I love me some WordPress. I was unfamiliar with the site until October 2010 when I was just starting my Sophomore year in college. I gained an internship with a local company called 4-Greeks where I had to become clear on the use of the site since we operated through this site. I was responsible for managing the blog. I then gained another internship blogging for Roomeo. Then I started one for my fraternity… I love it. Now I have a personal blog site that I do not update like I should.

Just a month ago I was contacted by a potential employer solely off the writing I had done on the site. WordPress lets anyone be a writer, a critic, a chef, a sportscaster, a political correspondant. The site allows the user to feel like a big wig for any topic of interest. The interface is easy enough for novice users and enough customization for a professional. The use of pictures, videos, links, and other media is easy and quick along with free layouts for the public to use.

WordPress is great to use for a small business and I am currently helping my father build his business that has been around for over 60 years by implementing a blog aspect to his website. Above all, it is honestly a lot of fun to poke around on.

It is great for students that want to show future employers, hey! Here I am, these are my thoughts, my interests  my talents; if you like them, contact me, if not, move right along.

In our group we have been trying to master “popcorn”, a digital storytelling website. So far we have created some very interesting clips to show for our project. Popcorn can grab tweets, google maps, images, videos, and comments and place them all on a video timeline. Tweets are live and current so watching the video will always be different and up to date. Popcorn was found through a TED talk. It is still in its development state more or less, but still up for use. We might incorporate this into our presentation by having the class shout out a story with all kinds of topics. We aren’t too sure yet, but it should be interesting.

In James Gee’s book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, I noticed something about my personal literacy. In being able to relate the content to my personal life experiences of video games I was more deeply connected with the material. Some of the readings so far have been very dry for me, but being able to relate literacy to something I grew up with was a great tool in capturing my attention.
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I am no teacher and do not plan on being one, but this simple thing can take on so many different views. I like it best when one of my classmates explained that ideological literacy is a leftist view and autonomous literacy is a conservative view. The clouds had parted and I felt like things in the world were right, then I read Street’s Whats “new” in New Literacy and I am again lost in this struggle. When Street suggest that in society there are “functional illiterates”, “good readers” and “illiterates” that all makes sense. There are students who can read and write, but do not practice these skills or are not enthusiastically involved with them simply because they carry limited weight in the field they are going into and that is fine, but in our fields we need to be good readers and in turn good writers. …

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In Brant’s writings literacy is again defined as an evolving term. I took up the offer to ask my parents about literacy and where they stand and compared it to my literacy goals today. There is such a unique difference in my two parents because of their background and current jobs. My father runs an auto parts store in my hometown and he mentioned to me that outside of sales and records, there is no real need for him to read much more than about sports and literacy through television. He said that he always wanted to get into reading and appreciated that my mother reads so much. I actually bought him a book on CD called S*** My Dad Says because I had read it and it really reminded him of myself and he enjoyed it. He said that since he doesn’t have much time for reading it was nice to have something new to hear in his car trips to meetings and work. When I asked him if this would help him try to read for fun more often he simply replied “I can’t see well enough,” which was a fair assessment. My mother who works as a court reporter, reads religiously. She shares books with me and vise versa.
I have always loved that connection. In the reading we did for Brant I like the point made that slaves were told to read the bible, which stayed true to Christianity while also giving them rights and literacy power which I assume greatly benefited them in the form of civil rights (Fredrick Douglas is a prime example). It seems apparent that throughout history religion has played a great role in helping define literacy. Priest were only allowed to read the works of the bible until it became readily available to all people. When this change happened, religion changed greatly.
It seems to be apparent that in my parents life and mine reading is most heavily used in either work related fields or in personal pursuits. My father reads sports columns because he loves sports, my mom reads novels for the adventure, and I read self-help books to get a leg up in a time where I am applying for post graduate jobs. I think these trends will change as my needs change as well. Currently I am on track with literacy at the same pace that most literacy savvy people are, but I also understand that when I am older I will be as scared of new forms of literacy as my grandparents are with computers. Literacy is growing and will always grow, I have to make the effort to catch up constantly in my line of work.