Building Your Virtual Portfolio

This blog posting follows up on our portfolio discussion in class. Hopefully, it will help you create and manage your virtual portfolio as I summarize some ideas shared in class.
The design of your blog should be something that communicates your personality in addition to communicating a sense of professionalism. The colors have to be pleasing to the eye and enhance the visibility of all your words. Be sure viewers can easily read your blog and the colors aren’t distracting to the intent of your message. The titles of the blog should express your personality and be easily remembered by the viewer. You want to catch perspective employer with something that illustrates creativity on your part.
Don’t try to over reach with the technical stuff. Blogger offers a lot of gadgets but remember this is about getting your message across to the viewer simply too. Brainstorm the transferable skills that you would like to illustrate. How can you sell yourself to an employer? It's important that you have good examples of what you do and who you are on your blog to back up your transferable skills. Illustrate these skills in both academic endeavors and outside hobbies, volunteer work, part time employment, etc... Be sure to include your resume and cover letter. You should use Google Docs to post large pieces of information. Give us a brief introduction in each blog and then, hyperlink whenever you can. Do not overwhelm the viewer. Create an easily scan able portfolio for the eye, similar to an easily scan able cover letter. Remember, when using Docs, you must upload your work, save it and then publish it. To do this, click on "Share" and then choose "publish/embed." Once the page comes up that shows your published document's link, you can take that link and put it in the "Edit Html" of your post so that it is immediately viewable on your blog (This is best for PowerPoint’s), or take the link and hyperlink it in your post using the hyperlink button on the "Compose" of your post. To make sure that this works, log out of your Google account and go on your blog as a visitor. Then click on the hyperlink and see if your document comes up. For those of you who may want to upload a video, use YouTube and then put the link in the "Edit Html" of your post.
Go to our blog and view some of my past students work for ideas on designing and writing. You shouldn’t hesitate to reach out to me if you need help. We can arrange to work together online or meet to discuss your needs or just brainstorm

Persuasive Presentations - Healthcare Reform

Post your critiques for the persuasive group presentations here. You will post a critique of a student in another group that had the same step in Monroe's Motivated Sequence that you had in your group presentation. Post comments that look at the strength and weaknesses of the argument and try to move past commenting solely on delivery issues. Discuss the reasoning and evidence used in the speech. Be sure to remain positive in your critique directly your comments towards ideas for improvements as well as praising on places that the argument was solid in both reasoning and evidence.

Step Into the Elevator- Networking- Impromptu Speaking

We discussed in class the importance of developing career networks. Networks are important for developing identify, developing contacts for information, advice, and moral support as you pursue your goals. Kellly Pederson, a Career Specialist, at Rider University states that 75-80% of jobs are found through networks. And, a referral generates 80% more results than a cold call. We discussed that an important part of the networking process is developing a 30 seconds to one minute commercial of yourself. The commercial should contain your background information, current/prior roles in your responsibilities, education and knowledge, strengths and areas of interest and goals. Please post two parts to this blog. First, post your ideas for places that you can reach out to develop these network contacts (religious affliations, friends, prior work situations, etc.) Second part of the post should include your commerical script. Bring a hard copy of your commerical to class too.

Informative Speech - " Did You Ever Notice"

Well done! The first round of speeches went exceptionally well! The topic selections were illustrated with both creativity and audience adaptation. Many of you illustrated a lot of time and application to our class discussions. Thanks for making my job to listen to your speech so pleasant! Please post your self critique here. The self critique should contain a thoughtful self examination of your strengths and needed improvements for the next speech. Please make sure that you highlight in detail at least three strengths and three improvements. I want to read in your critique your planned course of action to work on the improvements that you identify.

Conquering Speech Anxiety

Communication Apprehension seemed to be a major focus in presenting speeches. Two important ingredients to effective speech delivery are reprogramming your "self talk" and putting in proper preparation so you really "know your stuff". Take a look at this clip. Then, post to the blog what your self talk sounds like and a portion of this interview that you identified with in your experience. What does your self talk sound like? What are three practical suggestions that you can give yourself to begin to conquer your speech anxiety?">

Creating An Impression

The goal of this assignment is to help you acquire in class this semester the skills needed to produce an effective speech presentation. Find a clip of a presenter (celebrity, athlete, politician, etc.) on Youtube or some other video outlet available to you on the Internet, and evaluate why you feel he or she makes an impact on you through his/her speech. We will be using an assignmentd feedback form in class when we present our speeeches to evaluate your peer's presentations, but for right now share your present understanding of what is effective and ineffective in your chosen subject's delivery and message. This presenter can be making a speech, giving an interview or in a film as a character who makes an impact on you. The clip should not be more than two minutes (it is just a small part of the whole presentation). Place the url address of the link in the blog for me and your peers to look at as they review your posting. Additionally, be prepared to share why you chose this person in our class meeting on Friday, Sept.11 (so, you must post by our next class meeting. No late posting after this date will receive homework points.) As stated, you can use Youtube, news site (CNN.com, msnbc.msn.com) live.com/video, TED Talks site or some other video sharing location on the web.

Welcome- Fall 2009

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to Communication 240: Business and Government. I am looking forward to a creative and productive semester. I look forward to getting to know each of you and watching you evolve as effective communicators. I am excited to be here at TCNJ. This is my third semester. I enjoy teaching this class because I teach from a practical perspective, although we will examine some ethical and theoretcial dimensions too. It is so satisfying to help so many of you get prepared for your professional careers. We will be examining communication from a number of different directions all in the context of real life in both business and government settings. A few of the many paths that we will explore include investigating how messages are created from the perspective of the sender to how they are received from the perspective of the receiver. The channels used, the effective of culture in the formation of a message and the networks used. We will understand how to effectively communicate in business and examine how messages travel in a business environment whether you the management or subordinate. Additionally, we will focus on the presentational skills needed to give a talk, train an employee or ace a job interview, just to name a few. We will address the message shared in government and politics by using the issues in today's government. Examining the message and learning that making important decisions is more than the charisma but, analyzing the message. We will observe and apply technology and explore how it creates and changes in the message in new and fascinating ways. And, lastly, we will focus on networking and interviewing that occurs in professional settings. Blogging on our class blog will be an important method of capturing our thoughts. We will be using this blog to communicate in many ways in the class, so it is an important class requirement that you visit this blog a few times during the week to keep abreast of assignments and other important class information.We will be using blogs as a means of recording our learning and studies. Every student is required to blog. You can begin by posting your blogs on our class blog post or as the semester evolves, create your own blog. Whatever the case, it is important that you remember that this is an extension of our academic classroom. You must use appropriate grammar, spelling and ideas in all your posts. Also, trying to rush through an assignment or making a weak effort in posting will be evident for all persons to see. Also, be sure to adhere to copyright issues in all posting. Only your originals work(s) whether words or pictures may be used. Please check out the Com 240 links throughout the semester for helpful places needed while in this course. You should feel free to email me at the address on the syllabus at any time for help, questions, concerns, or possible class absences. We will be using this blog to create discussion and complete written assignments this semester. Please be sure that you create a gmail account so you can post on our blog this semester. Please email me if you have any problems asap.

Use this blog post to introduce yourself to the class. We will use it as a practice post. I am looking forward to a pleasurable and productive semester! Share with us similiar information from class and be sure to include how you hope this course will help you further your career or personal goals.