History In Communications

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:

1. 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?
2. What struck you as interesting about the way people adapted to the changes?
3. What was the impact of the invention of the clock (Crowley and Heyers, pp. 60-61)?
4. 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)?
5. The value of an education (Crowley and Heyers, p. 15).
6. How did education change (Crowley and Heyers, p. 65)?
7. How did commerce change (Crowley and Heyer, p. 29)?
8. How did governments change (Crowley and Heyer)?
9. How did our way of thinking and processing information change  after we acquired literacy (Crowley and Heyer, p. 36, p. 38, chapter 7)?
10. How are modern hieroglyphs being used today and why (Crowley and Heyers, p. 31)?
11. 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?
12. 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)?
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.