Weekly nuggets come from a brainstorm the class does together every Thursday to review the most important concepts discussed during that week in class.

Cognitive Classes

Decision Making

• Learning the 6 Barriers of Creativity for Decision Making clarified my barriers.
• 6 Thinking hats
  • White Hat – where you gather all the facts
  • Red Hat – where to share your emotions
  • Black Hat – where you examine all possible outcomes
  • Yellow Hat – your optimistic point of view
  • Green Hat – where you share your creativity
  • Blue Hat – the moderator (the blue hat starts and ends the process)
• Decision Making Style Inventory:
  • Internal people need to process the ideas/decision making privately before speaking.
  • External people need to talk out loud to made decisions.
  • Systematic people need to have a deliberate manner for making decision.
  • Spontaneous people are flexible, and they move quickly to a decision to the next decision.

Reading to Learn

• Questions 6 & 7 of What Smart Students Know
  • Q-6: What questions does this rise for me?
  • Q-7: What information is important?
  • How to apply questions 1 – 7 to one’s reading

Computer Lab

• When building a website I have used all of the many facets of what we are learning in class. Purpose, big picture, decision making, taking detailed notes, structure, problem solving, organizing, paying attention to details, ask questions, ect… super high executive functioning cognitive skills:-) Really enjoying the opportunity to find another way to use technology in a creative way.
• Google Sites has the flexibility to customize the appearance of virtually every element in every layer of a website. Using CSS, changes at the top level can propagate down to the lower levels providing a uniform look that enhances the readability and usability of your site. With its preset templates Sites offers you an easy way to change elements; like fonts, text colors, and background colors, or add images. Templates can be further customized to give your site a truly unique presentation.
• Learned how to add a Widget to Google Sites.
• Learned the difference between default Headings, Headings 2 & 3.
  • Default heading is the title of a page.
  • Heading 2 is a topic.
  • Heading 3 is a subtopic.
• How to change content area page background and customize content area fonts.
• How to customize the content gadgets (links, widget, side bar).
• This week I downloaded GIMP which is an image manipulation program for the MAC. I am still playing around with it, but I’m learning how to scale image sizes so that they are a more appropriate size for web pages.

Psychosocial

• The characteristics of Assertive Communication.
• How assertiveness can be perceived.
• This week we were given real life scenarios and had to come up with different ways of reacting using all 4 communication styles. It’s a lot easier to think of how you should react rather than how you might actually react if in a certain situation.
• The manner in which you physically carry/ present yourself either positively or negatively affects how others perceive you and the perception you have of yourself (Power Poses; TED Talk by Amy Cuddy about nonverbal communication).
• Communication Styles: Passive, Aggressive, Assertive and Passive-Aggressive
  • It is not beneficial to submit oneself to only one communication style, especially Passive or Aggressive.
  • Passive can be negative because you will never have your needs taken into consideration.
  • Aggressive can be negative because you only take your needs into consideration and dismiss the needs of others; can lead to the alienation of other people .
  • Assertive is the most useful style of communication because it takes your needs and the needs of others into consideration; it is neither confrontational nor submissive.