Response 8: The Future of Literacy

At my high school we were required to take two years of computer skills. However, I’m pretty sure I didn’t learn a single thing in the class because it was taught for students who had never used Microsoft Word or Powerpoint before. While it was great that these students were able to learn these programs that are staples in the average student’s life, it was unfortunate that the class couldn’t have been of more use to the 90% of the student body who had been using Word since middle school when we were first required to begin typing papers. During my junior year, I became involved with the yearbook and newspaper staffs. We used different design softwares throughout my two years involved with both to produce these publications and I became familiar with a variety of skills although I never came close to perfecting any of them.

Now I consider myself a fairly average computer user. Advertising requires you to learn Adobe Suite, so I have a refined skill set when it comes to using design software. But it seems like as soon as I start to feel like I’m ahead of the game, I end up working next to a Visual Communications student and suddenly realize I actually know maybe 5% of what you can do with Adobe. Also, one of my early journalism classes required that we learn to use Final Cut Pro and produce a news segment with it. Until this point, I had no idea how difficult video editing software was to understand and what a refined skill video editing is. While the program itself was easy to understand, the skill itself was so different from anything else I’ve done that it was an extremely straining process. I wish that my high school would have had some sort of broadcast group where I could have learned these skills earlier because I believe they would be very valuable to my future, I just don’t have the time to master them now.   

My in-school and out of school visual and technical literacies have blurred together in recent years. Any type of technology I would use for fun is integrated into my major somehow, such as social media. I think this has helped me because I get twice as much experience because I am no longer just using my personal facebook page, but I am also monitoring an organization’s facebook as well as my job’s page.