Ashley Serio Technobiography

I have been drawn to technology since about birth. My grandparents use to say that even as a very small child, I was always drawn to the television. Television and the telephone were probably the closest technologies I had as a child until I was about 8 when we finally got a Nintendo gaming system. My brothers and I were always drawn to video games and through the years we amassed a large collection of systems and games including: our original Nintendo system, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Nintendo Game Cube, the Nintendo Wii, Playstation 1, 2, & 3, and the X-Box 360. My husband and I still have all these gaming systems, with the exception of the Playstation 1, which broke, but I still have all my games because they can be used on the Playstation 2 system.

My family did not purchase a home computer until I was a freshman at Towson University in August 1999. We did own a Brother Word Processer. I used this to type up assignments in middle school and high school. I also helped my Grandfather with the home bills and budgets with the spreadsheet application that was a perk of the Word Processer. Prior to college, my only real use of the computer was in school. Elementary and Middle School consisted mostly of games that supposedly held some educational value, such as the Oregon Trail. High School progressed the computer into something more than a gaming system but into a tool used to enhance life and schooling. There the two classes I took focused on keyboarding and occasionally Windows Excel (however, to this day I still only have a vague knowledge of this program and of all Windows programs this one scares me the most).

My undergraduate time spent at Towson University did little to foster my knowledge of the computer. I was a History major and that does not always mesh well with technology. I did become internet savvy, which prior to college I did not have the opportunity to get to know. I received a Towson University email account and soon I opened an AOL email account. I would add a Comcast and Yahoo email account to this by the end of my 5 years. Thanks to friends and other trends I would also have a livejournal account, a MySpace, and a Facebook by the end of my bachelorette program. My technology general education requirement that I had taken was ISTC 201: Using Information Effectively in Education. I took this class in the spring of 2002, but the only thing I learned new in this class was how to use Microsoft PowerPoint.

I was only really equipped to use a PC until I began working at the B&O Railroad Museum in the fall of 2005 after I graduated from Towson University. My office computer was a Mac so I was literally forced into learning how to use it. It wasn’t all that different from a PC once I got the hang of things. It also helped me that my brother, who was living with us at the time, had a Mac Book. He really helped me figure things out. I can proudly say that I am now both PC and Mac literate.

When I came back to school for my Graduate degree in the fall of 2009 at Towson University I decided to go into library studies, which was something I always wanted to do. Towson University has this track under Instructional Technology so I had to take more technology courses than I had taken in the past. Last semester I took ISTC 541: Foundations in Instructional Technology. I learned many new things in this class, such as how to use a wiki, Glogster, Microsoft Moviemaker, blackboard, and we expanded on PowerPoint. We did touch on Excel and graphs, but sadly I am still a loss at this program. I learned a lot in that class, and I hope to expand on that knowledge in this class.

Communication Technology had always been my strong spot until I have become more strongly equipped for the computer. I was always a big talker on the telephone as a child and teenager. I would spend hours chatting to my friends and cousins on the telephone. I was the first in my house to figure out the voicemail feature of our phone line, which allowed me complete control of the answering machine at my home.

I had a pager all throughout high school. That was the big thing back then. I even had one of those voicemail pagers that allowed the person paging you to leave on a voice message instead of the traditional numeric page. Then I would call my number, hit the star button, and then enter my password to listen to the message.

I purchased my first cell phone in the spring of 2001. My father paid for it for me since he was worried about me commuting from Brooklyn Park to Towson every day for school. The cell phone has never frightened me; I always saw it as a hodgepodge of pager meeting the telephone. I quickly learned to use the others features from ringtones, texting, to mobile internet. I must say the mobile internet has come in handy with my Facebook obsession. Texting has literally broken me from talking on the telephone. I now just text people and a loathe talking on the phone now.