Until recently, I had thought of myself as I highly literate person. I can, after all, read and write to an advanced tertiary level, I can interpret academic texts and can communicate effectively as to their meanings. Then I was faced with the task of writing a blog. As trepidation, uncertainty - and yes, even fear -rampaged within me, I was struck by the notion that to be literate is not just being able to read and write well. According to Anstey & Bull (2004), a person is literate when they "have acquired essential knowledge and skills to engage in activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning in his group or community" (p. 10), and that people also require technological and computer literacy in addition to writing and numerical skills (Anstey & Bull, 2004). So LITERACY is, in fact LITERACIES? This is a new concept to me.

As I look back over my life I realised that I have become literate, indeed multiliterate, in many areas, but have remained illiterate in areas such as computer literacy. I embark now on a literacy journey - an adventure if you will - as I retrace my literate life through learning to read and write, how I negotiated the literacy quagmire that was my hairdressing trade and how at university, thirty four years into my literacy journey, I have finally realised what it means to be truely literate.

I remember the first sentence I ever wrote: "my yellow cat is at home." It was 1980, and I was in kindergarten. How proud mum and dad were when I brought my sentence home to be displayed on the fridge, resplendant with a bright gold star. I remember sitting in a circle at school singing little ditties like:"mummy makes marmalade, marmalade, marmalade, mummy makes marmalade m m m." Despite these two memories, I actually remember very little about the specifics of how I learnt to read and write. Given the time in history, however, it was during the shift from a mostly psycholinguistic approach to literacy as seen in the 1950s to the 1970's (such as Systemic Functinal Linguistics)advocated by such theorists as Halliday, to a more sociolingustic approach to literacy as seen in the work of Freire (Anstey & Bull, 2004). I would have partcipated in reading schemes with a greater number of graded readers, with a greater range of genres (Anstey & Bull, 2004).

My family place great emphasis on reading. As a child I was delighted to recieve a new book. My favourite books were "Meg and Mog" and "Are you my mother?" Mum would adopt funny tones and voices, which made books exciting. They became even more exciting as I got older and could "choose-my-own-adventure." I had never realised that these books were in fact a "first step towards hypertext" (Anstey & Bull, 2004, p. 234). Text always played an important part in my everyday life which must have certainly given me an advantage when it came to interpreting text at school (Anstey & Bull, 2004).

But now, many years later, I have the honour (along with Mrs B), of being able to teach my son how to read. His class has different 'levels' of readers for the different 'levels' of ability of the students. He has a list of sight words to memorise and practice, can copy words written down, and is actively engaged with 'jolly phonics'. These strategies for effective literacy learning are clearly a combination of theories as outlined by Anstey and Bull in "The Literacy Labyrinth" (2004). He is also learning to make meaning through writing as he learns left-to-right progression, word spacing, letter formation, spelling and punctuation. One interesting thing I did notice doing 'home reading'at school is the differences in the reading abilities between boys and girls. Girls (generally speaking of course), used expression and tone, and were much more proficient at reading than the boys. The boys, my son included, were easily distracted and did not appear to 'get it' as easily as the girls. As outlined in week three's lecture, literacy levels are lower in boys - perhaps due to fundamental cognitive differences as Ormrod (2006) believes?

Of course, much has changed in helping children to become pen and paper literate since 1980. Prior to going to school I was exposed to "Seasame Street" and "Play School". My boys, on the other hand, have been intimate with 'Baby Einstein', been active on the Fischer Price "Learning Chair", leapt with enthusiasm over their leapfrog and yes, they have a toy computer. As Healy explains, young children "currently develop their literacy-realted knowledge as much from interactive multimedia digital texts as from any other text mode" (Healy, 2008, p. 166). Indeed, my children are exposed to a vibrant, visual, interactive world as compared to the linear world of print I had at their age. As Anstey and Bull (2004) explain, print text is no longer the only basic text types - text types are diverse and include "visual presentation, a range of media texts, multimodal texts and non-linear texts" (p. 232). The downside to this is, of course, potential inequality in access to such texts due to factors such as socioeconomic status.

Before undertaking this course, I did not know that there were different types of literacies. Now, I have discovered the wonders of semiotic systems, described as sets of "signs and symbols goverened by codes and conventions that are known and understood by the people that use them" (Anstey & Bull, 2004, p. 6). In other words, semiotic systems can be seen as cultural literacies. I now realise how 'literate' I have been in my previous career as a hairdresser. Hairdressers, as a rule, are generally portrayed as being a bit dim - pretty, fun, but not very bright. Yet after discovering the joys of multiliteracies I fail to see how this can in any way be true.

Hairdressers need to have the semiotic systems of many genres. We need to understand scientific formulas so we can understand how, for example, disulphide bonds within the hair are broken and reformed during the perming process. We also need to understand semiotic systems associated with visual texts that encompass such elements as "colour, line, texture, format and shape" (Anstey & Bull, 2004, p. 233). For example, we need to understand colour charts in order to successfully complete colour corrections (believe me, you WANT your hairdresser to know this), and to mix different colour combinations together. We also need to understand mathematical ratios to mix colour quantities together and to cut hair at the correct technical angle. Wrong angle = bad haircut.

I would even argue hairdressing is a sub-culture, for we even have our own language. How many people would understand: "Good morning Mrs Jones. Today I will slightly wave your hair using different size rods, with a number two solution. I will then give you a deep, rich semi-gloss followed by a lock-in colour restorer. At the station I will lightly texturize your ends, then smooth out and GHD style your hair. Does this sound o.k?" Clearly, to be a successful hairdresser, one needs to use all three aspects of the Learning Triptych: you need to 'learn of'the decoding skills necessary to master the language, you need to 'learn through' (use) the different semiotic systems and finally you have to 'learn about' how the respective semiotic systems operate and function together (Anstey & Bull, 2004). And people think we are silly!

But for however literate I was in regards to reading, writing and hairdressing, nothing - I mean NOTHING - prepared me for university and its organically intertwinned use of computers. Prior to 2006, I did not know how to send an e.mail, which I now know to have its own linguistic/stylistic features (Christie & Misson, 1988). Even when I lived in Europe I would, like the time-warp history nerd that I am, rather phone home - just like ET in the 1980's. Slowly, slowly, over the last five years I have learned to grope my way through blackboard, studentmail and turnitin (therin lies a story: the first time I used turnitin it took me three very fustrating hours to upload my paper. It was in the wrong text format, and I did not know what 'text format' was). It has only been through perseverance and a dogged determination to succeed that I have managed thusfar. Gee (1992), cited in Anstey and Bull (2004), explains that the 'aquisition' of knowledge is unconcious, whereas 'learning' is a concious process, and I certainly found this to be true.

Then I was asked to create a blog. Until now, I had thought a blog was something one had when one had a headcold. Having discovered that a blog is not mucus, but a multimodal, interactive text, I now had to uncover how to approach the task. I thought the best way to do this was to use the four levels of literacy practice. I had to learn the 'functional' aspects of blogging, the coding and decoding practice. I had to be involved in the cultural aspect of blogging - to be an active text participant, and uncover what semiotic sytems I needed to become familiar with and how to make meaning of them. I then had to be a text user to engage in the personal aspect of blogging practice. Finally, I had to address the critcal aspect of blogging literacy in order to understand what the different components of a blog were, and how they worked. Luke and Freebody (1999) refer to this as the 'Four Resource Model'. Clearly, I had to use these aspects in combination, as they are not hierarchic in nature like an educational taxonomy such as SOLO (Ormrod, 2006).

So I hope you enjoyed my literacy journey. It has indeed been an adventure. I look forward to discovering many more exciting literacy moments, will can only impact positively on myself, my children, and my future students.