User:Celiaburns

Celia Burns My Digital Growth The Essay I cannot say for certain the first time I used a computer, but the earliest memory I have of using one involves me at a very young age sitting in my parents’ bedroom in front of a giant white Macintosh desktop computer while typing out my wish list to Santa on some basic word processor type thing, one letter at a time. The computer now plays a major role in the way I live my life, but it was not always so important to me. The computer started off as something I would occasionally hear, think, or talk about but was not originally something I sought out to use. Throughout the years, the computer, and subsequently the internet, became a more and more prevalent thing in my life, and many different people tried to teach me about the computer in many different ways. In the end, however, it was through direct experiences with the computer on my own time that shaped my digital literacy more than any formal instruction ever did. The computer was never something that I ever really wanted to use, it seemed to be the less efficient way of doing things, even things like research. I was seven years old and in the second grade when I used a computer to research. I had a project about recycling due and my dad drove me down to the Collins Hill Public Library and told me to use the computer to get the information I needed, despite me wanting to just use the encyclopedia and text research tools that I was familiar with. My dad assured me that the computer would have more information and would be better, but that was all the guidance I got. In this way, I was very much just "tossed in the deep end" so to speak. My dad told me that there was a way to find answers with the computer but did not tell me how. He sat me down, logged me in and walked off to go read some political biographies. I know that this was before Google, so I don't know for sure how I got my info or where I went, but I do know that I learned about composting and "recycling leaves" as I put it (I also remember this being the day I got my first very own library card). Netscape was the browser of choice at this time and they provided a very basic search engine. From then on out, if I wanted to do something, I found a way to do it on that giant, painstakingly slow, Macintosh. I believe that I was not the only person who learned how to first navigate a computer by just directly immersing themselves and just figuring it out as they go along. I was never really taught anything specific about how to use the internet, because my parents were still in the process of figuring a lot of that too. This lack of a formal teaching would have been fine if my school had followed up on this and provided some sort of lesson on how to search for what you want to know and then later compounded upon that lesson with lessons on how to know what sources you can trust. When I turned in my recycling project, I am fairly sure that I did not attach sources or anything like that, but my teacher did not bother to tell me that was something that was necessary. Instead, that first step was skipped all together and by the time I was taught how to determine what was trustworthy, Google had already been invented and was already a crucial part of both my research and general internet using lifestyle. Thank god for Google. When I got a little bit older different classes in elementary and middle school tried to teach me different skills, but I made the most progress outside the class room through social uses of my computer and internet. When I was in 5th grade, the computer skills they tried to teach us were more system oriented. Keyboard shortcuts and the beauty of the menu bar at the top of word documents was usually the focus of these classes with very little time thinking about teaching us about the internet. I learned how to navigate the internet in the most basic way possible and work a few different programs, but while in that classroom unmonitored, my mouse went directly to Oregon Trail, a computer game that was installed on all the computers in the lab because it was somehow deemed educational, despite the fact that we would actually learn about the Oregon Trail for another few years. Despite just being a computer game, Oregon Trail impacted the way I used a computer a lot more than one would think. Through Oregon Trail I learned about drop down menus, scroll bars, how to know something was clickable when the mouse cursor turned from an arrow to a hand and how to bring up other options through the right click option. As I started using the internet more, and not just CD-ROMs of games, I began to recognize some of these things on websites and I become more self-sufficient when using the computer. Not only did games like Oregon Trail and Cluefinders help me recognize when things could be done on the computer, they also built up a type of computer specific perseverance. There is always a way to accomplish what you want on the computer, sometimes you just have to go through a few different options and attempts. However there was quite a bit of time before I started using the internet in a way that I would just “be online.” Because of the whole “no one can use the phone when someone is online” thing, computer time in my household was limited to things that did not involve activating the dial-up, and mostly because I just really liked a bunch of different computer games. A similar thing happened a few years later when my middle school and high school tried to teach me how to type. There were different programs we had to complete and our teacher would turn off or screens and cover our hands to make sure we could type without looking at either. I always came close to failing that portion of the class, and get really worked up and say things like, “I hate typing, and I hate computers!” These were obvious lies, and I really wanted to be a better typist, but typing things like “the quick brown dog” over and over just did not motivate me to learn. Even as a freshman in high school, I was such a slow typist that if I had a very long paper (that I of course put off till the last minute) I would dictate it to my mom who was somehow a typing wizard. Then AIM became popular, I got a screen name and nightly chats with my friends turned out to be the best way for me to improve my typing, because talking about myself is always a great motivator. Later, when social networks came into play, I had a reason to be on the internet for longer periods of time and my typing continued to improve along with my familiarity with the internet. I always had to be difficult about the way I learned things. One major aspect of digital literacy that I just do not have is the ability to alternate between interfaces and be just fine. With the exception of that very first Macintosh, my family and I have only had PCs. When college came around and I needed a laptop, the cool commercials with Justin Long convinced me that I wanted a Mac. We went to Circuit City and I tested out a Mac, I freaked out. “Why are all the minimize/exit out buttons on the other side? Why is this so confusing?” The snotty sales representative told me I was probably better off with an interface I was familiar with. I was embarrassed. Even when I got my laptop home, I was resistant to some of the layout changes. The keyboard seemed somehow different, and I thought I would never ever be able to use a track pad as efficiently as I could use a mouse. Now, I find it odd to type on anything other than a laptop or a flat keyboard, and I get annoyed if I cannot use my thumb to scroll down a page in a track pad, and it has gotten to the point where the sound of clicking on a mouse or even the clickers on my laptop is bothersome because I can silently click on things with my track pad. I suppose the biggest part of being literate in the digital way is being able to adapt. If I had to switch over to a Mac, I would eventually figure out how everything works the same way I figured out how to navigate Google and type quickly; through direct immersion in it and frequent use and experience. The digital world is constantly changing, and people are constantly changing with it. My family used to have one computer sitting on a small desk in the corner of my parent’s bedroom. My family now has a room we just call “the computer room,” it’s essentially an office but because the main focus of that room is the computer, we just call it “the computer room” and there is one desktop and one laptop in that room at all times. Now, when left alone with a computer, I no longer play games about manifest destiny, math, or anything else educational, but I blog, tweet, and update all the time and all of those things are secretly changing the way I view technology just like Oregon Trail, Chip’s Challenge, and Math Blasters did back in the days of my childhood.

A Linear Timeline/Collage that visually demonstrates the essay you just read/skimmed/laughed at can be seen here: http://www.vuvox.com/collage/detail/0429df69ad

A critical essay reflecting on how the original essay and the timeline coexist can be read here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18XPecZijTtEfhE876xnlm_yY0G2277bLwqIxZiEzEbM/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CJL5y8II