6.3

Out of all the terms that we discussed this semester the most interesting concept to me was the idea of "storming". I can attest to the fact that when you first get into a group with people who you don't know it can be a little daunting: you're all pleasant to one another and try to get along, not wanting to ruffle any feathers. After a while, though, the niceness goes away, everyone wants to be heard, and ideas are shot down because people don't think that they are good enough. The idea of storming, which is where we "work through the niceness phase" and start to storm over other peoples' thoughts and ideas regarding the group goal. By doing this you can prevent the outcome of good results; instead of storming through the thoughts of others, if we listened to what everyone had to say and evaluating them not based on the idea that they aren't OUR ideas, but could be GOOD ideas can help us prevent this.

16.2

I chose my group observation paper on a group that calls themselves "Dork Night". Every Tuesday night they get together, have a couple beers, have dinner, and either go to a movie, go to a bar, or play some games (hence the name dork night). They've been getting together for about 3 years now, and no girls are allowed! I chose this group because I thought that it would be interesting to be a girl and observe this group of men (granted they were probably a little different than they would be if a girl actually wasn't around).

I thought that the group observation project was interesting and a fun experiment. I liked the concept of being an outsider and not influenced by what was already going on in order to make an unbiased statement about that group. My only concern was my group didn't have an actual leader and didn't necessarily have a goal or agenda, so it was hard to describe what goals they had trouble with.

16.1

Face to Face communication varies greatly than computer mediated communication. To me the biggest difference between CMC and FTF communication would be the nonverbal communication. When you're discussing something or solving problems through CMC pretty much the only way for you to tell if someone is happy, angry, laughing, or sad would be LOL, :) or :(, whereas with FTF communication you can see if someone is visibly uncomfortable, being sarcastic, or really excited. Typed words only offer so much variation to a situation where when you are face to face with someone there is so much more to interpret. This could be both a blessing and a curse; while there might be less distraction (laughing, or joking around, or even arguing) there would be less interpersonal interaction. Personally, just simply for the fact that I'm a social butterfly, I much prefer face to face communication. I like being able to read people rather than having to rely on the next text message or tweet.