This
semester, I can honestly say I have learned more about communication,
whatever form it may take, than I have in any other class in my life. I
initially thought I had learned more about digital communications,
however, upon examining my progress over the semester, that is the one
thing I have not learned much about. Despite the regrettable lack of
evidence to support this claim, I have made considerable progress in
nearly every other aspect of communication.
Whether
or not I consciously learned it, I have noticed myself approaching
technical documents and confusing concepts a bit differently than I did
five months ago. On more than one occasion, I’ve caught myself reading
and rereading things for individual points or themes, then reading the
article or paper as a whole, once I had a good grasp on the “basics” of
that particular article or paper.
Also,
I feel I have made leap-and-bound improvements in my ability to carry
on a conversation due to the rhetorical triangle. For instance, when
discussing technical concepts with people who are at least as (or more)
knowledgeable about the concept as I am, I find myself phrasing my
sentences differently than when I am explaining concepts to people who
don’t understand them as well as I do. Also, I’ve noticed myself varying
what vocabulary I use, based upon the group of people I am talking to.
All
of this is not to say I haven’t learned about digital technologies,
although my learning in that category isn’t as dramatic as in others, as
I had been communicating digitally nearly as long as I can remember.
Because of this, my learning was more or less limited to discovering and
becoming fairly proficient with some of the tools that had been
available to me previously, that I just had not known about.
For
instance, I have learned more about new digital writing techniques than
I have at any other point of time. Prior to this semester, I had never
explored all that Google had to offer outside of the normal search
functions or the translator and map applications, and I had very little
experience helping others or receiving help with research from my peers.
I
have learned more about the various Google services over the course of
this semester than I have learned about nearly any other form of digital
drafting/publication in my whole life. I found out about Google docs,
and while I haven’t used it very much, I find it to be an exceptional
alternative to program-based word processors. It has nearly all the
functionality of regular word processors, for free, without any of the
limitations of program-based word processors. For example, this essay
exists on a server somewhere in the world, that I can access and edit
from any computer with an internet connection, whereas program-based
word processors save to the hard drive of the computer they exist on.
Unfortunately,
one of the things I didn’t notice much improvement in was time
management, as evidenced by the fact that this analysis is far shorter
than I wished it to be, and is barely come in within the time limit.
