Échiley's Blog Post

Hello everyone, I'm back on the blog to tell you about my experience while taking

the fluency and digital literacy course in English. I'm Échiley Rios, I'm 19 years old, not

wanting to generalize, but as a young nerd with a weird name that I am, I was extremely

excited for the start of another school semester, I was confident that face-to-face

activities would come back when I finally would know the gigantic campus of the

Federal University of Santa Maria, well, I was completely wrong because unfortunately

the pandemic situation was still too threatening for us to return to the university. Well,

I just wanted to have lunch in the RU, but I promise that when that happens I'll take a

picture of that moment and stick it on my bedroom wall. For sure!

Well, but as I am Brazilian and Brazilians never give up and are always hopeful,

in fact, hope is the last thing that dies, I wouldn't stop enjoying college just because it

would be at a distance. So I started looking for subjects that expanded my view of the

world and made me think outside the box and I found Fluency and Digital Literacy in

English. At this point you might be asking yourself, “what”? that was even my parents'

reaction when I jumped up about my choice. But I really wanted to do it, but I wondered

if it would be related to my course, but anyway, I closed my eyes and enrolled. My endof-semester self certainly thanks my early-semester self for making this choice. As you

already know, I study dentistry and apparently it may seem that this course has little

relation to the subject I chose to study, but in fact, I found that this choice adapted very

well to my course and certainly contributed abundantly to my training and also for my

future as a professional.

But you must be very curious to know how fluency and digital literacy in English

acted as positive tools for my course, right? First, it is important to point out that we

are in an extremely globalized and technological world, focused on immersion and

accessibility, thus, it becomes evident the importance of mastering the English

language, as a world-renowned language, as well as the understanding of

technological tools aimed at integrate this digital world and also have more reach within

its goals, since we come in contact with technologies at all times, we can say that they

have constituted themselves as fundamental parts of our world, one day without

internet and without any type of technology feels like a really painful experience.

Second, in this sense, this discipline guided the use of digital tools, as well as

deepening my knowledge about multimodalities and their uses within the digital

universe. In addition, it expanded my knowledge about the performance of digital tools

as methods to share knowledge and even to promote greater interaction between the

target audience and the content in question and not necessarily technology only as

leisure, or as a social or social artifact. didactic, but as the union of all this. As well, it

showed me that fluency and digital literacy can be applied beyond teaching, as in a

professional routine in a dental office, in which I, as a future dentist, can use

technological tools to create a quiz to measure the satisfaction of my patients in front

of care, or even develop a game to encourage brushing and healthy habits in children

and these are just a few examples in a vast universe of possibilities that fluency and

digital literacy provide for students in the health area. Have you ever thought how

useful it would be if professionals from different areas were fluent and digitally literate?

In this vein, it is crucial to cite some authors who helped me to better understand

digital literacy , such as Buckingham (2006) with his expositions about digital literacy

and its different spheres , such as audience, language, representation and production

. As well as Gavin Dudaney, Nicky Rockly and Mark Pegrum in the book Digital

Literacies Research and Resources in Language Teaching, in which it was possible to

deepen the knowledge about the different ways of applying digital literacies, and in a

concrete way, to systematize this concept. Evidently, having studied this subject was

very positive for my education and even for my personal growth, since I clearly learned

to situate myself in the digital environment and use it as a means to expand, share and

create knowledge. Obviously, as I mentioned earlier, I can see several positive aspects

for my future inside or outside teaching supported by technologies and multimodalities.

In this way, I can conclude that, even though I was not able to study in person,

my experience with the virtual teaching modality was also very aggregating, as I felt

extremely welcomed and even miles away from Professor Suzi and my colleagues I

managed to feel in a real classroom and still with the bonus of having all the

technologies at my disposal, in this way, literally using multimodalities and digital

literacy. I will fondly remember the activities performed in class, especially the activity

in which we had to describe ourselves as a technology, it was really cool! It was a lot

of nice interaction. All my expectations were exceeded and I confess that I did very

well, I would even say that I am A in this subject, I was motivated and determined, I

can say that I walked hand in hand with the English language and overcame several

obstacles with the foreign language. In addition, I feel much more prepared to face and

survive the digital world, as I can certainly say that I am digitally literate and fluent.