Paulinians raise literacy and media awareness in ComMonth 2021
by Alexandra Ypil
The Center for Communication Arts (CommArts) hosted its first ever ComMonth 2021 for the month of March. It was conceptualized to combine two of CommArts major events: The Media Summit, which is CommArts’ annual seminar, and Literacy Week, a new project proposed to launch this year. The three-week seminar aimed to enrich the student body’s knowledge about communication skills through various plenary talks and breakout sessions.
ComMonth invited different speakers who offered valuable insights about media and literacy. The first day was introduced by Ms. Elise Sunga who spoke about the media and its strong influence on others in her plenary talk entitled “The Power of Media.” The second day featured a series of breakout sessions of the participants’ choice: Paulinians learned how to use different mediums in content making with Ms. Mariane Ylagan, while the breakout session with Ms. Eunice Andrada in “Today’s Poetry Scene” emphasized the influence of one’s surroundings in writing poetry.
The other breakout sessions focused more on media including Ms. Zoe Andin’s talk, which gave critical points on how the government affects the way it is curated in “Journalism: How the Government controls the Media’’ Meanwhile, Ms. Amber Teng discussed various issues and caveats with media consumption from a data science perspective in “How to Criticize the Media.” ComMonth 2021 concluded with Ms. Therese Aseoche sharing helpful tips on writing using her experience in publishing online articles in her plenary talk entitled “The Basics of Effective Writing.”
“Media and literacy are always going to be important in society. I don’t think these forms of mediums are going to vanish or become less relevant as time passes, so we should be able to continue learning and understanding them. We should be able to use the power that both of these forms have to create a difference not just to ourselves, not just for our future, but also to the rest of society because the future of the community lies in our hands as individuals.” says Julienne Cequenna, President of Center for Communication Arts.
