“After several weeks, I began to consider composing a tweet, but I felt unsure. What would I write about? Why would anyone care what I have to say? I was scared to type 140 characters. I feared that I would do it wrong”

          At first, when I started reading this article, I was thinking how one person could possibly care this much about Twitter. Really? Obsessing over how to compose the perfect tweet. Good lord. But, upon finishing the article, my opinion changed. It is fascinating to me that the author could learn so much about writing and rhetoric through a social media site that restricts the amount of characters per post. This access to these social media sites, digital literacy sponsorships, are now the new tool that teaches this new technologically driven generation to expanding their knowledge of writing, and even reading.

          Relating personally to my family, my two younger brothers were able to read on and identify with phone apps before books. My brother Scott even know how to text me from my stepmom’s phone and how to successfully play Words With Friends. The new digital literacy is slowly taking over print-based literacy, because the digital world has a bigger following and is even being promoted in elementary schools through online reading and writing workshops. I tried to become accustomed to digital literacy, even gave into getting a nook, tried to conform to what was becoming so popular, but could not do so because I grew up with print-based literacy for the majority of my life. Everything that goes into digital literacy was so confusing to me, which made me laugh because my little brothers, who really were not significantly introduced to print-based literacy, adapted so well!

Part of Scott’s Interview:

Do you like to write? Um I am sorta bad sorta good and I just wrote a big story called “The Three Adventurers” about meerkats that venture out. The reason I wrote it about meerkats was that because we were learning about them and that was one of our homework assignments and I actually really enjoyed it. I wrote the whole story and I put too much ‘them’s and ‘may’s and I fixed them with ands on the computer because my hands hurt too much. It took up a whole page and a half!

What did they do in the story? Their names were Manny, Carlos, and Digler who venture out trying to find a jungle. They pack all of their food, which was chocolate covered scorpions, lizards, and fried beetles. And then they had an enemy; the ferocious fat hungry bob the hyena. He was so fat that they punched him in the stomach and he got a bellyache. When he left they saw a jungle and I said “wow that’s a really really big lizard guys, I don’t think we can take that home to share” and they met with the family and it was actually and alligator!

Part of Travis’s Interview:

(This is where Travis took over the interview) Britnee, want me to tell you something cool? My friend told us about how you can create your own Pokémon cards, actually you have to choose a picture and put it on the website and print it out. You choose your own HP. I put a destroyer that looks like he, I cant really describe it, he had shorter HP and moved like acid and had 200 damage and poisons your opponents Pokémon, and he also has a move called tail whip that does 70 damage! …maybe I can find a picture of you and make you a Pokémon too! What type would you like to be? Maybe fire. No, I think you are more like a water Pokémon because you’re not cool enough to be fire and water beats fire. Plus I’m a mermaid. Yeah maybe we can find a picture of you standing by the river or something; I’m going to go make that!

So much of this article points out how literacy shows up in unlikely places and literacy can be used to the most random of things. Before reading, I would not have even thought about the different ways literacy presents itself to the world. Hamilton states, “Showing that you are literate can be a statement of your social identity and status and lots of writing is not done on paper” (20). The fact that paper is only used as a conventional way to portray literacy fascinated me. It made me realize how many writings and images are stretched over a horizon of platforms, all with different intentions such as “artifacts [that] include papers and other writing surfaces such as gravestones, banners and trophies” (Hamilton 28). I would have never tied literacy with a gravestone before this class, because when i think of literacy, I tend to only think about education, which limits SO much.

 

            This picture I found involves the fact that literacy can be used as a celebratory item through the use of cake. Everyone loves cake and has had it at least once in their lives (if you have not, wow, just wow). Think about where though: birthdays, achievement parties, retirements, weddings, etc. Each one of these typically has a saying to represent the event. Now, with the help of major fan bases and skilled cake decorators, even the simple cake has transformed into advertisements of popular fictions to match themed parties and whatnot. The food item you cannot wait to cut into and eat has become a representation of what books you like to read and visual literacy with what movies you loved seeing.

 

            Even this has escalated into not only literacy being part of celebration, but also literacy seen as an accessory. Those same books and movies that you loved are transformed into items such as jewelry, shirts, sweatshirts, etc. I personally define this response in literacy as a “walking billboard,” which is based of the popularity of the subject in correlation with conformity. But, having more and more people advertise these examples of literacy brings awareness and interest from outside parties.

Well hello there everyone. My name is Britnee Van Velden. I tell people Britnee with “one T and two E’s,” yet every time growing up I was either corrected to the general spelling of “Brittany,” or just sat quietly as I was ignored. I grew up in Huntington Beach, California. This is a place where seasons do not exist and it is a constant seventy degrees outside. It was nice, but it bored me. I transferred to Chico State in the fall and I am currently a junior studying English Education emphasizing in language and literacy, while seeking to obtain my E.S.L. certificate in hopes to teach abroad (hopefully in Italy, but I’m not too picky, I just want to travel).

Throughout my middle school and high school experiences, I dreaded going to my English classes. In relation to Szwed’s text, it was because teachers were attempting to get their students at all equal literacy levels that made me fall behind. What really stood out to me was Szwed’s description of the differing styles of reading, such as “silent reading and reading aloud” (425). It was the dreaded popcorn calling everyday in class that made me hate reading. Instead of focusing on what was being said, I was always too busy counting what paragraph I would have to read and practicing it in my head, attempting to master the pronunciation of every word until it was my turn. My social anxiety made me think that reading, particularly reading aloud, was such a horrible activity that I chose to avoid it.

It was not until I was forced to do something to kill time, on a fourteen hour flight to Europe, that I forced myself to pick up a book and discovered the excitement authors provided their readers through imaginary environments and situations. I was instantly captivated enough to read cover to cover in a book titled Serendipity, by Louise Shaffor. Since then, my love for reading has grown into an obsession, finding stories as a way to escape my reality into something much more magical than just normal life. I choose to read books that involve a lot of fantasy or twisted realities, such as post apocalyptic novels.