I remember my frustration, “how do I get quotation marks to go the other way!?” I yelled to my brother as I was trying to practice typing to increase my speed. My first memories of technology were sitting in my room, where we kept the family computer, playing the games Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?, Number Cruncher and Oregon Trail. They were all games that required little knowledge about computers and just involved knowing how to play the game and which buttons to press. Once I grew out of my computer game phase of my life I don’t recall computers ever having a large role in my life, not until about 5th grade when I started to learn about the internet. Once the internet started to get more popular my brother convinced my mom to get it for our apartment. We had the computer set up in the room that we shared and I remember sitting through the dialup tone, waiting for the internet to load. I would spend time checking the joint email account my mom, brother and I shared, I would look at some band websites to see about new music I liked and I would chat on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). From that time until about 8th grade the computer and the internet took a backseat, yet again. While I still used it for email and brief AIM conversations I wasn’t too into the technology thing that everyone was going crazy over. Once I got into 8th grade and had a core group of friends that were all linked on AIM I would spend hours at a time on the computer chatting about everything and nothing. The text from “Instant Identity” makes me laugh quite often because when I read it and look back on how I used to use AIM and what we would talk about, I see how comical it all was. Throughout the course of high school I was still on AIM for hours at a time a day, exchanging pictures, music, videos, stories, just talking. I did however progress to spending more time on the internet itself and not just using it for having conversations. I would look at clothes online, check out different news websites, etc. Then, once MySpace came into existence I would spend hours at a time on that site, updating my profile, looking at other friends’ profiles, just keeping up with everyone and finding new friends. When I got to UCF however I had deleted my MySpace and was back to just chatting via AIM with old friends and new friends. I found out about a new social networking site, Facebook, and decided to give it a shot and learn how to use it. I spent hours on there, not quite sure what Facebook was or what to do with it, but it was fun. I eventually stopped using AIM altogether and only accessed the web for Facebook, email and research. Throughout the course of college I’ve spent more and more time on the internet. I’m constantly on either my cell phone or a computer, checking my email about once an hour to make sure that I’m not missing important deadlines, meetings or questions from people. I’m on Facebook usually when I have a few free minutes to spare or when I’m bored and not really sure what else to do. Aside from those things I now use the internet to read up about issues that are important to me, to find other people who feel the same way I do about issues, to find new thoughts, ideas and theories on subject matter that I am very passionate about. At least once a day I can be found on feministing.com looking at the updates from people in the feminist community about issues going on nationally and internationally, from a feminist perspective of course.
I have definitely come a long way when it comes to how often and why I use computers, but one thing is still present in my life in regards to digital literacy. That one thing is that I am the absolute BEST at messing up anything that has to do with technology. I always find a way to freeze a computer, delete folders, lose emails, and not know how to make a camera on a computer work. I know how to do basic things on a computer and it’s weird because I’m a part of the generation that knows SO MUCH about the technology and the programs that are the most popular and yet I feel like I’m sort of in between our generation and our parent’s generation in regards to knowing how to use a computer and it’s programs and what to do with them. With that being said, when I got into this class and read the syllabus I was rather frightened about how much I might need to know and what I might have to do when it comes to using a computer. I mean, I just learned how to use a scanner and make files into pdf’s, so I feel very behind the curve. I think that I’m very intimidated by technology because there is just so much that goes into it all and I’ve never been properly trained. I’ve never had someone just sit down and try to teach me about all the neat things that I can do with the technology that I have so readily available to me. Maybe it’s because I’m a female and computers haven’t really been pushed on me to use for work or recreation, or maybe it’s because I’m the type of person that needs a lesson and is afraid to explore technology for fear of breaking something and getting in trouble. I’m not quite sure what the reason is as to my lack of digital literacy, but I’m hoping that through this class I might be able to gain some confidence and want to be brave enough to learn how to do interesting/useful things with the technology I’m so lucky to have.
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