Emergent Digital Literacy - Lindsey

In comparison with the rest of my family, I have never thought myself to be completely digitally literate. My parents both work for IBM, and my older brother knew he wanted to spend his life working with computers starting at age 12. I was comfortable with what I thought were the basics, things like the internet, instant messaging, and word processing, yet at the same time I was watching my family changing settings, taking the actual processor apart, and discussing things like RAM, gigs, and other technical jargon. When, this summer, I tried to clear the hard drive on my laptop this idea was reinforced when the process did not work for me. I called my brother who told me that he had been warned by our mother that I would probably be calling because I tried to wipe the hard drive by myself. I have always just taken for granted that I was not the most technologically literate member of my family, and I never would be (fortunately I never had the desire to be).
I felt sure before taking the quiz that this premise would be reinforced. However, I knew three of the answers confidently, one mostly, and two not at all. This made me realize that I am probably at the average level of digital literacy. Classes such as TE 401 are helping me to expand on my digital knowledge, and the fact that I have figured out not all literacy formats are technical and boring has made me want to expand on my knowledge (e.g. the methods of digital storytelling we learned about in class).
Tompkins talks about emergent literacy as it relates to children as the ability for learning literacy before they actually begin to read and write. I feel that I was provided with an adequate environment to learn these digital literacies, and those that I am not yet familiar with I believe I have the knowledge and capabilities to learn about them with relative ease. I have helped to teach older friends of my family the literacies I am familiar with already, and I know that I would have an easier time learning a new literacy than some of them, and this supports my aforementioned conclusion.