Author: Grace Rowan

This past weekend I attended the Young Authors and Storytellers Festival here at SUNY Geneseo. The children in the community were invited to attend the festival and enter their own poems into the poetry contest. It was a great day full of learning and appreciation for children’s poetry.

Literacy for this generation is defined differently than from even five years ago. The keynote speaker, an artist from Arkansas, showed the children a slideshow explaining ekphrasis, a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art. She began by showing what I thought were random shapes, and she went around the room and ask different age groups what we thought the image was. The adults had no answer, the college students labeled the image “art”, and the younger children yelled, “GOOGLE!” After looking at the image a little harder, I could make out the word “Google”, but the parents could not. I found this interesting and concluded that the children knew it was Google because of technology, whereas if the woman showed a blurry picture of Webster’s Dictionary cover, the parents would recognize that, while the children may not.

Because the keynote speaker was an artist, she related poetry to her favorite paintings to show that every piece of art has a story. As she went through the poems, she would ask the children, “what is the text message the author is sending us?” I was very confused by this question. Text message? This poem is from the 1800s, how could the author send me a “text message”? In that moment, I felt very old because the kids did not find anything wrong or strange with that question. She continued to teach the students about how each poem has a text message the author is sending to you to explain what is happening. This interpretation was bizarre to me, but it was an effective strategy because the students knew exactly what they were being asked.

The term literacy is constantly evolving. I think that as long as children are reading, it shouldn’t necessarily matter what they are reading from: a book, a magazine, an iPad, an iPhone, or a Kindle. Reading is a vital part to survival in our society and in the classroom. It is our jobs as teachers and role models to find what makes children excited about reading in order to ensure their interest in being life long learners.

After reading the article “5 Unique Uses of Twitter in the Classroom” by Ryan Lytle, I thought about how beneficial Twitter really is in a classroom setting. The article discusses the use of Twitter mainly in universities for the purposes of conveying messages to students, to broaden their technological ability, and how to expand businesses. Although the article focuses mostly on how to build a business over Twitter, I think one important takeaway is the importance of social media etiquette. Because social media is still relatively new, we have not created a social etiquette of what is appropriate and what is not including when you should and shouldn’t use social media, and what is and isn’t appropriate to post.

In our class, we use Twitter during and after class using #engl340. This, in my opinion, is a great resource to continue the conversation out of the classroom setting. It enforces the fact that learning does not end once you leave the class. The article discusses the importance of maintaining a professional Twitter in order to spread your ideas as well as become more marketable.

I think that this topic is now relevant to all ages, whether it be in a college or a high school. Technology is a topic that must be taught, and well, in order to maintain an appropriate social media image in future endeavors.

 

I think it is very difficult to define “happiness” in today’s society. Typically, people believe their happiness depends on their income or whether or not they have the latest version of technology or how they look. The amount of money a person earns in order to buy new technology or the latest trends is becoming the root of all happiness.

I recently watched the documentary “Happy” which follows various people in different regions of the world to see how happy they are. One story in particular made me question the true definition of happiness. Manoj, a rickshaw driver, lives in a slum in Kalkata, India. Although he lives in extreme poverty and pulls a cart of people everyday, he is considered to be as happy as the average American. He lives in extreme poverty, works through intense heat and monsoons, and has little to eat, and yet he thinks he is one of the richest people in the world because he loves his family and friends.

While watching his story, I felt sorry for the conditions he was forced to live in, but as his story continued, I realized he was rich, just in a different way than the typical American would agree with . He has the love of his family and friends, he considers his neighbors as a part of his family, and he considers himself lucky to have any shelter at all. If any American had to live this way I highly doubt they would consider themselves “rich”. I think that this is the perfect example of how peoples’s happiness today is too dependent on social conformities. People are in constant competition with one another to prove whose life is better, rather than living deliberately and for themselves. I believe this is what Henry David Thoreau’s ideologies were founded on: the concept of living for oneself and un-materialistically.

Manoj seemed happier than many people I know, and he has so much less. Because he feels that he is not in competition with anyone else, he works to provide for his family, but not so they can buy the new iPhone or latest trend, but rather so they can continue to live their lives. Thoreau would believe that Manoj’s lifestyle is ideal in order to live his life for himself instead of for the approval for others. Manoj is rich; he is rich with love and happiness for the life he lives.