Assignment 4 – All About Ong
For my final assignment, I decided to review the work of Walter Ong. Specifically, Ong’s book: Orality and Literacy. During the course of this particular term, Ong peaked my interest and I found that his material was so dense with valuable ideas and concepts. My goal was to review his work (more in-depth) and create a simple and engaging video that could be shown to individuals who are not familiar with him or his work. The content that I included is what I deemed most interesting/salient to today’s world. Deciding upon Ong’s most important ideas was perhaps the most challenging part of this assignment.
My video was created using Powtoon. Powtoon is a an exciting way to make simple animated videos/slideshows and is a fantastic alternative to PowerPoint. I have only used Powtoon once before, so I enjoyed the opportunity to play around with different presentation options.
Here is my Powtoon:
This is great. You have a done nice job highlighting Ong’s key ideas. I like that you have also included additional interesting and insightful bits of information. For example, I didn’t know Ong was a Jesuit priest, but I do know that the Jesuits are an order that values education, so that helps better understand the man behind the work. Thank you!
Thank you for your comment! I agree with you, that knowing Ong’s past – gives context and understanding to his interest in education and literacy.
Excellent work brelloyd, like you I was fascinated by the work of Ong and contemplated powtoons for my presentation. The main points raised by you were very pertinent especially based on the revolution of text.
One of Ong’s quote which stands out in my mind is ” without writing the literate mind would not think as it does, not only when engaged in writing but normally even when its composing its thought in oral form. More than any other single invention writing has transformed human consciousness” (Ong, 1982 p. 78). This is key as whatever technological improvements occur writing still remains critical to literacy.
References:
Ong, W.J. (1982) Orality and literacy. The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.