We have had 8 sessions so far in the PLACE fellowship career exploration program and I can say I have learned a lot. I have learned about the Black Heritage Trail, the history of discrimination against blacks, and how they did not have access to the same education as whites. I have also learned about volunteer opportunities within the National Parks of Boston, and another memorable session was today when we explored different National Parks around the world. We worked in pairs and were given the opportunity to dig for information about any National Park and convert it into a mini presentation that we could share with the rest of the group.
We spent about 15 minutes preparing our presentation and editing our slides so that they are both informational and creative. Iri and Destiny presented on Dry Tortuga and they gave us a lot of information about how the National Park specializes in the history of Fort Jefferson. Henry and I decided to do Big Bend. We presented a lot of information about how that park was considered a tourist site and specialized in creating a safe environment for different animals and various species of plants. Lastly, Nouradine and Chalina decided to present Kenai Fjords and gave us information about its landscape and how the scenery is basically the surroundings of mountains, ice, and big bodies of water.
After this, we got introduced to Ranger Josh, who gave us an insight on the types of social media platforms that the National Park Service uses. He told us about a project that he is planning and how the main platforms he uses are Facebook and Instagram.
Next we were each assigned to a social media platform used by the National Parks of Boston. There are 5 active social media platforms used to convey information about the sites in Boston. These platforms are: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and the NPS website. However, I was assigned to analyze and give my honest opinion about the NPS website! After taking a good look at it, I liked the organization and how there is an even distribution between information and images. In my opinion, if you want to catch someone’s eye on a platform, there needs to be visuals to match the descriptions you are giving and I could say that the website did a good job doing that. Although I didn’t get the chance to look at the other 4 platforms, after hearing about it from my other peers, I got a good insight on the type of information that is being conveyed.
Ultimately, the goal was to critique and give opinions on the different social media platforms used today and how your work can go viral if it is a good source of entertainment, a good hashtag/caption, and a big expansion on language.
