Disclaimer: No media was added because I didn’t know how to but will be fixed on the timeline. So, here is the timeline: http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/336102/Karens-Digital-Literacy/

When I started coming up with events for my digital literacy timeline, I couldn’t come up with anything. Then, I thought a little more and put down incidents that were not necessarily life-changing, but were quite meaningful in shaping who I am today. After having a concrete idea of what I would include in my timeline, I saw that there was a common theme between the stages of my digital literacy.  This theme pertained to my values, my global perspective and my most central interests. Essentially, these points represent me very well and I would have never thought that my use of writing, reading and technology would define me as much as it does.

Learning how to read and write around the age of five is a milestone that most people go through. However, I became literate in Spanish because I moved to Barcelona before I learned how to read and write. Already, my first written word was in a language that was not my mother tongue, as I am from Brazil and spoke Portuguese. This brings up an event that happens just a few years ago, in sophomore year of high school, when I read my first book in Portuguese. It was extremely ironic that I could read and write properly in English and Spanish but took much longer to do that in my first language.

The following steps, that still relate to the idea that I am a global citizen, is the fact that I started learning new languages such as Dutch and French. Therefore, I was exposed to new vocabulary through books and it made my literacy more holistic.  What is interesting is that I don’t remember how to speak in those languages as much as I am proficient at reading and understanding them. It is odd but learning it in class and not practicing it in conversation has made me frame my knowledge of the languages through texts. Moreover, studying Mandarin through tutoring while I lived in China was a whole new experience with my literacy because I delved into learning characters and it changed my prior perception of writing. The characters require a certain sequence to be written and are basically drawings.

Then I started exploring my religion/ethnicity by going to Sunday school to learn Hebrew and then went on to study for my Bar Mitzvah. Through that, I was able to start reading Hebrew but still don’t understand what I am reading, even though I somewhat understand the language.

Moving around and travelling brought me to buy an Amazon Kindle and then I could read as many books as I wanted without having to carry them around wherever I travelled, which proved inconvenient for long trips.

Later I moved back to Brazil, after eleven years abroad. This was a huge shock for me because I didn’t fully grasp my own culture. Then, protests started happening against the government all around Brazil. I only watched CNN and BBC, as my news sources, and felt that there wasn’t enough international coverage on the protests and so I got a Twitter account only to tweet about wanting more attention to be given to what was going on in Brazil. I was successful, as the next day I was emailed that CNN acknowledged my concern and was going to focus more on the protests. This moment of political advocacy led me to start writing about social justice issues on my school’s magazine The Talon, specifically about women’s rights. This ran along with participating in Model United Nations, and there I developed an ability to write resolutions and make them compelling.  I wasn’t just more political by using my literacy; I was using it creatively as well. I began to explore my more artistically literate side when I started writing scripts on Celtx for film class, but they were still quite politically driven.

Finally, my literacy has led me to the final stage of my life, in which I am in now. I got here by writing my college applications. Now that I am at NYU, I have subscribed to the New York Times online and home delivery, but I feel like I will just have the online version because paper takes up too much space and kills trees. To have some mental health, I have also started journaling to connect with my thoughts for only a few minutes and also record my time here.

Overall, my literacy demonstrates my background and has evolved to take me to where I am today.