Literacy Narrative Video

Part 2:

Literacy Narrative Thoughts

In my own reading history I can't remember being struck by a particular moment of literacy.  I remember being read to as a child, but the first key moment I can recall was one day reading a book to my first grade teacher - who seemed quite surprised. My usual interaction with books was not school, but it was the monthly family trips to the library, where any kind of reading was possible.  I think I was mostly drawn to books about technology, military history and science fiction.  By the time I was thirteen I had my first computer - used mainly for games, and as many of the games were text based at the time, those became part of my reading selections.  Also, films of the time had a significant effect on my understanding of narrative.  I never had a strong urge to write much, I wrote the least amount of letters necessary to communicate with people.  However, as a way to amuse myself I did write film scripts- or attemped to, as I created sequels to my favorite films.
As I went through high school, I always felt that the books we were forced to read seemed so boring and that there were ideas "out there" that were really fascinating,  So by the time of graduation I began to accumulate works revolving around philosophy and more theoretical fields such as quantum physics.  My first term of college I jumped right into working on a philosophy degree, and the subsequent amount of reading that it produced.
I still never found much use for writing outside of class.  Not until the explosion of social networking on the internet in the early 2000s did it seem to have a point.  But after the advent of blogs, anything written could be instantly available for anyone in the world.  Knowing that something I wrote could actually be read by someone else made it more compelling.  Blogging served as a decent outlet for expressing casual opinions about the world, as well as more academic material.
It seems to me that literacy is more than just being able to understand written language, but it consists of being able to use writing as a tool to continually expand knowledge and being motivated to constantly learn more and more and widen understanding to larger areas and higher levels of thought.