Sooooo Many Sponsors

Reading about Keri Franklin’s struggles with learning the new (to her) digital literacy of Twitter reminded me of my own struggles of learning new mediums of literacy. Remember creating your Facebook profile and friending people like mad? After I went crazy with describing myself and adding anyone I had met in passing I was stuck. I didn’t know how to navigate the site, how to comment, how to message or how to change my settings. It took some practice to become the Farmville/poke master I am today. Instagram was worse. All the pretty pictures was dazzling but I didn’t get the lingo. My first post consisted of #whatdoes#mean? I still haven’t heard the end of that from my more techy friends. Yet most of those technologically aware friends were my sponsors to digital literacies. They said, “Megan, you need to get on Instagram/Facebook/Tumblr/Pinterest/Myspace (like a million years ago)/ Twitter/Yelp/some-other-social-media-that-I-will-struggle-with-for-weeks.” Eventually I grudgingly create an account. My friends/sponsors then conduct impromptu lessons for me over the next few days until I get it. It was just like learning other non-digital literacies just with a different, non-academic sponsor. Recently I’ve had a certain professor, a.k.a. Kim Jaxon, encourage me to try Twitter, the only thing I ever stood my ground on not getting against my friends’ persistent wailings. Last night I caved and created a Twitter. For now I’m confused and hate myself for it, but I’m sure in a few weeks I learn to love it.

Literacy sponsors are anyone/anything who control access to literacy. This being said I don’t think there is much of a difference between digital and print-based literacy sponsors. The only difference I can think of is digital ads and digital sites themselves. A sidebar ad on a site may catch your eye and direct you to a whole new site of literacy to be learned. Then again I suppose a billboard could do the same though the likelihood of that working is slim.

My print-based sponsors today are the usual suspects; teachers, family, friends, library, authors, books, the list goes on. But many of those sponsors are also my digital sponsors. My teachers required me to use computers and various sites. Some friends gave book suggestions as well as digital site suggestions. My dad gave me my first computer lessons and continues to show me software programs. StumbleUpon and Pinterest are also my key digital sponsors since those sites lead me to all sorts of literacies. To sum up, I suppose that there is a lot of overlap between digital and print-based sponsors but the small difference would be the sponsors who are extreme on either end. Like the grumpy old history teacher that only allowed text based research and written essays and the purely digital sponsor only accessible online.