Week 7 - CST 300

Part I: Final Research Video Project

I've never edited (or even created) a video, so this project may be a little challenging for me. As a team, I feel like we're all working pretty cohesively. We used our team meeting to discuss the basic outline and what the video will look like. We've been using Discord to communicate with each other, which has been really helpful since all of us are on at different times of the day. We're also using Adobe Premier to edit the video and audio clips. 

Part II: Ted Talks and Presentation Skills

The Ted Talks video I watched was about encouraging schools to view teaching programming as they would a second language. Steve McIntosh, a high school student, discusses how the brain processes programming in a similar fashion as they would a spoken language. Despite this, many school do not offer programming as part of their curriculum. He discussed how some states have passed legislation to account for programming as a foreign language credit, including Texas and Oklahoma. 

The second Ted Talks video I watched discussed procrastination, something I continue to struggle with. Tim Urban spoke about two different types of procrastination, long term and short term, and the struggles people face with procrastination. His theory is that everyone is a procrastinator, however some people are able to manage deadlines more efficiently than others. He related it to the "instant gratification monkey" and the "panic monster" that comes out when procrastinating. 

Finally, I reviewed this weeks reading regarding presenting, which did give some helpful tips regarding slideshows and PowerPoints. Beyond the suggestions regarding font and formatting, visual aids and animations were found to be helpful, especially when it related to a single point. 

OLI Module 10

This OLI module covered active listening, which is something I am actually already familiar with due to my background in counseling. Active listening ties into validation a lot, where you don't necessarily have to agree with the person, however repeating back what they are expressing and validating their experience. A personal example of this occurred when another counselor was talking about a client and the client expressed her fears about a certain hallucination she was having. She told the counselor, "It's scaring me, don't you see it too? It's real you know." The counselor responded back, "I can't see it, but I know it's real for you because I can see how scared you are." Active listening requires the person to first of be engaged in the others point of view, and while not necessarily agree with whatever the person is saying, validate and come from a place of understanding.