Class dates 1/24 and 1/26
The reading entitled "Cultivating Communities of Practice" made a few statements about Communities of Practice. First of all, Communities of Practice are defined as groups of people who share a common interest and desire to deepen their expertise/problem-solving by interacting with one another. It also said that these Communities of Practice can share a common sense of identity because of their shared interest. The practice of sharing information within a community of practice can be essential, in some cases, for financial growth within a business. This reading also states that not all information can be cataloged and that sharing information face to face is important for growing one's body of knowledge.
The group activity of the day required for me to work with people that I had never met before. I enjoyed working with my group and thought that they employed the technique "yes, and...?" very well. They were very welcoming to new people (even though they already knew each other).
After reading Tuckman's Stages of Development, I condensed what I think characterizes the different stages of development:
1) Forming- safe discussion, dependence on each other and the group leader, discussion on how to approach the task
must be comfortable enough with group to broach potentially conflict causing topics to progress to the next stage.
2) Storming - beginning to get an understanding of each other, using a "testing and proving mentality", needs structure (i.e. roles within the group, leadership)
The ability to listen is necessary for the group to progress to the next stage
3) Norming - group cohesion, shared leadership, conflict resolution, sense of group belonging, resistance to change
True "interdependence" is required to reach the next stage. I imagine interdependence to be when all group members fulfill their assigned roles.
4) Performing - group is most productive, group unity, individual members are self-assuring
5) Adjourning - to take care of any loose ends of the assignment, indicates that the group was productive/effective enough to finish their task.
Colvin's "What Really Makes Teams Work" overviewed the importance of "dense" social interactions and how it improves productivity in the workplace. While I respect the research of a MIT scientist, his statement that online communities were ineffective did not make much sense to me. I've known people that have begun some of the best relationships in their lives through online communities. Online communities combines the principles of Communities of Practice, where people seek others with similar interests as them, with removing some potentially troublesome cultural differences and allows the user to objectively analyze what the other person has said. This article also assumes that face to face interactions consists of effective/respectful communication and the members are bound in some way to work with one another, which definitely isn't always the case. Also, from anecdotal experience, real life groups can amplify bad ideas if people are not invested in the group or are afraid of social repercussions from a disagreement.
Hi, my name is Katie! I am a junior ISTA major and enjoy cooking, hiking, and playing video games in my spare time.
This course is going to be helpful when I am in a professional setting because the ability to effectively communicate is very important in computer programming. This class may help me better understand the data structures of various types of social media that I may analyze in the future because I will know the characteristics of the collaborations that helped create them. An unexpected benefit of this course is that it may help me better understand needs of the consumer and therefore help me create better products suited to their needs. I also enjoy meeting new people and look forward to this course.
While I knew that ReCAPTCHA was used to digitize information, I did not know that Duolingo was used for the same purpose. I have used Duolingo in the past and thought it was a good teaching tool and would recommend it to others. The only thing that I did not like about it was that it required you to speak into the phone for some exercises, which can be awkward if you're doing it in a public place. As a result of that feature, I deleted the app and now use quizlet to study Spanish on my phone.
I enjoyed seeing the different analyses of social media on the first day, since analyzing large amounts of data is something I may do in the future. The picture of how people of different political parties interacted was especially interesting to me, since the recent presidential election greatly divided our country and revealed some biased reporting practices employed by the media.
I enjoyed reading Tina Fey's rules of improvisation and was surprised at how effective it could be when working with people. While assertively communicating your thoughts is important, it is also important when you respectfully listen to and expand upon your teammates thoughts even if you do not see the merit of their ideas immediately. Also, I have done a lot of group activities in the past and I agree with Lemon's suggestion to make statements because my ideas have been ignored when I didn't assertively communicate my thoughts. I used to be really shy and working with other people has really helped me learn how to communicate with other people. This was my favorite article to read.
I think I understand Levy's assertion that collective imagination creates reality, because some of the science fiction/fantasy in the past has become reality (such as mankind's ability to fly, travel through space, and carry around hand-held computers full of collective knowledge and the ability to immediately interact with one another).
The article "What is Collaboration Anyway?" was helpful in understanding the different types of collaboration and importance of similar goals when doing so. I did not realize hashtags were a type of collaboration, but after reading this article it makes sense that they are. Hashtags are especially effective on sites such as Twitter, because it is more text/communication based than sites such as Instagram. I think that hashtags are especially important for social movements and compiling public discourse because they help facilitate discussion and organization over enormous distances.
I look forward to working with you all and hope you have a great semester! :)
