Conclusion: Technology Literacy Narratives' Relevance to Education

The four factors highlighted in this exhibit—the ways technology is framed in memory, the use of detail to create verisimilitude and locate the narrator in a birth-cohort, the social relationships in which their technology memories are embedded, and the technology identities the narrators construct through their performance—provide valuable information for educators who want to capitalize on students' existing technological literacies in the classroom. Stories like these offer specific examples of the differing technology experiences students bring with them into classrooms, suggesting possible topics teachers can call on to remind students of their existing facilities with computers or to explicate and work through negative experiences with computers.

The familiar life stages—pre-school, elementary school—and spaces—home offices, school computer labs—that come up in the narratives suggest memory triggers that teachers can use to prompt students to think about their own experiences with technology. Several narratives depict comfortable, peer- and family-based in-school and extracurricular experiences that surrounded their earliest technology memories, which teachers can draw on to frame technological literacy learning in a positive, social light. On the other hand, memories of technological literacy experiences characterized by didactic, one-way instruction or by isolation and decontextualized mandates for computer use can become a productive starting point for explicit classroom discussions of pedagogy. When students recount negative experiences in technological literacy narratives, teachers can use these experiences to promote dialog with and among students about successful and unsuccessful computer use and learning experiences, which can then inform instruction in the course. These literacy narratives suggest that formal assignments and even informal, in-class discussions that ask students to reflect on their computer experiences can provide a wealth of information about students' technology backgrounds to help teachers calibrate their technological literacy instruction to students' interests and expertise.