Reflective Blog Post - ALES 204 Comes to an end

ALES 204 comes to an end today, and I certainly can't sum up the initiatives of the course better than 3 awesome students did with their video presentation in our last class this morning. It looks like they put a lot of effort into that video, so good job Kelsey, Annalise, and Julianna!
Our fall term ALES 204 communication class was the first to heavily incorporate social media into the curriculum. The class took on a very modernized view, and students were given a thorough introduction to the new forms of communication which are quickly becoming the norm. This included an introduction to websites and tools including Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, GoogleDocs, and much much more. We were given assignments based on these forms of social media as a source of practice for their use.

Some of the social media we used
Received December 7th, 2011 from this blog

Since our ALES 204 class took such a modernized perspective, you can expect that much of class and lab time was spent with computers. Most students came to class armed with a laptop, and as a student without neither a laptop nor a smartphone, I felt that the lectures were not as effective for me. Participation marks were granted based on tweets and blog posts, and students were given ample time to complete these tweets in class. Having to save my thoughts and complete the tweets after a day of classes often broke the ebb and flow of the course for me.
For this reason, the lab was my favorite aspect of our ALES 204 class this term. When students had to use computers in the lab; we had access to plenty in the lab classrooms, and it felt more natural for me to complete both the individual and group work in that environment. I also enjoyed the lab assignments, since they did a good job of focusing on the kinds of communication that one might encounter in real life. Examples of lab assignments which I feel I got the most out of include the mock job interview and the impromptu presentations.
Overall, I am glad to have completed ALES 204: getting practice with citation, journalistic examination, and  the newest forms of social media have left me better prepared to tackle the fast evolving forms of human communication.

Wikiwhoops

During the last two weeks of ALES 204, two assignments stand out most notably for me. The first is one is the Wikipedia stub entry. We were asked to find an article on Wikipedia which was a 'stub'; which is essentially an incomplete article, and add to it or complete it. I was going to choose Wiki's "sustainable planting" article, and thought of incorporating 'time stacking' and 'root stacking' onto the page.
Time stacking is simply the concept of varying the dates at which you plant perennials. If numerous plants of the same species are planted together at the the same time, they will be competing for the same resources at the same times. By maintaining variety and planting some earlier and some later, the plants will flower/fruit at different times, and won't be as vigorously competing for resources. Variety also adds stability to a system against varying annual conditions.

Retrieved November 16th, 2011 from the Garden Web

Root stacking is the concept of planting plants in such a way that a variety of root depths are maintained in the same area. That way, plants aren't competing for the same resources at the same soil depths. This drawing nicely demonstrates a variety of root depths:
Now, you maybe wondering: "Why is he telling me all of this here? Just link me to the whole wiki entry!". Well, the truth is that I missed the deadline for the Wikipedia article assignment by failing to read the rubric correctly! I figured I shouldn't let all my efforts go to waste, but I hope to finish the article entry by the term's end.
The second recent assignment we have done in ALES 204 which stands out for me is the lab we did this week in which we were asked to compose a pretend invitation to a professional with a LinkedIn profile. The assignment kind of played right into my hands since I immediately knew the person who I would (not actually) contact. It was William Shotyk of the University of Alberta, who gave recently gave this marvelous speech on soil and water here at the U of A. His talk fit so closely with my field of study that I figured to incorporate them together into the pretend invitation.

The Presentations Chapter

Hello Again! Another month of Ales, and this chapter of Ales definitely goes down as "The Presentations Chapter" for me. See Why.
One of the most memorable labs for me over the last month was the Pecha Kucha Lab. Our lab of about 20 was split into 4 groups and asked to quickly prepare a presentation about their topic of study. My group was filled with people from all sorts of disciplines so we decided on the very broad topic of food. Contrasting with the organized presentations of the other groups, our broad choice of topic lead to a very scattered presentation which we had to salvage on the spot. We definitely had the audience quite confused at some points.
 

Retrieved October 31st, 2011 from this page

ll in all though i'm sure everyone in my group brought some wisdom back from the presentation. We certainly have a better idea on how to transition from distant topics and how to recover from long awkward pauses!

The next week's lab had a similar exercise in which groups were given several links on global warming and told to compile a 5 minute poster presentation within 1 hour based on these links. Our group didn't want

to make the same mistakes as we did in our last presentation, so we spent lots of time putting together a lengthy, articulate presentation which made perfect sense. Ironically, it turns out we went a little too far with the detail and we ended up with a presentation which exceeded the time limit and had a cluttered poster. This lead to a presentation with a whole new set of problems then previously encountered in our first presentation. Having incidents on opposite ends of the spectrum like this definitely reminded us of the importance of having a balanced presentation.   

This month in Ales 204 certainly had presentations which brought a lot more finesse to the table than our group's. One of those speakers was Maurie-Claude, a graduate student who talked to our class one day to teach us on the topic of (surprise)... presentations! It is a communications class after all. In her presentation, Maurie-Claude gave the class a variety of tips ranging from the visual appeal of posters to the importance of noting the target audience. Two of the most valuable pointers I got from her presentation are: 1. Ensure your technology works/ is compatible before presenting and 2. Use the space on slides to support what you say, not as a presentation guide. These are mistakes I commonly make, so it was nice to be reminded of what not to do for presentations. But with regards to what to do for presentations, I stumbled upon an awesome cheatsheet which nicely aligns with what Maurie-Claude advised us to do in class. I printed it out to support the notes I got from her. 

Scratching the Social Media Surface

This week we spend ALES 204 learning how to make professional Facebook pages. Here's mine: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Philip-Auer/213756042021838?sk=info. I was initially a bit reluctant to begin since I don't need one right this instance, but once I finally began I figured I should use the opportunity to practice advertising my potential business. This approach gave me the motivation to make genuine use of the available space at hand for my page.

The only thing I didn't have at hand was a professional picture of myself or a camera, which is why I have temporarily enclosed a handsome car as my profile picture for now. With my Facebook page nearly complete, I look forward to exploring further depths of social media with my ALES 204 class. Till next time!

Greetings

Hello! Welcome to my first ever blog.

I'm Philip Auer, a second year agriculture student at the U of A. My major is "sustainable agricultural systems" and I am very excited on the idea of designing sustainable agricultural systems in which the human plays an integral role (permaculture!). Communication is necessary in such a field in order to link with fellow colleagues, spread information, and get connected on various events: power in numbers!