I mentioned earlier, very few people owned computers in their home and the Internet was not popular yet so the type of socially constructed literacy that Lemke suggests wasn't in full-swing. I am not saying technology wasn't affected by society, I am saying society had not realized the potential of media literacy and technology at that time. Computers and gaming systems were just tools to be used and put back on the shelf once finished. Little did we know, Googling, texting, and Facebook were lurking around the corner.
Then Apple came along...
Looking back on my experiences with new media technology and literacy, Lemke is right. "Literacies are legion" (71). While each person contributes something to the construction process of media literacies, people work together as a social unit and are constantly changing meaning based on current trends, cultural differences, and historical change. In turn, "[l]iteracies are transformed in the dynamics of these larger self-organizing systems, and we--our own human perceptions, identities, and possibilities--are transformed along with them" (71). Lemke makes a good point when he discusses how people make meaning: "...by contrasting types of categories of things, events, people, and signs" (80). As mentioned earlier, I made the connection between icons on the computer desktop to buttons on arcade games. I wish I could foretell the future of computer technology and its subsequent influence by media literacy and vice-versa; It is important to understand these connections and how we make meaning in order to better understand ourselves, the world we live in, and the future that lies before us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)