Symposium Presentations
The past two weeks of class I have had the opportunity to listen to a number of presentations summarizing chapters of a multitude of texts. The text that my presentation was on was Communicating for Life by Schultz. My section of reading had been very interesting so I was excited to hear what the other presentations would be about.
I found the presentation on the first four chapters of Culture Care by Fujimura to be very interesting. This was mostly due to the conversation facilitated by the discussion questions.
The concept of generative thinking was something new to be learned. Along with that came the discussion of: are all artists in the industry for monetary gain? I thought this was interesting because most of us disagreed with the author. That was too much of a blanket statement, and there has to be some exceptions.
Finally, in this presentation, we were able to come up with some ideas of positive things in society that have come from social media. I thought this was a refreshing perspective to take, seeing as society usually looks at the negative effects.
Many of us are focused on negative effects social media has on health, both mental and physical. The idea that social media consumes people and society, that we are obsessed w the platform, and that it has negatively effected our ability to form relationships, has become mainstream.
While this may have some truth to it, social media has also done a lot of good. We are able to use the platform creatively to express ourselves. We also can keep a record of memories, conversations, events, moments, etc. We are able to broadcast news worldwide. Communication has never been easier due to a multitude of technical advances.
This, I realized, is important to remember.
