Technologies and the Future of

Writing

JOURNAL
 WEEK 1
Dear Diary,
I just finished the first week of my new module Technologies
and the Future of Writing. I am so overwhelmed , I don’t know
what I’m going to do!! I was introduced to so many new
technologies that I've never even heard of before, and to top it
all off we have to work on Mac’s, which I’m also unfamiliar
with.  I am so far from being technologically literate
that I’m completely lost with everything we are doing in
class. The only real experience I have with technology is with
email, Google, and a few Microsoft programs. I don’t even
have experience in social networking sites like Facebook or
Myspace, so the whole idea of posting comments is
completely awkward to me.
 WEEK 1 Cont.
Now I'm supposed to be using the micro-blogging service
Twitter and sites like bitly.com, not to mention a million
other sites I’ve never heard of before like Word Press,
which is where I’m supposed to read and publish blogs
throughout the module.  On top of all of this I had
to open an email account in Gmail and learn about  RSS
(Real Simple Solution) feeds , Google Documents, Reader
and Buzz. This week has been so crazy I could cry. I don't
know if I'm ever going to get through this module!
Yours truly,
Technologically illiterate
 WEEK 2
Dear Diary,

I just finished the second week of my module and I am still confused about what
we are supposed to be doing, although I don’t feel anywhere near the way I felt
last week when everything was being introduced. Now that I have had some time
to mess around and get acquainted with a few of the sites I am feeling more
comfortable. I never thought I would admit this, but Twitter isn't as bad as I
thought it would be. In fact, it’s really helpful when it comes to the class because
whenever I’m not sure about something in class, all I have to do is log onto
Twitter or Google Reader and check out the recent Tweets between my
classmates, although I will say that it is a little difficult for me to access it as
much as I would like because I don’t have internet on my phone. Maybe one of
these days I’ll get around to updating my phone so I can use it more often. I also
kept some screen captures(another cool thing I learned how to do) so you can see
for yourself, because I know its hard to believe.
Yours truly,
confused
 WEEK 2
Screen Capture
 WEEK 3
Dear Diary,
Well I made it through the third week of my module and I am happy to
say that I am finally getting a grasp on all of this! I met up with my
partner Matt so we could write our blog
The "Net Generation" of Literacy which was about the Plester and
Wood reading “Exploring Relationships Between Traditional and
New Media Literacies: British Preteen Texters at School.” This was
a fun blog to do because it was all about the new generation of kids
who are being raised in a world of computer-mediated
communication technology. I found it to be interesting because I was
one of the people who believed that this way of communicating was
damaging to children's literacy skills, but the authors of this article
believe that since the children are experiencing an increased
exposure to language it actually enhances their literacy. Who would
have thought!?
 WEEK 3
Screen Capture: 1st Word Press Blog
 WEEK 3 Cont.
After that, we wrote another blog
Sexy Can I Pardon My Twitter in which we
discussed the Twitter community and how people
get immediate feedback from their followers. I
learned a lot from doing these two blogs, but it
wasn’t until I had to post my own blog about
something I had repurposed that I had the
opprotunity to put my knowledge to the test, which
was a total success might I add. On yeah, I also
posted a Tweet using bitly.com once I finished.
 WEEK 3
Screen Capture: Tweet Using bitly.com
 WEEK 3
Screen Capture:2nd Word Press Blog
 WEEK 3
Screen Capture:3rd Word Pres Blog
 WEEK 3 Cont.
I am really getting good at this stuff, so much so that I surprise
myself! In the weeks prior to this I had only learned to maneuver
my way through Word Press, but never actually did anything with
it other than read blogs posted by others. Now I was the one
posting a blog, which honestly was something I had never thought
I would do in a million years, mostly because I believed I was
incapable of doing so. Although this may not seem like much, it
meant a lot to me to see how far I had come in just a few weeks.
Now I’m not just viewing these sites, I am actually creating work
within them and learning to use them in them in ways that are
beneficial to my class work and writing.
Yours truly,
Getting good
 WEEK 4
Dear Diary,

Wow! I can’t believe I made it. Not only did I make it, but I learned how to use so
many cool things that I never thought I would use! I can proudly say that I am
technologically literate for the first time in my life!! This week I worked on
researching data for our group White Paper on the topic of You Tube. Through doing
this I was able to learn all about the community of You Tube, which is an information
ecology described by Nardi and O’Day in their book. This is because in You Tube the
participants are the main focus, not the technology itself. Prior to this, I had only
thought of You Tube as a place to watch videos, but now I see that it is a community
of people who share information in a variety of ways. Another great part of doing our
White Paper was that we created it through Google Wave so we could share the work
between all of us. I had heard about Google Documents before, but I never heard of
Wave until this, which is totally awesome by the way. By using Wave we could each
contribute to the paper at the same time which was extremely helpful in making the
best use of our time together.
 WEEK 4
Cont.
As we read in Moore’s article Technology Literacy “To be technology literate one must
develop an understanding of the technologies one uses, they must know how they
function, how they work and how they interrelate.” Since being in this module I can
finally proudly say that I am technology literate for the first time in my life! If I were to
rate myself on the technological literacy scale, before this module, I would have said I
was somewhere between “uncooperative” and “uncritically resistant.” Now having
completed this module I would have to consider myself as “receptive to and can
articulate affordances and constraints.” Over these past few weeks I have gone from not
even knowing the names of the different technologies I was being introduced to, to
learning how to use and incorporate them into my life.

 Yours Truly,

 Technologically literate
