What I Learned This Week:

Chapter two in my book discusses a "World of People and Purposes", but for class purposes I have identified two items from chapter two that I have learned about this week...
In just two words, purpose and audience, here we have the starting basis for how to focus your efforts in communicating technical information. This can be used for any kind of information really. It is really a lot more involved, but before a person begins to communicate with someone, they go through a mental process: Who do they want to have this knowledge, and Why ? Then they proceed to " how am I going to convey it?" Sometimes, this process is not as organized as it should be and the message gets confused in the presentation or the translation by the recipient. Once we understand the purpose for the communication, whether it be information they desire or information you wish to impart; define whether this is formal, specifically purposed for work setting or informal communication that could be more personalized. Then we can identify our audience, who will be using this information, and do they have any special needs in order to process this information. In other words, can we relate directly or will there be some difficulties in the transfer of knowledge. Now that our society has become much more global, we must realize that there are even more stumbling blocks that hinder accurate communication. Language, including dialects, slang, other colloquialisms, traditions, and norms from other societies may differ from our own. Other items to consider are if this is other than oral communication, who else might have access to it. If it involves computers, what are the skill levels of the recipients? There are really a lot of things to process before you actually communicate.