Our first think piece enables you to share your reactions to what you have been reading and make connections with our study of communication. A think piece is a short paper (4-5 pages) that uses an informal tone to evaluate and respond to what you have been reading.
It is not a summary. Target a specific topic or event in communication history for further reflection. State a point and then examine it. To develop your point, cite specific examples and quotations from the readings to support it. This makes your opinions and ideas stronger and more interesting.
Express your ideas and thoughts about how the changes in communication technology impacted the people in the past and are still impacting us today. Some ideas and potential sections of the text will guide you:
What is your reaction to the changes that occurred as society moved from being an oral culture to a print culture (Crowley and Heyer, chapter 11)? Do you see parallels with with events occurring today?
What struck you as interesting about the way people adapted to the changes?
What was the impact of the invention of the clock (Crowley and Heyers, pp. 60-61)?
How did these changes in literacy and the development of the printing press impact the transmission of the gospel? How did literacy change the church (Crowley and Heyer, chapter 8, chapter 12)?
The value of an education (Crowley and Heyers, p. 15).
How did education change (Crowley and Heyers, p. 65)?
How did commerce change (Crowley and Heyer, p. 29)?
How did governments change (Crowley and Heyer)?
How did our way of thinking and processing information change after we acquired literacy (Crowley and Heyer, p. 36, p. 38, chapter 7)?
How are modern hieroglyphs being used today and why (Crowley and Heyers, p. 31)?
What became obsolete as new communication technologies were introduced? Do you see evidence of the same things happening today as new communication technologies are introduced?
How did the printing press impact the way we receive news? What changes are taking place today that impact the way we receive news (chapter 13)?
What did we gain and what did we lose as we moved from an oral culture to a print culture?
Hopefully, the ideas above will get you started thinking about and posing questions to what you have read. You may use any one of the above ideas, combination of them, or something you think of to develop as your topic.The pages numbers are just suggestions to help you get started.
The next step is go back and read sections of the texts related to your topic, phrase your thesis in a sentence, outline your ideas and support material, and then write your paper.
Your paper should be 4-5 pages long. 5 citations in the text and at the end of the paper .