I thought this devotion was very interesting because I have always carried a bag with me through high school, college, and any job I’ve had outside of college. You never know when you need something throughout the workday, and I’ve never been comfortable with leaving personal items in my desk. When I worked in publishing, that bag was filled with CDs, notebooks, and a novel every once in a while. When I started working at Lilly, it was filled with CDs, comic books, and later my Bible. Now that I’m teaching, I’m carrying textbooks and a portfolio along with my bag with CDs, my Nintendo DS, magazines, and piles of coupons and paperwork and personal correspondence that I have to file.
Every once in a while I have to clean out my bag and take out what’s obsolete or unnecessary. There are only two things that can get me to clean out my bag: either there’s no room for anything else or it’s too heavy for me to carry. I think we approach life in that same way. When the schedule gets too full or stressful, we have to stop and say, “Wait, is all this really necessary?”
A full schedule can be sinful, as the story referenced, especially if you’re crowding God out of that schedule or consistently giving Him a small amount of your attention. And, to my mind, a stressed-out life is simply an invitation for sin to enter your life, as you desire to take short-cuts and you develop short-temperedness as a way to deal with the stress.
I know that I need to take account of things right now, because my bag is full (seriously) and God has placed His Word before me to remind me that my bag is full. So, at lunchtime, you’ll find me here at my desk, cleaning out my bag and giving some extra attention to God, His wisdom, and His plans for my life that I’ve cluttered up with all this stuff I’m carrying around with me.
As you all begin preparing for your final team presentations next week, I thought this slide show might be helpful to you. There are probably 10,000 people on the internet with their own ideas of how to put together a PowerPoint presentation, but this is one of the few I have found that integrates the delivery and communication aspects of the presentation equally with the technological aspects.
Again, I was very pleased with the quality of speeches last night. I saw improvement in everyone from the first night, and I thoroughly enjoy hearing about everyone’s interests and personal causes (whether everyone agrees with them or not). I think such diversity in the classroom environment keeps things interesting, and there were definitely some lively Q&A sessions after many of our speeches. I’m looking forward to the personal aspects you will each bring to this week’s Faith Integration papers and speeches.
Next week, I’m looking for some specific feedback related to the team teaching assignments. I’ve been collecting some of your feedback so far to pass along to the school along with my personal feedback, and you will have the chance to share it again in your end-of-course surveys. Please think about the last two weeks of class over the coming week so you will be able to answer the questions. I have a feeling I already know the answers, but I don’t want to second guess anyone.
Below is the PowerPoint that I use for the reading assignments for Workshop 3. Again, because last night was a team teaching event, you didn’t see these, but these are what I feel are the core concepts that are essential to get out of the reading. Hopefully, we will have time in the next two weeks to follow up where necessary.
I thought this devotion on the topic of intimate interpersonal relationships was appropriate to this week’s reading. It demonstrates many of the qualities that the book gives for developing a strong dyadic interpersonal relationship:
Initiation in the exhortation to “plant a tree” if you have not yet done so.
Experimentation and intensification in the growth and nurturing of that tree to help it grow roots.
Integration in the allowance of that other person to give reproof and to follow it
Bonding in the overall strength of the relationship with that “tree”
If you have a strong Christian friend such as this, consider yourself very blessed to have that resource at your disposal when you need them.
One of the mass media that I think your textbook ignores is video gaming. In terms of revenue generated, video game hardware and software is a multi-billion dollar industry that stands right up there with the motion picture and television entertainment industries. It fits as one of the mass media by definition, because the software is the same no matter where it is purchased geographically, and it is meant to be consumed by a large, diverse audience. In fact, on the subject, DVDs and video downloads would also fit into this category.
When the video game Grand Theft Auto IV was released earlier this month, there were concerns that it would actually cut into movie revenues of the key male 18-29 demographic, because players would stay at home to play the game. This mirrors the same concerns over lost work productivity when other video game releases such as the Halo and Madden NFL franchises coincided with “sick days”. The game ended up generating $310 million of revenue in first-day sales and $500 million in first-week sales. The link has some other interesting details about the game.
As a communication medium, gamers can go online via the internet and play a character in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) or create a virtual character to live in a virtual world such as Second Life. If you’re unfamiliar with either of those terms, Google them or ask your kids. Either they or their friends are probably playing them. People befriend other players through the game, communicate with each other, go out on missions together, or in the case of Second Life, open businesses and engage in transactions together.
There are also negative arguments against the violence and morals of some of these games and how they influence children. The industry uses a ratings system, but it is not always enforced and parents that buy the games don’t always pay attention. So, video games often come under the same scrutiny as television violence, and perhaps even more so, because in violent video games you feel like you are actually engaging in some of those activities. Here is an interesting excerpt from a blog on Wired.com:
The purpose of this article is geared more towards salespeople and how to communicate with sales prospects in a way to earn their trust, befriend them, and eventually earn a sale. However, there are many aspects of the article that apply to the discussions of interpersonal communication in your textbook.
On the surface, you might look at this story and think, “Well, duh!” However, as we shift our attention this week to organizational communication, there are some interesting ideas we can draw from this article about how communication affects more than just our personal relationships.
There were a lot of great speeches and great speakers last night during class. I always enjoy the informative speeches because we learn a little bit about everyone in class, their interests, and their experiences. I’m looking forward to your speeches this week and next. I’m hoping everyone is able to make some improvement based on the class feedback from last week, and I’m hoping that everyone will be able to stretch their speaking abilities a bit this week.
Below is the PowerPoint that I use for the reading assignments for Workshop 2. Of course, last night was a team teaching event, so you didn’t see these, but there are some points here that I would like to reiterate in Workshop 4, and we’ll have some activities to reinforce the concepts.
Here is another good site that interactively discusses some of the topics of this week’s reading, such as paralanguage, body language, tone of voice, proximity, and cultural uses of time, space, clothing, and gender. If some of the concepts of Chapters 2 and 3 were not clear to you, this site gives a good overview, and the rest of the topic of Language and Culture on the main page is probably worth of exploration as well.
I’m looking forward to seeing what our team has to teach the class tonight and hearing your informative speeches. It’s always neat to learn a little bit about everyone’s interests and what you enjoy in your spare time.
There is an interesting quiz at this web site. There are only about six or seven questions, but the questions are interesting in that they try to get you to decipher body language, examine the cultural aspects of communication (something I kind of wish were emphasized more in this course by the university), and predict how people will react to certain situations. There is a video series that goes along with this, and I think I might see if the university has one that I can preview for use in one of our later workshops.
