Bringing it all together

Welcome all to the final installment of the Ales 204 blog Tree Tales. For this post I will be doing a reflective post on what I did learn in this class and what I had hoped to learn but unfortunately did not over these past few months in the class of Ales 204.

Right off the bat let's begin by looking at the course name itself; ALES 204 Communication Theory and Practice. When one reads this title, they can begin to form an idea of what the intended purpose of the class may be. Personally I believe the premise for this class is a very good one, communication is a key component in any career, from the cashier at McDonald's to the CEO of a multinational company, everyone needs to know how to communicate effectively in order to succeed. Unfortunately, the idea that I had formed upon reading this title did not turn out to be what the class was all about. Going into this class, I expected to learn how to become a better communicator online but also when talking to another person or to a large group of people. Going into this course I had a pretty good idea on how to communicate effectively online but had some difficulty when speaking in public. I am sad to say that coming out of this course I still have not improved my public speaking all that much. For me learning how to speak in public is not about someone telling you how to do it but more on getting in front of a group of people and doing it. This class did not offer the opportunities I would have liked in this regard and in the end I was disappointed by this. In my opinion face to face communication and public speaking is becoming a dieing art that few people know how to do well, and with the heavy emphasis of this course on online communication I am lead to believe that my fear is well founded.

On the topic of the online portion of this course, I also found the majority of the information that was presented to be things that are not entirely useful to someone who has grown up using social medias such as Facebook and Twitter. I feel as though the majority of the topics that were presented were things that are quite easy to do in the comfort of ones home. Things such as signing up for twitter, creating a Facebook page, properly citing a scientific article, writing a professional email and other things along these lines are things that can be developed over time or can be learned by doing a quick search on Google. This being said, I did learn some new things that will probably be useful in my future career. This includes such things as using LinkedIn, what creative commons are and how to quickly and effectively read a scientific article. Other than these few things, I found the rest of the topics to be things I already knew and not of much use to me.

All and all it was and interesting experience in ALES 204 this past semester, we had some good times and we had some bad times, but in the end it was and experience to say the least.

Signing off on Tree Tales,

Pierre

 Links to comments:

Daniel Schwenk
Sara Hughes
Hayley Kosolofski
Carmen Prion-Frank
Pharyne

References: 
Retrieved April 13, 2012 http://blogs.mcgill.ca/gradlife/files/2012/01/public-speaking-vjxjea.jpg  

the online you

Hello again and welcome to the fourth post on of tree tales! In this post, I will be reflecting on the online profile that people have been creating for themselves and the importance of keeping it professional in an age were the majority of communication is now done though various technologies.

To begin, lets look at what an online profile is. In simple terms, your online profile is really whatever you make of it! Anytime you join a new website, such as Wikipedia, Facebook, Linkedin, etc., you add to this profile. Another example contributing to your online profile is a blog, and for an example of this you  can visit the blog by my classmate Becky. When taken all together it creates an online you and it provides others with the opportunity to get to know a little about you. This being said, these online profiles can sometimes be very detrimental if the wrong information about you gets posted, especially when it comes to employment.

some examples of various different sites that you can add to your online profile

With social media becoming more and more integrated with how our society functions, more and more employers are turning to searching the internet prior to hiring new employees. This can potentially effect the chances of getting a job if they find something that they deem as inappropriate, such as a Facebook profile with mostly drunk pictures of you. On the flip side, this can also be used as a means of presenting these people with the side of you you want them to see. An excellent example of this is the Facebook page we created in this class that can be used almost like a second cover letter and resume. Here is another article which demonstrates how to make a personal/ professional Facebook page using the various privacy setting that are offered.

On the note of privacy settings, another important consideration that needs to be thought about when creating a profile is your online security. There are many, many cases of people's accounts being hacked and their identities stolen. For me personally I find the best defense against such things happening is to use common sense. Things such as changing your password every so often, avoid giving away sensitive information such as credit card numbers and sticking to websites that you know and trust are all good ways to make such you and your identity stays safe when you are using the internet.

References:
Image:
          Retrieved from Google images April 11, 2012; http://everything.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451c82369e20112790a4fc728a4-800wi