Electronic Literacy Narrative

Andrew Russell

Jack Hennes

ENGL 191-17

September 3, 2012

Electronic Literacy Narrative

My first experience of using technology while writing would have to be the very first time I used a computer for an assignment.  I remember it was for my writing class in 1^st grade; we had been assigned to write a story about the story we had just gotten done reading.  This story was in fact the classic Cinderella, and our assignment was to write our own versions of Cinderella using anyone and anything as characters.  I was initially not very happy to be doing this assignment because I had just recently been told that I didn’t have very good handwriting.  Thankfully, our teacher said “For this assignment we will be going to down to the computer lab to write it on the computers” so I didn’t have to worry about my horrible handwriting effecting my story.  As we were heading down to the lab, I asked my teacher “How do I use a computer?” and she gave me a stunned look and asked if I had ever seen a computer before.  I hadn’t up to that point since my family had never owned a computer at home before so this was a completely new experience for me. 

When we finally got to the computer lab (which was like down on the other side of the school), I was amazed at what I was seeing.  On the three-foot desks stood about 4 rows of these weird boxes with a little half egg connected to each of boxes by a long, thin wire.   As I picked a seat next to one of my friends I couldn’t believe how big the screens were, they looked like TV’s so I spent the first 3 minutes looking for the remote to turn on the monitor.  Eventually I accidently bumped the half egg thing (that I had just learned was called a mouse) and the screen immediately turned to the bright white login screen.  The screen told me to Press “CNTL, ALT, DELETE” to log on, so I did that then entered my number ID and the password that I had been given using the keyboard with the help of my friend sitting next to me.  Once I was logged onto the computer, I found Microsoft Word and opened it to find myself at a blank document that looked like a floating piece of paper in front of a grey background.  I started typing my story very slowly because I had no idea where all the letters on the keyboard were and eventually I had written a little story about ¾ of a page long.            

That little ¾ of a page story I wrote about Cinderella changed the way that I wrote and did assignments at school.  It showed me that I did really have to worry about losing points on assignments for my horrible handwriting; also it showed me basically how to use a computer.  I had to include picture off Clip Art and from the Internet so this assignment pretty much laid down the basics of how to use a computer for a project for me. 

It actually changed the way I do assignments and to this very day I still use what I learned from that story.  I used to pretty much do everything by hand, writing out, drawing and formatting papers which took me forever.  It also saved me a ton time because I would by constantly erasing my spelling errors and rewriting parts of stories that I didn’t like by hand.  Since I can do that on a computer instantly without eraser marks, I was cleaner too.  It also seems for me that it’s faster to just type out a paper and come back to spelling mistakes than actually writing them out on paper and having to immediately correct the error.  Plus I’m a horrible speller so using a computer helps me use correct spelling in my papers instead of having a bunch of spelling errors. 

This experience didn’t really change the way I write however; it just changed the delivery of information onto paper.  I still use the same approach to writing something as I did in 1^st grade; I sit down, punch out a paper, then its done.  Nothing special, just focus and determination.

This experience writing through technology was my first but it will not be my last by far.  I use a computer for a lot of things in my life and I feel as though it will continue to be a very large part of my life more many years to come.