Perspectives on Reality

What you see ad hear is filtered through who you are. Each person has a different perspective. Your perspective can be influenced by the physical environment: where you are standing, the weather, or the time of day. It can also be influenced by one’s mood, by cultural filters, or by past experiences. When you understand what you think and feel and even see and hear is impacted by human experiences, you begin to understand how difficult it is to arrive at pure fact. Technology has an opportunity to impact human ways of knowing, thinking, and expressing.

In this paper you will experience the same story in multiple formats: the written word, the spoken word, and video. When you begin to add photos or manipulate images, is this changing your experience or enhancing or distorting your reality? Reference content from Week 3 Notes and Readings in your paper.

To prepare:

• Return to Week 3 Notes and Readings and review Saki’s The Open Window (written and audio), Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a Woman? (speech and performance interpretation), and the two forms of the Omayra Sanchez story (written and written with pictures).
• Think about your reaction to the different forms of each resource and what it might mean for you as a learner.
• Consider how humans use their perspective to understand new experiences by imagining details of a story.
• Since technology has made it easier to share visual versions, does that impact our need to “see to believe” or influence how easily we understand without a visual?
• Have you ever had the experience of being given false information about a new situation? Or changing your mind about something with growing evidence?
• How is a story, a painting, or a song a kind of virtual reality?

Post a response to one of the following prompts (at least 500+ words); complete EITHER Prompt A or Prompt B.

PROMPT A

Consider the imagery you created in your mind as you interacted with the written version of The Open Window. Describe this imagery and discuss whether it helped you understand the story. Did the imagery or imagined tone change when you listened to the audio? How? Which medium did you enjoy the most?

Now, do the same exercise with Sojourner Truth’s speech in text and as interpreted by Cicely Tyson in video form. Which medium did you prefer and why?

Comparing the forms you preferred in each case, what might that tell you about how you learn?

OR

PROMPT B

How we interpret something often depends on our past experiences and perspectives. Begin by reading the Ain’t I a Woman speech given by Sojourner Truth. Describe your reactions to this speech. When you watched Cicely Tyson’s interpretation through her performance, was it different than you imagined? How and why? Which medium did you enjoy the most?

Now, do the same exercise with the two articles for Omayra Sanchez’s story. When her picture was released, there was controversy about whether the picture was necessary to convey her story or if it was just an attempt by the journalist to shock the public and sale more newspapers. Do you think the picture was necessary? Was the event conveyed just as vividly in the story without the picture? Why or why not?