It's Monday

I reviewed the rough draft of my groups presentation. I am very happy with the way everything is turning out. It is looking really good. It looks like we are close to being finished. It has been a bit of work but very helpful. My friend actually will have a job interview on Thursday for an internship teaching position. The power point presentation that my group developed has helped me assist her in preparing for this upcoming interview. We are going to get together by phone in order for her to practice with the interview.

I reviewed chapter 13 today. I found it very interesting since public speaking is not my favorite thing to do. In preparing a speech for the public it is important to know and understand your audience if possible. I also found that a self analysis may help in preparing an effective speech. A person can review their life in order to find potential topics to discuss. I think this may also be helpful when getting prepared for a job interview. One can review their life and recent accomplishment then look at creating a short summary should the interviewer ask questions of that nature.

Do you understand me?

We don't always understand people because people have different way of communicating. We also leave a lot of room for interpretation when we don't say exactly what we mean. Often when talking with close friends I don't say everything and most things are picked up because of facial expressions. Normally this is effective but sometimes it does not always work. Recently I played a game at work with a few team members. One person had a picture of shapes and was told to describe the picture to the person sitting at the table. The person describing the picture had to face away from the person drawing. I found in this exercise that each person thinks differently and that if we have a message to pass along we have to be very precise by giving specific instructions such as draw a circle in the middle of your paper. The circle should be 2 inches in diameter and 2 inches in length.

Thursday

This evening I learned about the qualities of a great leader. I actually made a connection about qualities that I felt were in great leaders. My director - Virginia is a great leader. The qualities that stand out the most is that she listens, has compassion, and works to see both sides of a situation in order to find the best solution. I have not actually taken time to think about why I admire her until I was working on the discussion this evening. The fact that she listens and has compassion draws me to her. I want to be a person that listens and shows compassion.

What is communication?

Communication is the transmitting of information either verbally or non-verbally. It is also listening and understanding what another person is transmitting. Communication can be done in a variety of ways to mention a few: email, memos, verbal, and non-verbal.

My group has continued to communicate effectively. This evening I will be calling one of our team members to assist with the power point. They shared that they were having difficulty.

The advantages of group work is that a variety of minds and ideas can work together to make a presentation better than it may have been had it been made by one person. The disadvantage to group work is that not everyone works at the same pace. This can cause confusion and frustration. The other disadvantage is a person that realise on others to do their work. This also would cause frustration.

Blog Experience

My experience with my group have gone very well. I have found this class challenging because it requires several hours of my time. I have found this class enjoyable and meaningful. The communication between my group has been great. One team member has taken the role of organizing and seeking out volunteers for different parts of the project. During the chat I was able to share a few ideas that were received well. When a team member in my group has an idea it seems that we all work to make it happen. Another team member felt we should have some key points that were found in chapter 10. I volunteered to provide that along with another team member. I made one PowerPoint slide for our presentation and another group member put together two more pages that matched my page. The power point presentation is looking good. My group seems to easily reach consensus, it seems that we all go with the flow of things and we all care about our grade. Earlier today I sent the summary off to be added to the presentation.
To be honest, my previous experiences working in groups have not ended well. I usually get stuck doing most of the work and then the teacher grades us down because not all team members participated. My faith in working in groups has been restored. This has been a very positive experience.

Group B - Communication

This evening group B had an online chat. It went well. We had some great ideas about recording our voices in the power point to give it a personal touch. We also will be adding some info from chapter 10 to our presentation. Steph and myself will email our info to Bea on Wednesday. I will be reviewing the pp tomorrow. Gabriel and Steph will record themselves asking the interview questions. Then email it to Bea, who will insert it into the PowerPoint. Bea will also insert the info from chapter 10 into the pp. The last phase - Justin will answer a few questions by recording his voice and the remainder of questions by writing the answers down. That will be inserted into the PowerPoint. Each person will give it one more final review before we turn it in to the instructor. I have a great group.

Working

Today - I worked on my group project and emailed my part to another team member. It will then be entered into a power point. I also checked Yahoo answers and assigned the best answer to my questions to the people that had what I thought were the best answers. I also looked at a few people's questions and answered one. I am really glad this week is over. It has been really busy.