Throughout Summer 22’s blogposts and her comments for Steph’s lecture and her own personal page there can historically be found openness as a way to raise her level of Interpersonal Communication. The first place that I looked where I found Summer 22’s openness was when I went to the classes’ project on student guided tours. Here, a list of anonymous blognames were posted with links to student reflections about the class. While scrolling down on Summer22’s page I came to a title labeled “Most Important Thing Learned in Class”. While reading what she wrote I was seeing openness being used as a tool to express her own reflections on the course. Summer22 uses her openness stating, “My most drastic change, however, has to be my understanding of leadership. In different instances I have been dubbed a leader, and I think this is because my goal has always been to give off those perceptions of myself because in our culture it is what one strives to be.” This shows her being open with others telling the readers personal information as a way to make sure her point is getting across. I realized that there must have been a reason she was talking about leadership as an important part of IPC so I went to the link she left on the bottom to Steph’s lecture. This lecture explains the importance of “roles” in a group and how a leader is the most important part of the group but is unnecessary without a task at hand. As I scrolled down to the comments I came across Summer22’s post. The first thing that Summer talks about is how great her classmate Efhant’s comment was; she thought they really encapsulated the importance of a leader. I figured I ought to read this person’s response first so I scrolled up and read what they wrote. One of the most important things I found on their comment which was reflective in Summer’s page and comment was: “You can stick a bunch of people in a room and you’ve got yourself a group, but only if one of those people takes the initiative to address the group as a whole will the group create something together.” When Summer read a comment like this it prompted her to be responsive with openness to express her agreement and new points as well. On her comment she said: “I am always in at least one group project at all times, and sometimes it is up to that one person who will step up to the bat.” She again expresses openness with response to Efhant’s comment that they left which both were in response to Steph’s lecture. I scrolled down a little further to make sure Summer didn’t write anymore and to my surprise I found a link she left with reactions to comments people left her. On this blogpost Summer expresses how happy she was with the comments and how they have helped her work on IPC during the duration of the class. One of the things she learned from comments throughout the class was being sensitive to others. She said, “I’m a pretty passionate person, so I know that I need to be cautious of not being too overpowering, my goal has always been to express my views but make sure that everyone else feels comfortable expressing their own views.” This is another instance of her being open in response to other classmate’s comments and reactions to her posts. As shown, Summer22 has used openness as a tool to further her IPC skills and also as a way of “nexting”. By expressing her own opinions and reactions to others in an open fashion she leaves ideas for people to think about which can continue the conversation. I believe that openness has been an essential tool for this particular person in an online-style course and throughout the various this is proven of why she reacts the way she does.
August 18, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Looking at the two team project’s I found while trying to synthesize some of our prior learning from Bohm: On Communication chapter 2 in Bridges Not Walls I found a way to link my classmates work together with the core concepts. “Openness Opens the Doors to IPC” makes known the importance of using this skill. I feel that Bohm in his words holds the essence of what a lot of us experienced in this class, which is that “communication can lead to the creation of something new only if people are able freely to listen to each other, without predjudice and without trying to influence each other(44).” I think that we were able to created an environment wherein this could be experienced.
In regard to “Group Project” we see topic’s of relief, confusion, empathy, and frustration touched upon. They exhibit examples of some of what we have all experienced somewhere in the class. In writing about frustration, Bohm might consider that the frustration came about because of the fact “that other people are ‘blocked’ about certain questions, so tht without being aware of it, they are avoiding the confrontation of contradictions in certain idea that may be extremely dear to them(45).” This makes me think of the example about Steph’s frustration’s from the “Group Project” jaggerbunny’s comment’s. “Please, we will get too scattered if everyone opens new messages on the same topics. If you (any of you) are responding to a subject that is already under discussion, please REPLY appropriately instead of starting something brand new! If, in fact, you ARE starting something new (!)- go for it. Bohm says that “the key to…collaborative creativity is effective listening (42)”. This is where I think that Bohm’s work ties in, because these new ways of communication were a source of frustration for us too. Partly because we didn’t “effectively listen” to our instructions, and maybe in part because we “blocked” out what Steph was communicating to us because it was new way of thinking for us.
The second presentation I looked at “Openness: Essential tool of IPC” , this part was written by jimigarcia27, who followed Summer22’s post. He said “one of the most important things I found on their comment which was reflective in Summer’s page and comment was: “You can stick a bunch of people in a room and you’ve got yourself a group, but only if one of those people takes the initiative to address the group as a whole will the group create something together.” She (also) said, “I’m a pretty passionate person, so I know that I need to be cautious of not being too overpowering, my goal has always been to express my views but make sure that everyone else feels comfortable expressing their own views.”
jimigarcia’s comments. “This goes back to Bohms thoughts on communication by saying “we need to be able to communicate freely in a creative movement in which no one permanently holds to or otherwise defends his (or hers) own ideas. This just combines the IPC skills of openness that are necessary with group formation and how the groups functionality can be dependent on right environment- “if people are able freely to listen to each other, without prejudice” (44,Bohm-yes again).
http://grant2u.wordpress.com