Techno-Literacy Narrative
Warm Up Prompts
When i first started reading books from what I remember it was a bit of a challenge at first, I always enjoyed when my parents read me a book when I was going to sleep. One of my favorite books when I was a child was "The Cat in the Hat." I always loved reading it its like I read it so much that the words were so easy to read. Another book that I enjoyed reading was "Clifford." These two books were my favorite and being read to was nice when I was a child. It helped me grow as a reader today.
Learning to write was also a challenge because doing things the first time of course always is. Learning to write my name was quite difficult at first, since my name is long. Remembering how big I use to write to this day is now funny. I look back to some of the work that I have saved since I was a child and to this day I learned a lot. I really never wrote before starting pre-school. In preschool it was a challenge learning how to write. Learning how to color between the lines was a bit rough, but practice makes perfect.
Once I started pre-school was when I started writing my name and learned how to do letters and numbers from 1-10. Learning this of course was a little rough at first, but practicing writing the numbers while I got older started becoming easier. I learned reading small words at first such as, Cat, and Hat. I also learned syllabes which helped me sound out each word I was writing. "school versus home" was different because in school I had my teacher read instructions to the class and at home I found it easier to concentrate. Home was where I felt I learned more because my parents always helped me write my name out and it got to be a habit after awhile which is great.
I believe at the age of 8 was when I got my first screen name. I was so excited because I got to chat with my friends and family and learning how to do this was a little rough of course at first but then it started becoming easier. I remember going into chatrooms when I was around the age of 11. I talked to all different people in them, which now I would not do this because talking to random people can get a person in trouble. At the time of course I was so happy because talking to new people was nice and just using ASL I felt like I learned a lot of new information from random strangers. To this day now my favorite websites I use are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. On these websites at least I know who I'm talking to now like when I was young in chatrooms.
To this day text messaging I feel like my writing can be interuppted a bit from this because when I text message words are not spelled correctly using abbreviations is popular. I do enjoy reading text messages which is included in reading because I am actually reading something. To this day now I am reading more than I use to. My favorite book I have read while in high school was "A Walk to Remember." I loved reading this book it touched me in every way possible.
Some activities that I did while growing up in elementary school that involved reading and writing with family and friends were group chats. I would go in group chats with my friends and writing to each other was one way of communicating. Another activity was in middle school online instant messaging was popular. My friends and I would always chat with each other about what was happening and even gossiping was popular back then. In high school and even to this day now text messaging is the main technology that is being used. This is how I communicate with my friends not as when I was in middle school I used the phone more for communicating. If I need to find something out I text message someone then I would meet up with them If they needed something.
The way reading and writing is used to keep in touch with friends is either by emailing or text messaging. Reading text messages is now popular in my life today. Writing emails to my friends is also something I do. Now people are using twitter to update what they are doing or where they are going to be. Keeping in touch through Facebook is also popular today. I leave my friends messages on there if they are not answering their text messages sometimes. Techonolgy is getting better and better everyday pretty soon everything will be touch and talk. Some things that I've learned from my friends is that never to give up on anything. They have helped me stay strong. A skill that I have learned from a friend is I've watched my friend do card tricks which I thought was quite amazing. It was intersting watching it be performed. This doesn't really involve reading and writing.
Reading and Writing is used in school and at work by in school reading directions is important and writing is important mainly in english classes when writing papers. Also in math class, when solving a problem reading every direction to each problem is important, especially when solving word problems. At work reading different codes is important and memorizing them is also important. Working at Shop Rite for almost 6 years now I got use to the atmosphere around me and I am waiting to get my career job so I could leave. Writing down main facts from what you read is important so you do not need to go back to the whole story and re-read it again.
Some experiences I've had with writing and reading on the Internet is reading emails. Emails were more important back in the day, do not do as much today. Reading certain websites that are important when doing research for a paper or project is important. When I am doing research projects and need to cite sources I need to get information on the Interent in order to get it done. Scholarly journals are important when researching a topic given in an english class.
I've had some articles I had to read for one of my english classes. Reading them was quite interesting it was about plagarism. I learned more about plagarism then I had known before. Learning about this topic I thought was interesting because plagarism needs to be stopped and people are doing more and more everyday. This has shaped my identity as a writer by me watching what I write and make sure if I take something from a website that I use the right quoting method. Everything needs to be quoted if taken from another person.
Reflecting to Find a Focus
Most of my answers that I have responded to each of the questions do have things in common. It talks about how my writing was while I was growing up. Each experience shaped my idenity as a writer by my writing has grown since I was younger. Learning new words while gettin older is important and learning how to add interesting facts within my writing has become important. These experience helped me grow as a writer today. Proofreading my work is important so that I make sure what I wrote makes sense when turning in an assignment.
The only long pattern that I see that began in my childhood is me learning how to read and write. Some people are not taught as well as others about writing and reading. Learning to know how to read is important because going for job interviews is important if you are being asked questions you need to know how to respond back. Learning new vocabulary is important because it helps you build as a person. An experience I see from my childhood that sets up my current relationship with reading and writing are comparing and contrasting the things that I've learned. One similarity is sounding out each word even to this day I like to see how many syllabes a word has so pronucing it can be easier. A difference from my childhood as to now is I've taken a big step in life with spelling and grammar. Learning new grammar skills has become important and learning new words is also important because when writing its important to have new words then repeating the same ones over and over just becomes boring. Using your personality is important having an open mind to everything.
What I thought about writing at first while growing up that it can be difficult. For instance, learning new grammar has become difficult like where to add commas and apostaphes. This was quite the "shift" because writing was simple in my mind until the topic comes up and then thinking about it can be difficult depending on what it is. For instance, I had to write a paper in my British Lit. class which was difficult. Writing about that time things were taking place was boring and I had to really think about my writing.Chancing my writing is important because knowing what I am going to write can sometimes be a challenge. Once I chance my writing things start to become easier because at least I have some sort of idea what I am going to write. Writing in my future I am hoping gets even better I want to find ways on improving my writing. I want to be a Special Ed teacher so writing needs to be taken serious in order to do this. I love children and this is something I always wanted to do all through my life.
Some parts to my relationship with writing that are the result to my "formative experiences" are the way I am is the way I write. Whatever may come to my mind I like to jot down things so I enjoy free writing because ideas that come to mind I like to remember so writing them down on paper is something important to me. For instance, I keep reminders on my phone so I know what I need to get done because without them I would totally forget about half of the things I need to get finished for school and even in general. My relationship to writing that connects to my "nature" is just learning new techniques about writing and what I need to get done in order to complete what i need to.
I feel that writing can be fun depending on the topic that is either chosen or asked to write about. Writing about topics such as "the revolution" or "WWI" I believe is boring so writing would be looked as a turn off. Writing about my life for instance, would be interesting because its about myself so I know this topic really well. Writing about an interesting topic is always fun so I definately enjoy doing that. My expereinces in my life that I've gone through connect with my feelings about writing. My feelings undermine my identity as a writer by the way I am feeling a particular day all involves how good or bad my writing will be. If I am happy one day I will end up writing a lot. If I am sad or just not feeling right my ideas will slowly come to my mind and I will just lose interest in writing. It all depends on the kind of day I am having that involves my writing. I want to expand on my writing. I want it to be better and more interesting, because when I write I feel like I do not put much enthuisam in my writing which really needs to start changing.
The way I use writing/technology has changed by technology is getting so much more in depth that text messaging is so much easier then actually writing out things. Technology is getting better and better each day that probably by next year students will have devices that do their work for them. Who knows technology is getting better each day. "Turning Points" to me is something that totally twists the way someone writes for example, if someone is writing about their life a turning point could be like something that happened in their life that made them who they are today. A turning point could also be the ending of someones writing. Something that changed could also be a turning point. Turning Points could also be adventourous depending on what type of mood is happening in someones life.
Thinking about a personal, family, educational, or work experience that has drove my relationship to writing is important. My family has been there since I was born so they helped me grow on my wiritng. My parents would always encourge me to stay strong and never give up when it comes to school. Educational wise my writing has grown since being in college. While I was in Middlesex County College I felt like I didn't work as hard as I am now in Kean. My writing experience was looked upon as not to good. Wanting to graduate college now my writing has overall become better.
