Wednesday, 28 September 2011

Communication: Theory or Practice?

This week’s blog post is a reflection on the two “lectures” we had this week. Unfortunately, both of these lectures were given online and not in person. This directly relates to what I would like to address in this blog post. As the world today becomes more computerized and technological, people are being replaced. Only two generations ago, people had to hand-write a letter and send it by ‘snail mail’ to contact anyone far away. Compared to today, this is a very personal and meaningful connection. You had to sit and write and put effort into your letter. Nowadays if you want to contact a friend, you could reach them by dialing a number, typing a few characters on Twitter, sending them a Facebook message, emailing them or connecting to their Blog . I can’t remember the last time I got a real, hard copy letter in the mail. This makes me a bit sad.

My mood was not good on Monday. I didn’t realize the class was cancelled until I got there. Later, when it was time for my lab, I didn’t know where to go because the room was booked by some other group. I took a wild guess on where the lab was, and turned out it was right. Well by then I was not in the mood to do a lab. Luckily, we were practicing a skill which I think is essential for the repertoire of a successful student and worker. That skill, of course, is public speaking and the lab proved to be useful practice.
I was glad to see we were going to learn about public speaking this week because of its importance.  But my mood was dampened yet again this week when I learned that the lecture would be online today. How, I ask, does one learn how to speak publicly from reading directions off a screen? The answer: communication theory can only broaden your skills so much and the real improvement comes from practice.  I hope that we will be practicing our speaking skills soon, I long to un-glue my eyes from this screen and look into the eyes of my fellow students as we communicate.  Online may be the fastest, cheapest, most efficient way to communicate, but nothing beats face to face.


Picture Citations:
1.https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2y7wAFt5ACiJ6HBiIoKtHl2qNaw33UsLnvP5iHuB1w63bpCybbk3qsNtOqatmdNX0INR65BF_cICjVuKHXr5Z9RF3WLTFuOvnz_s87LAVkbn-25jSXKiEdF1ega3evUWwGbcasXOhQZE/s1600/letter%252520writing%252520skills.jpg
2. http://nataliecopuroglu.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/twitter-email.jpg
3. http://www.smcdsb.on.ca/UserFiles/Servers/Server_6/Image/Shared%20Image%20Library/Educational/public-speaking-micorphone-crowd.jpg
Posted by at

5 comments:

  1. Angela Komarnicki3 October 2011 at 20:33

    Excellent post! I used you as a reference in my blog because you make great points on how the world has changed to reading and learning online with the reduction in face to face communication, even though it is still most important. I enjoyed your blog :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. J.L27 October 2011 at 14:41

    I agree with the sentiment of this post.
    It is a bit sad to see different forms of communication essentially disappear (eg.letter writing). It makes me wonder if there will ever be the day when we are nostalgic for Facebook?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous1 December 2011 at 16:20

    Hello,

    I liked that last paragraph you had there about public speaking.I completely agree with you, nothing beats face to face. It was a nice way to tie everything you said together. I sure hope online communication doesn't take over the way people talk to each other. How would you ever build a relationship with that person and have meaningful conversations? People are constantly having their eyes "glued" to a screen, whether it be a computer screen, tv screen, or cell phone screen. We must preserve traditional forms of communicating!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lark6 December 2011 at 18:29

    I agree with you on the value of face to face communication and snail mail. Getting a letter always cheers me up and brightens my day, it makes me feel valued that someone would take the time and effort to send something to me. I love social networking for the ability to share and keep in touch with so many people yet it will never replace that feeling of receiving mail.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous7 December 2011 at 12:02

    Alyssa, I am so glad that you brought this issue up and discussed it in full. It was wonderful reading your post on everything I agree with. I worry for our future now that almost everything can be done through the internet. Even businesses and classrooms are turning away from paper and using the internet or computers for their documents, etc. What if the internet crashes or computers don't work anymore because of some phenomenon? I realize that sounds extremely Y2K but our world would be in disarray because nobody seems to know how to communicate without computers or the internet anymore. It's pathetic.

    I have the same reservations when it comes to everything being online. For ALES, I often wouldn't know of an assignment being due until the morning of class when I'd check the class blog and see an assignment that wasn't there before I went to bed the night before. It is extremely frustrating. Same with the labs - almost all assignments are verbal. There is no writing or even a powerpoint to show us clear instructions. I resented going to labs for that very reason.

    I hope this issue is fixed in the future, even if ALES and other classrooms consider themselves to be technologically savvy and feel that paper instructions defeats the purpose of the class goals. It doesn't.

    Glad to have read this.

    - Shelby

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)