From a young age I was surrounded with signs. Signs that told me when to do things, where places are and when not to do something. As I continued to live my life through a digital lens, these signs became even more powerful. I learned how to Photoshop pictures in a way that describes beauty or horror, in order to draw readers into my story. I also began to design a story spread for a magazine with visuals in mind. As a journalism student, it was up to me to pull together all I knew from images that I had been surrounded by my entire life and choose them wisely to enhance my digital product.
David Barton and Mary Hamilton describe literacy as being "historically situated" which means that the idea of literacy changes with time (Barton, Hamilton 60). So throughout my life I have developed my visual literacy from signs and gestures, to the digital age. Visual literacy is important now in the ways of the internet, because these visuals now encapsulate stories on their own. So, as a digital literacy participant, I must know how to address these elements on a new platform, the digital universe.
Source: Barton, David and Mary Hamilton, Local literacies; Reading and Writing in One Community. Routledge, 1998.
What does this digital community contain? What are people within the literacy coming in contact with?