Identify, define, and evaluate the influence of technology on human culture

Course Project: Online Technology Conference

The final project is a presentation for an imaginary technology conference called in order to evaluate the impact of technology on culture. Students will pose questions of cultural concern in regard to new or emerging technologies and answer these questions in a multimedia presentation that uses scholarly research. The project will be completed in stages throughout the course and shared with the class in the final week. Students choose a new or emerging technology and ask the following questions about it (from Neil Postman, Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century):

1. What is the problem for which this technology is the solution?
2. Whose problem is it?
3. Which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution?
4. What new problems might be created because we have solved this problem?
5. What sort of people and institutions might acquire special economic and political power because of technological change?
6. What changes in language are being enforced by new technologies, and what is being gained and lost by such changes?

Students answer these questions by doing research in the UMGC library.  At least six scholarly sources must be employed to answer the questions.

Your exhibit will consist of a multimedia presentation on a particular technology and its relationship to culture. The exhibit will address the following issues regarding technology and culture:

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is for you to understand and articulate the relationship between technology and culture

Skills

The project will enable you to develop the following skills:

1. Identify, define, and evaluate the influence of technology on human culture
2. Analyze and evaluate specific relationships between technology and literature, writing, philosophy, religion, art, music, and posthumanism
3. Articulate cultural critiques of technology
4. Synthesize interdisciplinary scholarship in technology and the humanities
5. Demonstrate the ability to design and produce multimedia communication appropriate to a given research or creative context (purpose, audience, event, form, genre, medium)

Knowledge

The project will enable you to obtain the following content knowledge

1. Nature and function of technology
2. Nature and function of culture

Part 5: Submit First Draft for Feedback 

This week you will submit a draft of your completed narrated presentation. The presentation should last at least 20 minutes and not more than 30 minutes. You may use PowerPoint to narrate your presentation or use a screen casting software to make a video. 

Microsoft - Record a slide show with narration - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/record-a-slide-show-with-narration-and-slide-timings-0b9502c6-5f6c-40ae-b1e7-e47d8741161c

Microsoft - Rehearse and time the delivery of a presentation - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/rehearse-and-time-the-delivery-of-a-presentation-8424270a-d865-4aed-a321-1d2dd656381a

Course Project: Online Technology Conference