Electronic Literacy Paper

Kevin Geyer

Jack Hennes

English 191

4 September 2012

Typing at An Early Age.

“This is the future.”  These were the exact words my dad said to me as he setup our family’s very first computer.  “Your going to be using this more often in your schooling from now on.”  All I could think was yeah right, this? No way that this was even going to compare to writing on a piece of paper.  Anyway, weighing in at 45 pounds and 36 inches tall, this monstrous machine was about to change the way that, we as a family and a society, use text; I just didn't know it yet.  

Looking back now, I never realized that literacy was moving into the electronic stages.  Mainly because the only things computers had on them back then was Internet Explorer 3, and Word Pad; and the only web pages out there were AOL and Yahoo.  Some people must have seen this day coming, but for me I can tell you that it was a huge surprise.  

When I started using the computer to type for the first time it was, for lack of a better phrase, “Interesting.”  As looked down at the keyboard I was very bewildered; the keys on the keyboard seemed, to me, to be out of order.  I was expecting the order to be alphabetical, you know A,B,C,...etc; but to my surprise, it wasn't. By the time all of this is happening, my school has already started putting us into computer classes, so that we can learn to type, use the new Word, and Powerpoint (they must not have cared much for excel), and just become more familiar with computers in general.  While in this class, the instructor taught us how the keyboard is formatted differently then the alphabet is and why.  She called this particular type of keyboard a “QWERTY keyboard.”  She explained that using this type of keyboard would ultimately make us better typists, providing us with the skills to one day be able to type faster then we can write with a pencil.  

Even before we acquired our first computer, I was never one for reading and writing.  I was one of those kids that you would consider to be “illiterate,” granted I was about 6 years old at the time.  Nevertheless, the adaptation of the computer allowed me to increase my literacy skills in a way that would soon expand my knowledge of what it means to be “literate.”  To this day, the only type of text I really enjoy to read are the ones seen on a computer screen, be it in a word document or posted online.  Having access to a computer for the majority of my life has influenced my development in literacy to a development in electronic literacy.  

From the time when AOL was introduced, to the newer Facebook phase; The electronic literacy influence on the world has been consistently growing, slowly taking over most of the text in the globe.  From the standpoint of a developing teen during this age, the need for actual printed text is becoming obsolete.   Today when you are assigned a writing assignment for class, you are specifically told to type it.  They no longer want you to handwrite anything, and due to this, handwriting skills have seen a dramatic drop.  I feel then, from this realization, it is safe to say electronic literacy has greatly changed both the way the world reads and writes. 

Looking back to when I had spent about a month or so using a computer, my dad comes up to me and says; “hows it been going?” “did you master the keyboard yet?”  I mean really, its been a month and he wants to know if I have mastered using a keyboard.  I haven't even yet today mastered the skill of using a keyboard.  Although I must tell you that using the keyboard was a lot easier then I had expected, it is still a challenge, one that has been with me for my life’s entirety.  

When we talk about how electronic literacy has changed the way in which we read and write, there is one aspect that really comes to mind.  Its an 8 letter word, “spelling.”  Back before the world was filled with these wonderful machines people had to learn to spell everything, and if they needed to, they had to look it up in the dictionary.  Now a days with the click of a button you can see the spelling for the words that appear to be, what was the intended word.  I personally know that if it wasn’t for spell check, there would be no way I would make it through my first couple years of high school.  Letting the computer spell for you has led to a huge drift in the academic world.  I am scared to see what would happen to this world, if suddenly all of the electronics went dead, and people had to start writing letters.   Since no one seems to be able to spell correctly without a computer, there wouldn't be a person on this planet that would be able to read those letters.

Now that I take an even closer look at the past, I realize that my dad was correct the whole time.  It was important to learn how to use these miraculous inventions; they are now an important part of todays influence in literacy.  Computers have changed the way that we, as a society, use text.  Especially on a day to day basis, so much that we would actually start to rely on them to get us through our lives.  It is to be hoped that though, we wont be relying to much on them, because the day when we don't have them, we wont have literacy.