Literacy History

Amy Christman

Literacy History

Personal Literacy Biography

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I feel very fortunate for the literacy opportunities my personal and educational experiences have brought me. Personally, I have always enjoyed reading and I still find it to be both a comfort and a source of education. Although there are many different forms of literacy that describes my daily usage, I will always keep reading books for pleasure as an important part of my life and hopefully the lives of my future children. As a potential teacher in the schools, I expect to integrate literacy into as many lessons and activities as possible.

When I was young, my parents had literacy involved in every aspect of my life. As a toddler, they expected me to practice my alphabet and understand the sounds of each letter. When I was still too young to read myself, my parents would come to my bedside every night to tell me a bedtime story. This was my favorite time of day because most of the nights my parents would make up a story that included me in it. For example, my mother always told me adventure stories that "Amy" would go on with a unicorn (my favorite animal at the time). I will never forget how closely that bonded me and my family.

As I began to read and understand language, Berenstein Bears books was the most interesting for me as a young girl. They were based on a family of bears that took on life's challenges. On a daily basis, my dad and I would squeeze into his lazy boy chair in the living room, turn on the light and snuggled in his arms he would begin to spin the tail written in the book. I would close my eyes and imagine the story as it was told. He would incorporate voices and sounds that made it seem like if I reached out in front of me I would touch the bears themselves.

Each night reading the Berenstein Bears with my dad began to get more and more difficult as he expected me to contribute to the reading process. I see this now as him trying to develop my skills and progressing me through my learning in his own way. This was a time in my life where receiving and expressing the information was involved in my personal and enjoyable aspect of literacy.

During a difficult time in high school, I had just gotten surgery and was incredibly ill from it. I was so nauseous and miserable that I was not even able to watch TV or be comforted by the radio. My parents were at a loss for how to make things more comfortable for me, until the Harry Potter books were released. My mom and dad would take turns sitting in the living room with me as I moaned from pain and would begin to describe the scenes in the books. Since the books were hundreds of pages, they would switch on and off and I began to look forward to different characteristics of each of their readings. My dad would read quietly and with descriptive language as my mother would get animated and scream or make noises that correlated with the scene- her impressions of some of the characters seemed so creative.

Learning to develop my skills at an early age was lucky for my developmental progress. I was able to pronounce words, identify and define words as well as bring meaning to the story at an earlier age than my peers. Pronouncing words just reminds me of my dad pushing me to read the first sentence in the book or my mom incorporating a new word into our bedtime stories.

Identifying and defining words was an area that most likely was expressed in school for me. School was mainly where I learned to letter-sound correspondence and where I built the number of words I was able to identify. Applying meaning to the words came as an application from both home and school. At home, it may have had a more personal spin to a specific story but at school I was able to be pushed towards identifying deeper meanings and implications.

As an adult, I still enjoy reading on my own. These memories that I have been lucky enough to experience have taught me how important reading can be in a child's life. I used to read for pleasure before bedtime every night, but since schoolwork has become part of my daily routine it is not quite as easy for me to incorporate. However, every night I do have time it is always an enjoyable evening for me to relax with a book.

In school, I remember feeling frustrated by the structure of the classes and how they integrated reading into our lessons and homework. I was one of the few students who enjoyed reading for pleasure, but whenever an assignment was created for a chosen book, my interest would suddenly drop. I hated having to answer specific questions about the book I just read or having to interpret deeper meanings that I just did not feel were relevant to appreciating the literature itself but instead was built to ensure the students read the assigned pages.

As a future teacher, in my ideal classroom I would want literacy to become a creative, integrative and important aspect of every day. Allowing students to share, be rewarded for and instructed to progress in literacy terms will only let them feel positively about incorporating literacy into their everyday lives. Although they may not realize how involved literacy already is such as texting, tweeting, status updates or even reading instructions for baking, I want my students to have the passion and enjoyment that I was lucky enough to experience.

I think it is critical to spark the interest in literacy in a child at a young age. At this point in my career I do not know where I will be placed to teach and it is possible I may teach younger children. I hope that I can express the gratitude I have for my literacy incorporation into my students. Every teacher of quality should already be identifying their students literacy usage and how to improve on it. I know that this will be a large part of my future classroom and I hope to remember how my personal experiences made me feel.

Resume Assignment/ Cloud Computing

      Cloud computing has become such an important aspect of modern companies attempting to stay current and up to date. If you have an avid computer user in your company, utilizing their abilities to set up cloud computing is the best option for small companies and even for individual usage. Most young Americans use several social media outlets and more than one e-mail address.
     The positives for cloud computing in my opinion are that it can be accessed by any type of device or computer, it is based around users needs and it only charges for what you use it for. The last positive in that list is the most important for me- I am still in school (obviously) and am struggling to simply support myself, let alone pay for additional apps and usage that I can't afford. I also think it is very important for companies to continue with the "going green" process. In my mind, this is as paperless as a company can be without affecting the quality of what they offer. Cloud computing is a great way to ensure that companies are doing that next step towards a paperless society.
     One of the largest negatives that I can see occurring with cloud computing is that simply it is putting your companies ability to function on a computer. That is it- if high functioning, high speed internet was not available for whatever reason, this company will not be able to conduct business. In this same arena, I have a general fear of online safety. I know this sounds silly because I do quite a bit of internet shopping and signing up for different apps or memberships but I am always aware that someone who is much more computer savvy than myself could access that information. From a company's point of view, I would be concerned about the safety of my information.
     I think that the older generation is quick to judge about my generation's computer and internet usage and thinking that it is unnecessary. However, whether society likes it or not it is becoming quite a valid use for interpersonal relationships, company advancement and educational means. I understand the fears and concerns with putting all your internet needs in one "cloud" but this is a hype that is staying around and will continue to be used for many years in my opinion. I hope to see that the previous concerns I spoke about may be diminished, but in the mean time I would expect to see cloud computing usage to skyrocket with or without improvements.

Milennial- How Milennial are you??

Being "millennial", a portrait of Generation Next is described as being confident, connected and open to change according to a Pew Research Center report.

Most people don't need research to tell them that there is a valid difference between a typical 20, 45 and 70 year old person, but the reasons why they are different is what was so interesting in this article. One of the statements from this site was that "young people may be different from older people today, but they will become more like them tomorrow". This was an interesting viewpoint in that it connects everyone of every age and reminds the younger generation that at some point in their life they will reach that older generations age.

There was a quiz available on this site to take and see how "millennial" you are. I scored a 93 on their quiz, showing that I have a tendency to be confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat, open to change, less religious than the older generation and on track to become highly educated.
http://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/how-millennial-are-you/results/

I agree to an extent to the results of the quiz (especially since I answered the questions honestly and it calculated a result) but I do not feel like this defines me or my generation. As I continue with this course, I will be further along in my process of becoming a teacher of students with special needs. Taking into consideration that I am "millennial" I believe that it will incorporate into my teaching style and how I approach my students. Although I am not currently involved in a classroom in which I can discuss this topic with them, I would like to believe in my ideal classroom that I will incorporate modern technology, discuss their challenges and interests and make my lessons meaningful and relatable to my students everyday life.

Frand's list of 10 characteristics of the information-age mindset are as follows:

1. Computers are not technology but a given. … (Students) make the devices work without a manual, without an instruction set.
2. The Internet is better than TV … Many of our students do believe that everything they need to know is on the Web and it's free.
3. Reality is no longer real. (e-mail authorship and even photographs can be manipulated).
4. Doing is more important than learning … In many disciplines, the half-life of information is measured in months and years…. As our students enter the workforce, the ability to deal with complex and often ambiguous information will be more important than simply knowing a lot of facts or having an accumulation of knowledge."
5. Nintendo over logic. (Rephrased by Oblinger: "Nintendo symbolizes a trial and error approach to solving problems.")
6. Typing rather than handwriting.
7. Multitasking way of life.
8. Staying connected.
9. Zero tolerance for delays.
10. Consumer/ creator blurring. In a cut and paste world, distinctions between creator, owner, and consumer of information are fading. "

My response to these..

1.     Computers are a given in my personal and professional life. It is not something that I feel I need to follow directions to use. It is a part of my social, educational and professional daily progressions and I know I will continue to stay updated on computer usage and new technology.
2.     The internet IS better than TV! I use Netflix for any show or movie that I actually want to watch or Hulu and connect my computer directly to my TV to watch it! If I want to do research on anything I immediately go to google.
3.     Reality is no longer real-at least as depicted on TV. I believe that every show is edited and comprised specifically for audience attention and drama.
4.     This is not a very specific characteristic and I think it is not clearly written. However, I am a hands-on learner and I prefer performing a task a few times in order to master it instead of reading about a task in a book.
5.     Video games are not a part of my every day life, but I do play games on my Iphone and will continue to play levels until I master it.
6.     Typing is 10x faster for me than writing with a pen. If I have to write something longer than a page it will immediately be typed on a computer.
7.     Multitasking! What 20 something year old do you know that does not study with the TV, music playing and internet on? I take breaks during studying to check facebook, twitter, instagram.. ect! As I am typing this I am watching Alaska State Troopers on tv and have water boiling to make lunch... multitasking is a huge part of our lives and I think we get frustrated when the older generation cannot do so.
8.     Staying connected- every morning I wake up I check my phone for the time. That will show me if I have any messages or notifications. I will check all of my social media outlets first thing to see if anything interesting catches my eye and then will update my own profiles! (sad, but true!)
9.     Delays... impatience! I have been told I am the most impatient person my family knows- this is probably true. I have specifically noticed that in my hometown outside DC everything goes FAST! If a car hasn't gunned it as soon as a light turns green then you have a line of cars honking immediately.. restaurants go at a warped speed.. and then I moved to Fairmont. In my opinion, one of the slowest moving areas.. cars go slow, restaurants move slow, people even talk slower! SO FUSTRATING!
10.     Taking credit for others thoughts, pictures, ideas and motivations is so easy. Cut, paste, post. You have now taken credit for whatever you want to without taking responsibility for correctly citing the source.

References

Frand, J. (2000). The information-age mindset:  Changes in students and implications for higher education. EDUCAUSE Review. September/October15-24. Retreived December 21, 2011

    http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0051.pdf

Madrigal, O. & Schreiber, D. (2011). Student Information-Age Mindset: A Key to Success in Distance Learning Courses. International Journal on E-Learning, 10(3), 277-310. Chesapeake, VA: AACE.  Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/33128.

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First Blog!

First blog post!

My name is Amy, and I am currently in my masters program for multicategorical special education. I am also an athletic trainer and currently work for FSU as a graduate assistant athletic trainer. Love my job!

I know this course is supposed to be tough, but so far it's really interesting and I can't wait to see what it will teach me :)

 

Me with one of the physical disabilities classes I aided in Virginia!

A little blurry, but me helping an injured athlete on the sidelines next to our team physician