Critical Response to Twessay II

 

Storytelling is evolving – My Critical response to all our Twessays

For me being a proud Irishman I was pleased to discuss this topic. Story telling runs deep in our history and culture. The stories of Finn McCool and the Fianna and fond memories of my childhood.

My view on the evolution of storytelling in 140 characters was (https://twitter.com/DenisVaughanUCC/status/667321798074245120)

The main evolution for me is its accessibility. Almost every story told is only ever at most a simple few clicks away, thanks to the development and the expansion of the internet. There is no denying that this accessibility is fantastic. Thanks to this children and adults alike all over the world have access to stories thousands of years old.

One factor that I’m fearful of is the extinction of the storyteller. Could the once great tradition of the Seanchaí be gone? Instead replaced by a computer screen. A Seanchaí, a traditional Irish storyteller, was once the only person who you could listen and learn of the great Irish fairy tales. They were traditionally not meant to be written down and were passed down through the years by word of mouth. This form of preservation allowed the art of storytelling to be also preserved. It was not all about the story, it was also about the way it was told.

Out of all my fellow peers tweets the one I found the most insightful was Paddy O’ Toole’s (https://twitter.com/paddykoolster/status/667330344106987520) I could not agree more that the internet and other resources or ‘tools’ as paddy refers to them as are evolving storytelling. This can’t be denied. The accessibility nowadays compared to even 20 years ago is miles ahead and it doesn’t look like it’ll be stopping soon. However it’s his second point that engaged with me most. “Human interaction is @ the core of any #narrative” We can preserve and store stories but we cannot preserve the storyteller! Storytelling is a skill which needs to be practiced not stored.

Now to concentrate on the positives of the evolution of storytelling, and don’t get me wrong there is a few! Kasia bangs the nail right on the head with her tweet. The benefits of the digital world are enhancing the way we experience stories. Through the use of hashtags, hyperlinks, music and videos the very nature of stories are growing. Hashtags are linking similar stories and ideas together in one place making it very easy to follow. Hyperlinks give external points of view that may interest the reader and finally sounds and video provide the entertainment any great story should have!     (https://twitter.com/KasiaSobiech182/status/667747477320241154)

In conclusion I feel I have gained much more than I thought I would from my two twessay assignments. At first I thought there’s no way they would work with a 140 character limit but I could have not been more wrong. You learn not to waste a character and I hope to bring this same methodology into all my future work not only in these assignments.

DV

References-

Kasia Sobiech – https://twitter.com/KasiaSobiech182

Patrick O’Toole – https://twitter.com/paddykoolster?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

DenisVaughan – https://twitter.com/DenisVaughanUCC

Sir Ken Robinson- Ted Talk Response

To be brutally honest I have not watched many ted talks, however saying this the one that I most recently watched “Do schools kill creativity?” given by Sir Ken Robinson was greatly enjoyable. His humour along with his ability to engage with his audience fluidly made this talk appeal to me. The issues he dealt with were ones that concerns all of us who are currently in an education system. One of his first line captures it simply “Everybody has an interest in education”.

I believe the image above depicts the way our education is structured and set. We are all different. We all have different skills, interests and abilities. Sir Ken Robinson is of the view that “All children have tremendous talents” and thanks to our education system not all fulfil these talents as they grow up. The ones who don’t are the ones whose talents and interest are not those that our education values most, the likes of dance, music and art are way down the “Hierarchy” of subjects that are most useful for future jobs. He tells a touching story about a girl whose mother was told she had a learning difficulty because she could not sit still in class and learn the ‘normal’ way. She kept dancing and moving about. Instead of giving her medicine to calm her down her mother sent her to a dance school. She excelled in this field and is now a millionaire.

This lead me to think.. What if? How many others were told they had learning difficulties when really in fact they were just learning the wrong way?

One of the points that most stood to me was how he stated that “kids are not frightened to be wrong” it’s through our education system that the fear of failure or making a mistake is instilled. He defines creativity as “original ideas that have value” in most schools if the answer is not from the textbook it’s incorrect, this destroys the child’s creativity. I thought back to my days of 2nd and 3rd class, if a teacher asked a question to the class, bang, straight away almost every hand in the room would be shot up. Now? In 1st year of college when a lecturer asks a question rarely a sound is made, all eyes turned away in case he/she makes eye contact and asks you directly. The reason for this is what Sir Ken Robinson was outlying in his talk, we have learnt to become afraid of failure.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not blaming the teachers for the loss of creativity as they were brought up through the same education system also. It’s difficult to point a finger and simply pick out one or two reasons why it is happening. Having 1 teacher and 25 plus students it’s very hard to meet every single one of the students preferred learning style. A lot is up to the students themselves, pick subjects that you enjoy doing and carry on with these through future education.

DV

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References:

 http://thecompanion.in/competitive-exams-and-our-education-system/

Emoji’s :) :D =]

With the launch of Apple’s new iOS 9.1 software comes over 150 new emoticons. One cannot deny that the use of emoticons are becoming more and more popular.

The way we communicate is changing.. But are we looking at a completely new way of communicating or are we simply going back to the old ways of Hieroglyphics?

Today’s online language has been morphed into a mixture of pictures and emoticons, along with short text and abbreviations to accompany them. Speed seems to be the catalyst in which new words and ways of communicating are developing. In the fast paced environment in which we are currently living, the faster information can be shared seems to be the better.

Drawings and paintings were one the first ways we communicated with one another. We see here that this picture represents hunters hunting dear. The beauty of this form of communication is that it is very much colloquial, no matter what language you speak or what age you are, it is very simple to understand what the picture represents. This is the same with emoticons. Everyone knows what a love heart or a smiley face represents, its today’s universal language. I believe language is moving forward, and that text has always been and always will be accompanied with some sort of picture, symbol or emoticon.

During my studies of the digital humanities we were given an article to read ‘Emoticons, a Return to ‘Hieroglyphics?’ written by Quinn Bartlett. I found his article very interesting because it deals with a very popular topic at the moment, emojis. The thing that interested me the most was how he spoke of the importance of faces to humans. It had me thinking straight away about new born babies and how they recognize faces from an extremely young age. Before we can talk we can very easily know who people are just by the look of them. He speaks of the importance of these faces even if they are only digital. We all respond differently to faces. We’ve all experienced one time in our lives the ‘stare’ a teacher would give you for talking in class. No need for worlds just simply a facial expression.

We discussed the idea of emoji poetry in class and I found it interesting, how something held in such high regard especially in the education system was being bombarded with little yellow faced men. Would this type of poetry be as highly respected? Maybe someday leaving cert students may have to study these types of poems. While searching for some examples I found this clever text using emoji’s to reconstruct the lyrics of a well-known Journey song. It’s a very creative way to get across the same information, granted here, in this case it may take more time to read compared to plain text. I liked the way it challenged the reader, in some ways it was a sort of puzzle trying to use the clues (the emoji’s) to remember the words of the song. People like challenges.

DV

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References:

Bartlett, Q. (N/A), Emoticons, a Return to “Hieroglyphics”?, url:http://revelfoundry.com/emoticons-a-return-to-hieroglyphics/

http://www.lureoflanguage.com/blog/telling-stories-through-emoji/