Leisure and Society

Human expression through language, texts, or images can be analyzed in multiple different ways. We need to understand that it is equivalent to a systematically designed way of communicating to others through the use of speech, writing or reading. The Children’s Museum of Phoenix illustrates this completely (See Artifact--Official Interview Questions). In my interview with the Director of Marketing and Communications at the museum, I learned that they are “helping to develop a child's early literacy or math skills or creating activities that help to make important connections in the brain.” They do this through sensory, visual and auditory stimuli. The children can play with water, sand, textures, flat surfaces, shiny surfaces, rough surfaces, multiple versions of building blocks, pictures can be made and seen, bubbles are blown in the air, mazes run up and down the walls. All of these things and more help to stimulate a child’s language abilities through play (recreation).

Human expression has been analyzed and understood in this class as a way in which education allows individuals to understand the impact that we have on various systems. One way is understanding how human consumption and traveling has significantly impacted our environment. This can be seen specifically through travel and making students and people aware of the impact, whether large or small, of their carbon footprint. Human expression can also be seen through images by spreading awareness of one’s impact on the environment, as well as how humans choose to spend their leisure time. (See Artifact “Leisure and Society Paper”)

My third artifact “ Play Again Reflection” shows the detrimental impact technology has had on humans, particularly younger generations (younger than me). My peers and I appear to have been less affected than today's younger people. While my generation was involved with AIM, MySpace, Ask.fm, and eventually Facebook, these were primarily text chatting platforms that led to its own problem of cyberbullying. Today’s generation is immersed in the video game world where they disappear for hours on end and no matter how many hours they may have already played in a day, everything they need to do during the day is done in anticipation of being able to devote even more time gaming. This therefore has led to less and less face to face communication and less time being spent outside to play and embrace nature for what can be learned from it and all that it has to offer.