Portland State Defintion: "Students will enhance their capacity to communicate in various ways—writing, graphics, numeracy, and other visual and oral means—to collaborate effectively with others in group work, and to be competent in appropriate communication technologies."
From my perspective, communication is the ability to effectively convey a message to a reader. To communicate, is to have the ability to organize your thoughts and/or your reasearch in a organized manner, then to present those thoughts in a captivating or compelling way to readers.
Throughout the year communication was one of the learning targets I struggled with the most. During first semester, I especially struggled with communication. With my first go at a research paper (winter research paper) I nearly face planted in trying to communicate my ideas and research. I struggled with finding the correct way to put my thoughts and research onto paper in a way that would maintain a readers attention and would properly convey the message and argument I was trying to portray and explain. With extra the help from Ms. Ray, Mrs. Ferris, and Dr. Bury, I was able to learn methods on how to properly organize my thoughts and how to better incorpate syntax and fluidity into my research paper. Also, with practice and again additional help from my teachers I was able to grasp how to correctly cite my research in my paper.
While my first research paper was a tough learning experience, I was able to redeem myself after gaining the skills and knowledge that I obtained from getting that extra assitance from my teachers in my public art final from first semester.
For this assignment, students had to find a public piece of art from a country of their chosing and research it's background information. Student's were required to find things such as the artist(s) of the piece, the reason for it's creation, and lastly how it affects it's community and surroundings. Students were also expected to research different perspectives of the piece possibly from civillians, other artists, and the artist himself/herself. Individually students were required to create a group presentation slide show of each of our pieces along with a short informational speech. I personally knocked this assignment out of the ballpark with showing my ability to verbally communicate to an audience the reasearch and perspectives I had discovered. I was able to effictively and efficiently organize both my thoughts and research into a very short period of time.