Olivia's Semester Recap

 I have really enjoyed the semester in this class. I am a Journalism major, but focusing so much of my time in STEM classes has made it hard to use my "broccoli" for things outside of science. This class was a refreshing opportunity to use my creativity in new ways and give my brain a new way of thinking. I was able to look outside of my own world and look at pieces of work that made me a more open-minded person. Especially in the digital sector, it is so interesting to look at how the multimodal experience can take people out of their own worlds and bring them into someone else's world. This form of technology is so important to education, especially in the pandemic. I think that the ability to virtually connect and travel in a time like this where most of us are stuck inside or in our own community is really vital to creativity. Being able to virtually immerse me in another place has been such a powerful experience. People can really only imagine things to the extent of their own experiences or their own imagination. It is really hard to visualize a place or an event when you have no visual context of what it really looks like or feels like. The multimodal digital experience really allows the reader to extend themselves outside of their own reality and force them to get rid of their own imagination and face the fact of what a real situation looks like, good or bad. I think that this is so important for education moving forward to utilize these technologies to broaden the horizons of children and allow them to see outside of their world. Using these technologies have their pitfalls and benefits, but I really think they have more pros than cons. I think that the cons are that sometimes social media is too captivating. I think that people spend far too much time in the world of their phone and in the lives of others than in their own personal lives and it can be very toxic. People live inside a screen and they are becoming dull social creatures who have an increasingly hard time in real-life interactions.  This scares me. But, as much as it can be a toxic thing it can also be a very positive thing as well. I think that giving people an opportunity at their finger tips to immerse themselves in other cultures, other people's lives, and other experiences is such a valuable educational tool. This can give underprivilege people or children the opportunity to see things and broaden their education in a way that we couldn't before. In addition, it adds such a powerful element to storytelling that adds an invaluable narrative that words cannot bring.