COMM 385...Oh, the lessons I've learned!!

If someone had approached me prior to COMM 385 and said that from it, I would learn (1) more about my children; (2) become more understanding of their generation and how to communicate with them; (3) how to create a blog; and (4) become better equipped for successful communication and interaction with my children, as well as the professional and educational world around me, I would have said they were crazy. I guess the joke's on me, huh?

The lessons I take with me from this class have been a wealth of information and of immense importance. With regard to my children, I feel better able to relate to them and to understand some minute amount of what they are going through as Generation Y. Of course, I know what it is to grow up, but not in their generation. I feel more knowledgeable in regard to their methods of communication, physically and mentally. I now understand, as does my husband, why they do some of the things they do. For the past ten years or so my husband and I were under the impression that our kids had no friends...okay, maybe we didn't really believe that, but we did sometimes think it half-heartedly. ;) I've learned via this course that friendships of this generation are sometimes created and regularly maintained via technology, not face-to-face interaction and rarely telephone contact. As part of the Generation X/Baby Boomer Generation, my husband and I had a hard time grasping that fact.

In addition to the foregoing, I learned how to create a blog!! Me! I can create a blog! To be frank, when I read the syllabus to my husband, his response was, "do you even know what a 'blog' is?" Yes, I knew what a blog was, but I felt like I was at the bottom of a well with no rope, no light, and absolutely no idea how I was going to get out. Fortunately, blogspot was pretty self-explanatory and not too hard to figure out - I think downloading pictures was harder than anything for me, but I eventually got a handle on it all. I'm even thinking about creating a political blog...who knows? After conflict flared in my US history recently, I look forward to 'really' getting my thoughts out there!! :)

The weekly readings have been eye-opening and provided me with alternate points of insight to today's technological world. Each and every week I've related readings to my life, primarily via my kids. The weekly blog assignments have been my outlet...I love to write and therefore, eagerly anticipated my weekly blog assignments as it provided me time to think about the relativity of the class to my life and time to myself to simply do what I enjoy.

I utterly enjoyed this class and would gladly take its sequel. I can't think of anything I would change. As I said, I completely enjoyed it and it served two purposes for me - (1) educationally and professionally I learned a lot, and (2) from what I've learned, I was able to improve communication with my kids. I would recommend this class to anyone - technological novice or pro!