Presentations and Cyberbullying

In the third chapter of Untangling the Web, the authors pull together a list of useful resources for presenting. In it, there are some popular favorites--like Prezi. I've seen Prezi used a lot in class, and it's quite impressive, especially when compared to your typical powerpoint. It has a lot of pizzazz, a lot of ornamentation that makes a presentation more interesting. Also in the chapter is Poll Everywhere, which gives teachers the opportunity to, well, poll everywhere. It's really helpful because you can do an instant poll, and integrate it into lessons and presentations as well.

TED talks are a different kind of presentation. Of course, they're actual talks, instead of academic presentations. However, they always have some sort of message behind them. Monica Lewinsky is probably a familiar name to most--known as a former president's mistress, the reason he got impeached, but not removed. She did a talk on cyberbullying, calling herself patient zero of such harassment. In it, she talks about how her story was the first one to burst onto the internet scene before it came out on traditional media. Later, she accounts other victims of cyberbullying--Tyler Clementi, especially, who killed himself after being publicly outed by his roommate, and ridiculed online.

Things spread on the internet like wildfire now, and Lewinsky was the first victim. Now with social media, there's a lot of talk, and with cameras everywhere, news spreads fast. Lewinsky asks that we do not feed into this culture of devouring each other, that we do not give more clickable dollars to gossip websites, and I agree. It's like buying a terrible tabloid with stories you know that are wrong, ones that claim celebrities are terrible parents just due to one unfavorable photo. The culture surrounding the internet has fostered public humiliation to a ridiculous extent, and everyone needs to take their part to stop it.