Milobo’s Musings

For most of my life, I’ve carried a physical sign that marked me as literate.  At the age of 5, that sign was first acquired over weeks of laborious work under the guidance of my Kindergarten teacher as I carefully practiced forming the symbols of  literacy by putting pencil to paper.  For the next 12 years, as I filled pages and pads with notes, essays, reports and thoughts, that sign became a constant symbol of the work I put into my studies.

Through college, graduate school, and almost 2 decades of teaching, that sign remained.  But recently, I’ve noticed that even though I write more than I probably ever have, I’m actually losing that physical reminder of my ability to write.  Instead of a callused pad of skin formed from decades of balancing a pen against my finger as I write, there’s a smooth area where that callus used to be.  It’s probably the most concrete example I carry of how my own mode of communicating and building knowledge is swiftly changing.

Since I’ve acquired digital writing tools – mainly a laptop and an iPhone – I rarely write more than a reminder or grocery list by hand.  There are times when I spend the entire day writing, but don’t ever pick up a pen.

As look at the students who are part of our 1:1 laptop program this year, I wonder how long it will be before we see a generation who remembers fondly the scratch of ink to paper as part of an earlier era.

What will be their sign of literacy?

Picture from Flickr Creative Commons, CharlieCE