nreddy – Page 2 – English 332

Take your time when you Tweet

By nreddy | February 16, 2015

Sponsorship in terms of digital literacies, in my opinion, is more self-driven than print-based literacies. The sponsors of digital literacies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, and more, tend to be the individual themselves. It is a voluntary effort to acclimate oneself with these literacies. On the other hand, print-based literacies tend to be sponsored by educators and, in my case, parents. Students are forced to become literate in many print-based sources like how to obtain crucial information from a textbook chapter and being able to take in-class exams.

The most recent example I have of learning a new literate practice is Twitter. My experience with using Twitter was quite similar to Keri Franklin’s. It took me several weeks to get the hang of how the symbols # and @ worked, what a “DM” was, as well as what putting a period in front of an @ did.

I was forced to make a Twitter account at the beginning of last semester as part of my position as sports writer for Chico State’s student newspaper, The Orion. Part of my job was to “live tweet” scores and statistics updates during home and away Chico State athletic events. As a new member of the Orion, as well as one who lacked any prior journalism experience, I was not formally instructed in the ways of the Twitter universe. I slowly came to grasp the inner workings of Twitter by intently reading the tweets of the people I followed, noticing which of my tweets received favorites and/or retweets (and tried to figured out how), and by not being scared of missing up. In a roundabout fashion, I’ve come to the point where I can confidently call myself proficient at using Twitter. To borrow from Franklin’s four keys to composing, I sought help from more Twitter-savvy journalists, studied my intended audience, and keyed in on Twitter’s terminology. Feel free to follow me on Twitter @NickIsReddy, and I’ll follow you back!

The Importance of….Penmanship?!

By nreddy | February 7, 2015

I decided to interview my mom via email for the Literacy Narrative assignment. She is in her mid 50’s and is a Chico State alum from waayyy back in the day. She is the second youngest of five children raised my my grandparents, neither of whom attended college. My mom’s responses were pretty neat and I learned a lot from what she told me. Some of the highlights from the interview were how my grandmother stressed the importance of good penmanship, instead of reading, to my mother.

“As far as values my parents placed on reading and writing, I would say penmanship was important to Nana and that reading wasn’t really emphasized, rather it was just there. I do remember Nana bending over me and Uncle Bruce at the kitchen table teaching us how to properly hold our pencils and to sit up straight with our feet flat on the floor as we wrote. I also remember that Nana read to us often, and that Grandpa rarely did.”

My grandmother was the primary sponsor of literacy for her kids. She would take them to the library, did all the adult writing (lists, bills, forms, letters, cards, etc) in the household, and read books to them. Reading was skill just assumed to be acquired on ones own in their household, but it was not taught or had any emphasis placed on its importance. My mom is semi-retired now and really enjoys reading and writing, for she quite a bookworm, a big fan of email, and frequent list-maker.

Interactions Between People and Written Texts

By nreddy | February 2, 2015

The section of the Hamilton article titled “Interactions between people and written texts” resonated with me for two main reasons. The primary reason I chose to discuss this section in my blog post was because I felt it was a relatively simple concept to grasp and relate to. Secondly, the image I selected fits in perfectly with everything Hamilton laid out in the section regarding participants, setting, artifacts, and activities.

I connected each of Hamilton’s sub-points in the passage. The participants of literacy in this selection of photos involved humans, either an individual to a crowd. I saw this as reading a book by myself as well as reading a slide of a Powerpoint presentation in a large GE class. As for the setting, literacy between people and written texts can occur anywhere. If the physical location is not apparent, the words in the picture usually can indicate where the literacy is occurring. Legal notices could indicate a courthouse while a scoreboard would apply to a sporting event. The activity of literacy in these instances is not only reading, but can also involve discussion, displaying, and “disputing written texts of various sorts” (Hamilton, 28).

The picture I chose for this week just so happens to be a perfect illustration of “interactions between people and written texts. Four elementary school aged children gather around a large book (I chose to view the book as a dictionary, as it is quite large and lacks any visible illustrations) and appear to read something that was previously unknown to them.

The setting is a classroom, judging from the fact that there are two other students in the background. A teacher would be in the room but is not present in the picture.The participants are the four students surrounding the book. They are the ones directly interacting with the written text.The artifacts in the picture could include the table on which the book is placed, as well as a pencil behind the ear of the boy pointing to the text.The activity performed by the participants is reading. In this instance, reading has become a communal and social event. The picture depicts both boys and girls reading, something I think is culturally significant. I feel that this is important because in some cultures girls are not allowed to attend school to become literate.

Read, Write, Spike!

By nreddy | January 25, 2015

Hey everyone! My name is Nick and I’m a junior English Education major. I’m from Mountain View, CA, in the heart of Silicon Valley, and home to Google and Shoreline Amphitheatre. I came to Chico as a freshman in the fall of 2012 with the thought that “I’m awful at math and science but I can read and write pretty well, so I guess I should stick to my strengths.” Fast forward to today and I’m proud to say that I now know what I want my career to be. My goal is to teach high school English in the Bay Area, preferably back in Mountain View, and possibly get into coaching.

Aside from my passion for reading and writing, I enjoy watching, discussing and playing sports, with my two favorites being basketball and volleyball. I’m a member of the Chico State men’s club volleyball team and always itching to jump in on pick-up basketball games at the Wrec. I also wrote for The Orion last semester as a sports reporter and had a blast, despite not having any prior journalism experience. Furthermore, because I can’t get enough of athletics, I spend my summers working as a sports camp director at my former high school. Lastly, I’m very proud to have a younger brother who is a United States Marine.

My personal literacy practices are quite varied. I like to believe that I will read almost anything, but with a preference towards my interests, of course. I will give any book, magazine, website, social media post, and more at least a try. Growing up in a household where both my parents read frequently, I suppose it was natural that I would read a lot as well. To put it bluntly, If I came across words, I would read them.

The Szwed reading was interesting, and I tended to agree with his claims. I particularly liked Szwed’s assertion that people can be literate in different contexts. To paraphrase the the text, Szwed says proposes that a boy who isn’t able to read assigned texts may actually be very good at reading and comprehending baseball cards and statistics (423). This bit really stood out to me and it made a ton of sense. I can recall instances during my middle school education where I just wasn’t interested in an assigned text for whatever reason and chose to read something else. It didn’t necessarily mean i was illiterate (I like to think of myself as the opposite), but not engaged enough. As a future teacher, I hope to notice these instances in students and be able to respond accordingly, not just reprimand them for not doing the work.

One aspect of the article that was new to me was the difference between public and private literacy. I never really thought about the importance of aligning the two domains. If a child isn’t read to/exposed to reading material at home, and the school thinks that he/she is, problems would arise. Even so, a child could still be literate at reading street signs through location identification instead of reading. I found that concept very intriguing.

What Counts as Literacy?

Reading together

Calendar

Author: nreddy