Cooper 1 Jefferson Cooper Ms.

Rand English 1103 02 September 25, 2013 Evolution of My Digital Literacy While my father jokingly called it a toilet bowl seat, most called it a clamshell. It was made of gray and blue plastic and had a small retractable handle along the hinge that made it easy to carry. The most noticeable aspect of it, however, was the illuminated Apple logo on the back. The laptop was an iBook G3, and though I did not know its name or specifications back then, it is the first electronic device I can remember using. I did not use the iBook for much, as it was my dads work computer. However, the one thing I did use it for was to play a game called Bugdom. The game featured a character called Rollie who was a rollie pollie in his home land of Bugdom. You played as Rollie to fight off bees and other insects to overthrow King Thorax, thereby reclaiming Bugdom and restoring it to its former glory. I can distinctly remember playing this game in our blue Ford Expedition as my family traveled to camping trips for our vacations. As a mere six year old, I did not know anything about computers, but I knew that I loved playing Bugdom and that this machine allowed me to do that. It would be the start of my quest for digital literacy. It is my opinion that literacy is the ability to be competent and thrive in a certain area. Most of the time, people connect literacy to reading and writing, but literacy can take many forms. For example, you can be literate in dance, mathematics, surfing or driving a vehicle. In this case, playing Bugdom opened the door for me to start becoming literate

Cooper 2 with technology. Though I was only a passive user and was just beginning to generate literacy, I could tell I was gaining a passion for it. A year later after playing Bugdom, I was sitting on the thin-carpeted floor of the cold computer lab room of my elementary school in Clemson, South Carolina. Clemson is a very small town, and Clemson Elementary was a brand-new school that served the entire county. While I was there, the school was rebuilt and given state-of-the-art supplies that included a new computer lab with all new computers. Sitting there on the floor with my classmates listening to the computer lab teacher talk about software, hardware, and floppy disks was my first real exposure to what computers were really all about. After she talked for a while, my classmates and I would find a computer and play games that were designed to teach us the basics of computer technology. For example, a game might include a simulation where we would have to identify the locations of keys on a keyboard in a certain order. In other cases, we would have to take components of the computer such as the monitor, mouse, operating system, and programs and sort them into groups of hardware and software. I carried this additional knowledge and digital literacy with me all the way into middle school where I would put it to good use. I found this opportunity in the seventh grade when I had a wonderful English teacher named Mrs. Hodges. She was a short lady who wore glasses, sported short brown hair, and was the womens basketball coach. Her class was challenging, but looking back I can say that it was one of the best English classes I have ever had. She gave us many assignments and projects throughout the year, but the one I enjoyed the most was a project that involved creating a video with Windows Movie Maker. We were given video cameras to capture videos and still pictures, and then were expected to upload these multimedia

Cooper 3 files to the computer, add voice-over commentary, and finally present our videos to the class. We spent countless hours in the library working on the computer to complete our projects, and while it took my classmates several days to finish editing their movies, I finished mine in just a few hours. With all of this extra time, I went deeper and deeper into my movie, changing things and making it even more spectacular. All of this additional work helped me realize that being creative and making exceptional videos on the computer was easy and fun. It seemed to come naturally to me, and I realized that my literacy level with computers was expanding at an astonishing rate. Near the end of the assignment, as we were working in the library, the schools librarian, Mrs. Below, approached Mrs. Hodges and asked if anyone who was good at Movie Maker would be interested in producing the Mustang News for the following year. The Mustang News was the weekly news program that my school produced every week. It consisted of an anchor that would tell the headlines of what was happening throughout the week while photos or videos of those events flashed on a screen. I had really enjoyed working with Movie Maker, so when Mrs. Below asked the question to Mrs. Hodges, I quickly blurted out, IM GOOD WITH MOVIE MAKER! On the first day of school the following year, I would begin my term as the Mustang News anchor. I would spend an elective period, forty-five minutes, every day in the newsroom working on that weeks edition. During this time I would let my imagination run wild with all of the special effects and graphics that could be added to the news with the help of the computer. Eventually, forty-five minutes a day would not be enough time for me to complete everything I wanted to for the news, so I began taking my lunch to the newsroom and spending more time searching for ways to improve the episode. All of that

Cooper 4 time and exposure with the computer allowed me to build literacy of software and hardware, as well as begin to refine my skills working with a computer. At this point, my literacy level had increased from simply being a passive user to being an active producer with technology. I suddenly was using the computer to accomplish heavy tasks and output a quality product. This was a huge step in the formation of my digital literacy because the vast majority of people only have the ability to be a passive user. Almost anyone can play a video game, make a call on their cell phone or look up something online. I had now graduated from this stage and moved to a level that fewer people had reached. As my skills continued to improve, I began to grow fascinated with Apple devices. It was June of 2007 when the first iPhone hit the market, and I was amazed at the revolutionary things it was able to do. I wanted one so badly that I would sit on the computer at home for hours and research them. I watched videos, read manuals, and studied reviews countless times. Each year when a new one was released I watched the product announcement as soon as it was online. This trend spread to other Apple electronics too. I studied Macs, iPods, and iPads. I had become an expert in Apple and could have, without a doubt, taught the Apple Store employees a thing or two. I loved Apple so much, that for Christmas one year my grandparents bought me a share of Apple stock. My friends soon learned that I was fluent in not only Apple products, but in computers in general. In high school I began getting constant calls and text messages concerning computer problems. How do I print multiple slides on one page? How do I make my phone show the battery percentage? What is iCloud? Can you transfer my iTunes library to my new computer? These questions were simple and easy for me to

Cooper 5 answer with all of my acquired computer literacy, and I was more than happy to help whenever I could. I was excited to now have this newfound persona of local computer expert. I was starting to troubleshoot more difficult tasks like upgrading our homes Wi-Fi network and removing tricky viruses from peoples computers. At this point I had moved to a literacy level of teaching. No longer was I only producing for myself, but I was helping and teaching others how to do the same. My troubleshooting skills only improved when I took a Computer Engineering Technology class during my last two years of high school. Our teacher was a younger man, whom I thoroughly respect. He took us on several trips and to many conferences. He cared deeply for his students and had a true passion for teaching. He wrote me several recommendation letters that got me several interviews for big college scholarships. It was his class that taught me the most about computers. I learned how the internal parts of the computer work. In his class we worked in pairs and I got a chance to build a computer from mere parts. It was this class that finally made me decide that I wanted to become a computer engineer. major in computer engineering at UNC Charlotte. My digital literacy has progressed quickly over the years. It started on the level of just a simple, passive user. When I invested the time to improve my skills with technology and computers, INow I am here at Charlotte, in the challenging major of computer engineering. Often I think I may not be cut out for all the work that engineering majors have to go through, but then I think back to the core of what I am doing. I truly love computers and technology and if I can be a part of the technology of the future, the course work will be worth my while. quickly moved on to the active stage of producing quality computer generated products. Soon my technical skills grew again and I evolved into

Cooper 6 someone that could teach digital literacy to those who need help with technology. As my education continues into college, I look forward to the new digital literacy levels that I will someday achieve.

Cooper 7 Literacy Project Reflection I think the most successful part of my literacy project paper was the stories I was able to tell through it. I chose to tell a number of short stories in my narrative rather than focus on one single event. Some of the stories I told were ones I have not thought about for a long time and was happy to be able to think about and express in my writing. I am most proud of the chronological flow of the story. I was able to start it while I was very young, and gradually progress in age and in literacy as the story went on. If I had more time I would work more on the specific levels of digital literacy I explained in the paper, as well as the progression from one to the next. I felt like that was an important piece of the overall progression of my literacy. I want the reader to notice that aspect of my paper and be able to identify with the levels of digital literacy that I mentioned.