Turkey Made Me Forget

I am a little late on this blog, but I am going to blame it on the delicious turkey that I ate last week. It was good to get away from school work for a while and to spend some time with my family. We always have big meals and it is always good to talk with family that I do not get to see very often. Our group did a good job on Monday of getting the content into our PowerPoint and now we just need to spruce it up a little bit. We will need to meet outside of class one or two more times to finalize our presentation, but we are really close to being finished. I hope that everyone had a good break and was able to catch up on some rest.

Zach M.

Last Week

This past week, we only had class on Monday due to Thanksgiving break. During our class we spent time working again on our final presentation of our service learning project. We are coming along well. I think that we will have enough material to cover to fill the entire hour. We spent time creating slides and brainstorming topics to present to the class. Our group presents last, which gives us plenty of time to get together outside of the classroom and continue working on our presentation.

Andrew F

Short Week

This week of class was extremely short due to being Thanksgiving break, therefore we only had one day of class. Today in class was another workday and we worked more on our powerpoint for our final presentation. We have a really good basic outline, and we're working towards filling it all in. I think the biggest problem we may face is filling the required time slot of presenting. A whole class period is a pretty significant amount of time to talk. Once we add some "rich" media we shouldn't have a problem making the presentation last the whole time period. We still have some time to get everything completed, and we are the last group to present so that also works in our favor.

-Katherine

Getting It All Done

Today we met as a group in class and finished organizing our final presentation. Our group is the last group to give their presentation, so it gives us plenty of time to practice it. We plan on meeting a couple of days before our presentation to go back over everything and practice.
This class has been a good investment for me overall. Small groups come about in almost every aspect of life, so it is important to know how to make those groups work successfully. Performing the service learning project showed that even helping others requires people to come together and work toward a common goal.
The Guardians of B230 have been the easiest, most competent group I think I have ever worked with. We all got along so great and knew that we all wanted the same things out of this group as the others, and I believe that is why we worked so well together.

---DLM---

Leadership

This past week we have been discussing leadership in group work. I have grown up participating in several different leadership organizations such as 4H, FFA, and other classes both in high school and at Purdue. I think that the most important asset of being a leader is serving. I do not think an effective leader is one who directs or organizes a group. I think a leader is one who leads by service, and the rest of the group follows. By service, I mean doing the same amount of work, if not more, than the rest of the group members.
On Friday we had a work day for our group's final presentation. We are coming along nicely, and have a rough draft of slides created. I think the biggest challenge our group faces in this presentation is filling the time slot. I do not foresee any problems covering the material required for the presentaion. I think with a few more work days though we will be able to come up with enough matieral to speak about in class.

Andrew F

Leadership & Workday

Throughout most of my life I've been taught to be a leader. My dad is a lieutenant colonel in the army so the principles instilled in me, even as a young child, were to be a leader. I also have a younger sister that I was always expected to watch out for, so I naturally took the role of being a leader. As far as working in groups go I have taken the leadership role multiple times, but it is usually something I don't like to do. I don't mind being the leader of the group, but I feel like I get a better perspective of everything when I am not the leader. On Friday in class we had a work day and got to discuss/layout a plan of action for our final presentation. I've really enjoyed working with this group, because everyone is really easy going but we still get everything done. If more groups that I've been a part of had worked as well together as we do it would have saved me numerous trials and tribulations throughout my college/school career.

-Katherine

Lead By Example

The discussion on leadership this week was good and it was interesting to see how others view me in comparison to how I view myself. When I think about people in my life who have been good leaders, they all have one huge aspect in common. All of the people that I see as great leaders have a servants heart. By this I mean that they are willing to do the work right along side of you and get their hands dirty. I believe that leading by example can be the most effective way to get people to follow you. I have never been much for the delegative or authoritarian types. These types of leaders turn me off and I find them to be lazy. A quick example was a particular boss of mine that I worked for doing landscaping work. This boss did not just stand back and watch others do the work. He did the opposite and motivated his employees to work hard because he was sweating and working just as hard as all the others. I really admired this and it always made me want to work harder and made me feel as though what I was doing wasn't in vain. I aspire to be a leader and I hope to do so through leading by example. I believe that you should not ask others to do what you are not willing to do.

Zach Myers

Leadership

I was raised the youngest of five boys, so I did not always take on the leadership role. As I got older, I still didn't jump up and take the leadership role right away. I don't mind being a follower (somebody has to be) and I certainly don't mind being the leader (somebody has to be). The only problem I have with being the leader is that I don't want the other people to think that I want to have control over all the decisions. I only take on a leadership role when I feel like the group I'm working in at the time needs to be redirected or have a broader view of things. In other words, I like to be a follower and see how things are being run, but when I think the goals of the group are sliding or the group isn't working, I'll step in. (That was all about a group in general, not the Guardians of B230).
When we took the first test about our leadership abilities, my group's average verses my own beliefs were practically the same. All but 2 of the traits averaged out to 4.66, and most of my traits were 5s. On the second test, i was not surprised at all to see that I got 30/30 for my Technical Skill Score; after all, I am a technologist. The Human Skill Score was lower, and my Conceptual Skill Score was lower still.

---DLM---

Creativity Workshops Are Fun

I really enjoyed the workshops this week and it was a good break from the normal routine of class. The workshops provided our group with the opportunity to have fun and also learn about the creative minds that exists with in our group. I think that my favorite creativity workshop was the workshop about making a product and presenting it as a commercial. The whole class seemed to take this workshop serious and also had a lot of fun with it. It was really funny to watch everyone do their impression of an infomercial and to see what crazy ideas the other groups had come up with. Our groups workshop went well and I think that the class enjoyed it. If I was to change one thing about our workshop I think that we should have given the groups some sort of prop so that they would have to expand their creativity even more to try and figure out what to do with the prop. It was interesting to me that each of the groups decided to use a narrator when they told their story of the worst school day ever. I thought that the class might come up with different ways of presenting, but I guess that people always try to take the path of least resistance. I learned a lot about creativity and I enjoyed the workshops. In the future I will try to constantly be thinking outside the box, because I think that being a creative person can make for a more enjoyable life. If you can constantly come up with creative things, then you won't have to get stuck in the mundanes of life.

Zach Myers

Workshops

All this week and the end of last week we have been working on these creativity workshops. Each team came up with a different creative task that the class had to complete. Our group had the class split off into 3 groups and come up with their worst possible day on campus. We gave the groups about 10mins to brainstorm. The rules were that everyone in the group had to participate, they had to act out their worst day, they could use anything in the classroom as a prop, and their skit had to last 3 to 5mins. All three groups came up with some pretty funny skits, and I would not have wanted any of those things to happen to me if I was having a bad day. The creativity workshop that I liked the best was the group that had us protect our "egg". We were given an "egg" and two cups. We were told that we had to come up with some way to protect the egg because it was going to be dropped from approximately 8feet above the ground, and if it was not protected it would break. Our group made a pretty strong enclosure, and we used newspaper inside and outside of the cups to act as a cushioning for our egg. Apparently our protection was not strong enough because our egg broke. Regardless of that fact it was still my favorite out of the creativity workshops.

-Katherine

Skits

This week has been full of Creativity Workshops, where each group had their turn to get the other groups to come up with something creative based on criteria that the "boss" group came up with. Unfortunately for me, my eyes really hurt today, so I couldn't really participate in any of the activities. From the sounds of it though, B&G Clubbers made a really fun, creative workshop! I'm bummed that I missed it.
One of the activities my group participated in was the one where cannibals were in a cave that we got trapped in and well we had to defend ourselves was clay, sticks, and whatever we had on us. This was a fun, yet challenging, activity because we could not talk to each other or the cannibals would find us. The hard part was not being able to talk to anybody. You would think that not being able to talk would lead to groupthink, but our group took a piece of paper and passed it around, each one of us writing ideas down. The whole Creativity Workshop was fun, except for today...

---DLM---

Project

I realized I did not post for last week (11/8) so I am going to do that now since I just finished my catch up posts. Last week we finally got to put our project into action. I sat at the table in Stewart on wednesday from 2:30-5:30. Unfortunately we had no one actually bring any cell phones to us, but a couple of people said they would come back on Thursday and bring some. I was unable to make it to the Thursday session, but apparently no one that said they would come back actually came back and we also didn't receive any new cell phones. I know that myself and a couple others in our group brought some cell phones so we do have some phones to take to the YWCA. We decided to wait a couple of days to take the phones over to the YWCA in case anyone from class decides to contribute a phone as well. Overall I think it was still a good project to do, because if nothing else we spread the word a little more about the YWCA collecting phones for abused women.

-Katherine

Missed Post (11/1)

This week of class I missed all of due to a family emergency that required me to spend the week at home.

-Katherine

Missed Post (10/25)

This week of class I was sick and missed Wednesday and Friday's classes. In class that Monday, though, we talked about problem solving techniques. A good point that was brought up in class was that vigilant thinkers ask questions. Throughout my college career I've learned that the best way to learn/remember something is to ask questions about the topic that will bring you a deeper understanding of the topic. Asking questions expands your horizons on a given topic and requires you to go into a deeper thought process so that you may come up with a relevant question. Something new that I learned in that class was the five steps for reflective thinking. These steps are: 1. Identify the problem, 2. Analyze the problem, 3. Generate several possible solutions, 4. Select the best possible solution, and 5. Test/Implement the solution. We also got into new groups to work on a different project, but I was unable to work with the group due to being sick one week and having a family emergency the next week.

-Katherine

service learning

This week we put on our service learning project, the cell phone drive for the YWCA. I was able to attend the first day and not the second. The first day we collected around 8 phones, and had several people approach us with questions and how long we would be there. Overall I think we picked the right location for the event. It was a busy area as we expected, and I feel that there was no better place than the Stewart Center.

Last week we learned about creativity and sat through a few creativity workshops. They were interesting to say the least. I particularly enjoyed the last one we did, trying not to bust the barries in the napkin. It was a fun, cunstructive group activity that I though sparked a little creativity between the groups in the class. I am anxious to put on our creativity workshop on Wednesday.

Andrew F

Almost Done

Today, The Guardians of B230 hosted the first segment of their Service Learning Project. Some members stayed the whole 3 hours, while the others could only stay for parts of the time because of classes. We collected about 8 phones today for the YWCA to give to abused women. We probably had about 5 people tell us they would be back tomorrow so that they could give their phone. Overall, I would expect that we get between 15 to 20 phones total. I think that is a pretty reasonable number, not too many and not too few.
We also experienced an unexpected form of communication while we were sitting at the table. Straight ahead of us, outside, we witnessed action of the Zombie game some people on campus are playing. I had not heard much about the game until today, and I still don't exactly understand the whole concept. Either way, it was obvious that the "Humans" were bonding as well as the "Zombies". I don't know if all of these people already knew each other or not, but if they didn't it is a great example of how a group can be formed using the Symbolic Convergence Theory. Each group (Humans and Zombies) used what they had in common to shape the identity of their newly-formed group.

---DLM---

Getting creative

Today I realized that I haven't been posting. My communication with myself is apparently failing, so let me take a stab at a new post :/

Monday in class we participated in Jasmine's creativity workshop, where we had to come up with useless birthday gifts and brainstorm ideas using the Post-it method. We also had to come up with a way to present our ideas without using PowerPoint. Personally, this was the most fun I've had in class in a long time. Not only did we get to brainstorm something ridiculous, like useless birthday gifts, but we got to color and play with Post-its. I really enjoy the lack of predictability in this class. It keeps it from being boring and I still feel like I am learning when I'm sitting in class. Not only do we learn about communication, but we learn about a lot of different people as we work with new groups all the time.

I'm really looking forward to conducting our own creativity workshop, although I'm not sure how we're going to top this one. I guess we'll just have to be creative.

-MNE

this week

This week in class we completed our problem solving task and presented our proposal to the class. Our project was the Exon Oil Spill. It was a fun task and I felt that our group worked well together and everyone did their assigned task. It was lot of work between the short turn around time, evaluating another class members contribution, writing a refection paper, and all at the same time preparing for our service learning project that happens this week. It was interesting evaluating another class member working in their group, and then explaining that to them face to face. It was different, but rewarding. It was nice to get feedback on my own performance in my group, and let me know the things I need to work on. Overall, I think it was a worth while activity.

Our service learning project is quickly approaching. We have been advertising all week, as planned. We are ready to put on our cell phone drive. The last thing we need to do as a group is make up a sign for our booth and confirm the days that each member in the group can work.

Andrew Ferrel

Post It

This week in class we talked about how to enhance creativity in the groups we are involved in. In the book and in the class we discussed the technique of the affinity technique. This technique is all about sorting through the ideas that a group may generate. I especially like the idea of using Post It notes to help with the sorting process. The idea is to have members write their ideas on a Post It note and then to put the notes up on a wall or board. Then the rest of the group will go through all of the notes and organize them into to categories or into groups of most importance. This technique seems very functional, but also seems like a little fun. The fun is that you get the chance to express your ideas and also to see the ideas of all group members. This process will allow everyone in the group to have some sort of input. Many times in groups that I have been in everyone is full of ideas, but it is difficult to organize and choose an idea. Using the Post It notes would be a huge advantage and would help the group work through ideas. I like this technique and will more than likely use it in the future.

This is the week for our group to complete our service learning project. I want to say thanks to Andrew for doing a great job on creating the flyer design that we are using.

Thanks,

Zach M.