“We are convinced that narratives are a form of ‘social action’ available to all humans.” This quote comes from the article “Digital Literacies, Technological Diffusion, and Globalization” from the online book Transnational Literate Lives in Digital Times by authors Berry, Hawisher, and Selfe. The project follows thirteen international students, who documented their interactions and experiences with literacy and technology, as well as other aspects of their lives. After reading a few pages, this quote caught my eye and related to my topic of digital literacy. Literacy and personal narratives are a social action, only perpetuated by technology and social media. And narratives can take on many forms, as evidenced by this picture. This is what I consider as my first “introduction” into digital literacy. Sure, I had access to a family computer since I was four years old, and I had a Nintendo DS (a Nintendo DS Lite, to be exact), but this cell phone was the first piece of technology that gave me my first experiences in digital literacy. I could read game prompts in Nintendogs, and I could read instructions on my pet store CD-ROM game, but a real-life cell phone allowed for communications with actual people via phone calls and more importantly to eleven-year-old Melissa, text messages. My first phone was an LG Chocolate in the color “Ice Blue.” I received it for Christmas when I was eleven years old. My father decided to call the cell phone while I was unwrapping the box. However, his plan quickly backfired, since the box had a High School Musical 2 bookmark taped to it, and I thought I had just received a musical bookmark. Man, those were the DAYS. Any time I bring up my first phone and connect with other LG Chocolate users, there’s this instant moment of connection (no pun intended). From the picture, you can tell that the structure of this phone was a bit unique and a “high edge” piece of technology for the mid-2000’s. The phone had a mini turntable that allowed its user to scroll through the menu, and it would slide up to reveal the keyboard. Any other LG Chocolatier will recount the countless times friends would steal your phone on the school bus just to get the satisfaction of gliding the turntable around in circles or sliding the phone up and down into oblivion. My parents originally got me the phone because they were ready to take the step of leaving me home alone for bits of time, but helping me score some brownie points with my peers for having a cool phone was a plus. Thinking back to my early cell phone days, I have come to the realization that something as simple as text messages can count as a social and digital narrative. Even what I thought were meaningless text messages to my friends about going to dance class or what server I was going to be on in Club Penguin were all documentations of my personal life put into written and digital form. Writeawriting.com defines a personal narrative as: “A personal account which offers details, analysis and a personal opinion from a particular happening or event, experienced by the writer” Phone calls and text messages I sent through this phone hundreds of times certainly would have contained details, analysis, and opinions from my personal accounts. Even though this personal narrative wasn’t written down in a traditional long-form story, it certainly encapsulated my personal life. So, I finish with the other half of my beginning quote: “we understand the stories told to us in words and videos not only as vehicles for formulating identities—people's ways of telling themselves into being—but also as personal efforts to tell about and bring into being a new kind of globalized world” (Berry et. al). Not only were my very early text messages bringing my identity into being, but they were also the early trends of the massive personal, technological, and digital world we know today. Sources: writeawriting.com/essay/personal-narrative/ http://ccdigitalpress.org/transnational/ch1.1.html
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May 2018
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