Month: September 2018

Communicating in Other Environments – A Reflective Journal

During our outdoor learning session, our section was split into four teams given the task to create a fort that can stand by itself, has at least three sides and can have everyone in the group sit inside. Group and … Continue reading →

During our outdoor learning session, our section was split into four teams given the task to create a fort that can stand by itself, has at least three sides and can have everyone in the group sit inside.

Group and Leadership

When completing our task, I found that I emerged as one of the natural leaders of the group. We did not formally choose our leaders I believe I was at the forefront of delegating and making sure everyone was able to speak. I was actively trying to include every member of the group in both saying ideas and physically making our fort “Casa De Tipi”. Looking back on the day the most challenging thing was physically getting started. Our group overcame this by voicing as many ideas as we could and filtering down from there until one of the group members said the design of a tipi, which would fit all the criteria of the task. Then we were able to start and build from there.

Explaining

I, unfortunately, was looking after our fort while the rest of my team was getting the explanation of the building of someone else’s fort. So instead I will reflect on how I explained our fort to another group. I explained how we constructed our fort from concept to final product. I added an entertaining flair to it to keep it from feeling purely fact-based; however, I could’ve been more thorough in explaining our preplanning because the other team had to probe to find out how we got started. Other than that I felt I was articulate and spoke well, being sure to keep my tone pleasant and intonation varied to keep my listeners engaged, thus making myself clear.

Environment

Although the physical environment didn’t impact our team’s ability to communicate, I do understand we were lucky with the weather we had. Had there been strong wind or rain I could see where issues of miscommunication could happen. In the future, I’ll be able to use the skills I learned from my classmates. The main change to how I will communicate in an outdoor environment is being physical. I noticed as we were sharing ideas members of my team would physically show what they were meaning as well as saying the idea, this aided in cementing what a group member meant. Looking at this specific idea and expanding the concept further, had the weather impacted how our team was able to communicate I would be sure to use non-verbal communication to its fullest. Making use of gesture and proximity, making sure to be an adequate distance from the group and putting more physicality than usual to convey ideas more explicitly. As a listener, I would be sure to engage actively with whoever is speaking. In an outdoor environment this, for me, would mean being near the speaker. Also, I would be sure to maintain decent eye contact with the speaker to ensure I catch as much information as I can. In this particular exercise, I didn’t notice any distraction for myself but could see the environment distracting others as it was a picturesque part of the university grounds. Although taking a minute to enjoy the surroundings isn’t a bad thing and we should appreciate nature, I can understand if this was with a group of primary children finding that balance of appreciation before it becomes a distraction a tough challenge. To overcome this, I would be sure always to be iterating to the learners what they should be doing and avoid mentioning things they shouldn’t be, so it’s not an even an idea to them.

Negotiation

During the task, our team had to negotiate to acquire something from another team that seemed essential to the structure of their fort. We were successful but had difficulty with this acquisition. The main obstacle was that most teams had an emotional attachment to their creations and thus were less than keen on parting with anything, nevermind something essential to the structure. I took the lead on negotiations as I felt I could be the most persuasive. Another team was scoping out the others and asked if they could have something from us. I was using a classic business negotiation tactic of “If I do this will you do that?” this structure keeps control with me but lets the other party think they’ve had input in the agreement. In the end, we were able to acquire the block in question for our cardboard walkway, in my opinion, a worthwhile trade. The success of our negotiation was down to having receptive other parties willing to listen and counter-negotiate, had they not been willing to do either we would’ve very likely failed.

Reflections

To summarise this experience was eye-opening and a great way to entice engagement from my peers and I. I plan to take aspects of this, active listening, interpersonal communication, negotiation, and general outdoor learning and try to incorporate these into a classroom environment when I am delivering the curriculum.

Situated Communication – Outside Learning

On Monday 24th of September we explored the outdoors and made ourselves a den in our allocated groups. In my particular group we didn’t have a team leader as we all wanted to have specific roles and help each other … Continue reading →

On Monday 24th of September we explored the outdoors and made ourselves a den in our allocated groups. In my particular group we didn’t have a team leader as we all wanted to have specific roles and help each other rather than one person deciding what everyone was to do. My role in the group was to break apart the boxes with another group member to create a wall, whilst other members of the group created the roof and other walls. As our group decided to work individually on different tasks it meant we could manage our time usefully and then start planning on what to do next as we had extra time. However i do believe the most challenging part of our group was deciding who was going to do what role as we were all new to outdoor learning and none of us really knew what we would be good or bad at but overtime we began to realize who was suited to what role. For example i started off breaking the boxes however i did struggle to do this and swapped with another team member to doing the roof as i found this easier and also made the group task go by more effectively.

 

Once we all finished our dens we then got partnered up with another group to explain how we built our den and how we decided to work as a team. The team we were with did a great job at explaining how they built their den for example the told us why the used string and cardboard for their door as it made the door swing like a normal door would. However i did feel like they struggled to explain how the group came together and what their roles were during the task. Out of the 5p’s i feel the group covered most of them very well however i feel their preparation could have been slightly better however the group did say that they struggled with time creating their den which effectively shows that they recognise how to change this in the future. For my group out of the 5p’s i feel we struggled with presentation too as we quickly had to figure out what to say and it was dificuilt to explain the den. This is also something i found particularly difficult when it came to explaining the den with my group as we often do things without actually thinking about it especially when making a den is something you don’t do often so this task helped me get a little better at explaining why i dd something. for example my group decided to each explain a part of the den and i explained the location of our den and that we put it in this area as there was ready natural materials nearby.

 

Working in an unfamiliar environment meant that we had to change the way we spoke. Luckily due to our location choice we had much less wind than the other groups did but even with the slightest wind meant we had to speak slightly louder to ensure everyone could hear me, not only the wind but the distance was different to being indoors as people in my group could be further away than when indoors which also meant raising my voice to be heard. In the outdoors we also had to keep an extra eye open as their are many objects covering people such as trees so when going to communicate you had to go out your way to see the person rather than in an indoor classroom setting where everyone is relatively visible. One of the ways to make communication easier outdoors would be to gather everyone round close by when something needs to be said or go close to the particular person to be heard. When explaining our den to the other group i noticed myself using a lot more hand gestures to direct my audience in what i was saying for example i had to say that in our location we found nearby broken off branches which we used as walls and as i said this i pointed out the broken tree branches original location and then pointed to where we moved them to. When listening to the other group speaking about their den i did find myself losing concentration to the surrounding groups talking around us as we were all particularly close at this point.

 

For our negotiation stage as a team we decided to send off two of our members to take on this task as they felt most confident to do so. We sent away two materials for use in swap for just one in return, we thought this might help us gain a good material for out den but unfortunately out negotiating did not work out and we had to use our own materials. We believe our negation didn’t work due to the material of our offer being polystyrene meaning they it was a cautious material to swap for.  The most challenging part of this was saying no to the other groups offers a i almost felt kind of rude but this is what we had to do for out den.

Overall the outdoor experience helped me understand that it is vital to adapt our communication skills in different environments to ensure we put across all information we give out effectively to keep the children engaged and also for them to enjoy the lessons outdoors.

Situated Communication: Communication In Other Environments

On the 24th of September, we took part in an outdoors workshop as part of the situated communication module which looked at communicating in different environments. We had to work in small teams of about 6 or 7 people to build a den with a limited number of resources provided. In our own group, there …

Continue reading “Situated Communication: Communication In Other Environments”

On the 24th of September, we took part in an outdoors workshop as part of the situated communication module which looked at communicating in different environments. We had to work in small teams of about 6 or 7 people to build a den with a limited number of resources provided.

In our own group, there wasn’t an official group leader selected but it was obvious who took on the role. She was very forward from the beginning and knew exactly how to go about creating the den and was able to delegate different tasks to everyone to make sure we were all included but also so that we used our time effectively. I think this worked really well for our group as none of us were really familiar with each other so it allowed us to get on with the job and not waste time because everyone would’ve felt a bit awkward and wouldn’t have wanted to voice their opinions.  The most challenging aspect of working in the group for me was feeling like I was contributing enough. I was taking part and helping the team but it felt like when everyone else finished their task, they easily moved on to something new and I felt like I struggled to know where to go and that sometimes that was because I wasn’t close to the people in the group so I didn’t wasn’t to intrude on someone and then upset them.

Part of the task was to explain to one of the other groups how we built our den.  The other group explained their construction relatively simply and clearly but they didn’t put a lot of thought into it. It was more simple statements rather than explanations and I found my attention drifting towards other areas as the group wasn’t very captivating.  However, the main point of the explanation task was to come across clear so that you were understood and the other group definitely achieved this.

The environment definitely had an impact on the way we communicated, within our group and then to the other group when discussing our den.  I noticed from myself that if the information wasn’t particularly interesting or wasn’t presented in a way that made it interesting, I would end up looking around and paying more attention to the trees and different noises that surrounded us rather then the group doing their presentation. So this made me realise that when we done our explanation we had to do something different which is why we decided to split the explaining between all the members o f the group. This meant it the information didn’t just come all from the one person which sometimes, if its a lengthy piece of info, can be quite boring and by adding that to the distractions created by the woodland, people lose interest quickly.  One way to also try and overcome being distracted whilst listening is use demonstrations. This way the group is focused on watching something as well as listening which I thought helped to keep peoples attention.

We also received a negotiation task, which for our group, was to try and negotiate an item from another team that appeared vital to their den. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful. We tried to swap an item of our own in exchange for something of theirs but nobody would budge. We tried a friendly approach and tried to make the other teams pity us so we could get some good materials but everyone was in the mood to win. Another tactic we could’ve tried was to be confident and just keep pushing rather then give up at the first hurdle. However, that method wasn’t a first choice on the day probably down to the fact that not everyone knows each other and you don’t want to create a bad impression with the people you’re spending the next four years with.

Situated Communication- Outdoor Den Building

In our den building experience we had no official leaders as we all were contributing and ‘piggybacking’ on ideas. Due to the fact there was not an official leader meant we could all have our ideas shared therefore this was including each of member of our group. Our most challenging aspect as a group was … Continue reading Situated Communication- Outdoor Den Building →

In our den building experience we had no official leaders as we all were contributing and ‘piggybacking’ on ideas. Due to the fact there was not an official leader meant we could all have our ideas shared therefore this was including each of member of our group. Our most challenging aspect as a group was deciding whether our den was secure enough. As we used the longest white poles available then bent them as semi-circle slightly dug into the ground. We needed to decide if this was secure enough for us to to use. By working together, digging them further into the ground and using other methods to secure we decided this was safe enough to use.

When the other group did their explanation they had really good ideas and seemed to worked really well as a group.  They had really positive body language and followed with gestures as well. Their thoughts were very clear and maintained good eye contact with us. They provided all of the 5p’s assessment requirements; per assessment, planning, preparation, presenting and postmortem.

The environment only slightly impacted our communication I think we were lucky as the trees sheltered us allowing us to talk. We discovered that comparing this to a typical classroom it was easier to get distracted by various sounds and trees swaying. When were listening to the other group we discovered that we could hear dog walkers and dogs (which we extremely enjoyed). However this could of been distracting for the other group.

Our negotiation was to ask for bin liners for more shelter in our den. This was extremely successful as they were happy to give us some as they did not need them. The most challenging part about negotiation was deciding on an item that we knew a group would be willing to part with. Luckily for us something we needed, another group did not so it work in favour for both groups.

 

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