BLOG 5

What interested me most through reading and class is technology of literacy. Before the class stared, I had no idea how it was like because I knew the definition of “literacy”, but I did not know what I would learn about it. When we started talking about digital literacies, I was fascinated by the topic. During the last twenty years, literacy has changed a lot in some way. Digital literacies like article on the Internet and blog as we do has played an important role in reading from real books. They do help people in everyday life, for example, students use them in academic scenes and some use online newspaper. As they have developed, print-based literacies are decreasing although real books are published. I like real books when reading something because I feel like “I am reading” as I turn pages of books and hear the sound of friction of papers. We also use computers to write something. I do not know it is good or not, but Japanese people get a bad influence since they started doing it. Less opportunities of handwriting made us forget how to write Kanji. It is a serious problem, and I watched about it on TV so many times. I just want to know what American people, I mean English speakers and writers, think about this. Do spell checker and word processing give them a good or bad influence? It is annoying for me though.

Familiar digital literacies I use are email and Facebook. These can be mainly used as communication tool among family and friends, sometimes with teachers. A difference between two is that email is to send messages directly and Facebook is to post something and look at others’ post even though we can send messages in using it as well. We can get much more information thought Facebook. This kind of usage is somewhat similar to books. The most interesting thing is a difference of language. When we are texting or posting, we use a different language, which is kind of computer slang. I used it without caring, but I noticed that it was not used in speaking (Some might say omg in oral conversation). I learned that language in speaking and writing are different in a class of last semester. I could see the differences in digital literacies. This connection made me more interested in literacy genres.