The impact of words

Posted by dbatty1 on December 17, 2011 in Uncategorized |No Comments

At the second assembly yesterday our Principal shared this YouTube clip:

The Power of Words

I flicked it around twitter and it was nice to get a reply from a tweep about a blog post she had created around the clip regarding empathy – Teach Empathy

Thinking about the clip further, considering the range of medium we have to engage in communication the words we use become so much more significant.

Twenty years ago we did not have Facebook, Twitter or other forms of social media that reach a vast audience within seconds of creating our message. Consideration of what we say within this context is greatly important. Being aware that you may not be in control of who reads/hears your words is a concept I think at times is difficult to grasp. Once we use to find information about situations or people (if not directly from them) as part of the gossip mill, now we not only have the hearsay gossip but the online presence that many forget about and consequently are left wondering how particular information was disseminated to those not in their close circle.

I guess the message I am finding here is that words have greater avenues than they have ever had in our past and as a result the message in the video clip is so much more powerful. Where our words end up and who is impacted by them is out of our control, but we are still in control of what words we use and how we use them.