Intercultural Communication: Cookbook tool
Cookbook Process: For the intercultural tool we decided to create a cookbook. The idea was that food is a kind of universal language that connects all of us, and is a great starting point for learning about different cultures in a way we can all appreciate. After planning what we wanted to cook and doing some research on dishes from each culture we had on our team, we went to Andrea’s house to actually cook the food. Once there, I volunteered to do the photography as well cooking the Indian Butter Chicken with Aakash. I also decided to direct filmography and record as much footage as I could to use as promotional material on instagram and other social media. Hours later, when we were done with everything, Vince started on the cookbook while I worked on the promotional video. After the first presentation of what we had, we got some feedback on the cookbook and I decided to take the redesign of it on as well and redid the thing from scratch in Adobe XD. I also set up our Instagram page for promotion and engagement with the Instagram community. We didn’t get around to doing more with this, however, […]
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Intercultural Communications: TEDx Talks Paper
You can read my paper here. You can find our presentation here. In week 4 we had to watch 3 TEDx Talks for Intercultural Communications on Youtube about communication, culture, behavior and how these 3 things affect each other. Our assignment was to watch these videos and write a paper about them and about how we related to them. We also had to make a presentation on it as a group. These videos got me thinking more and more the more I watched them and discussed them with my fellow students. I noticed that a lot of them were mostly either summarizing the videos or just giving their opinions on the overarching topics in their papers. I thought that both those ways were coming up a little short of really talking about the subject matter of the videos, so I tried to be a bit more analytical in my approach. Taking the main points mentioned in each video and then arguing my own view on each allowed me to get a deeper understanding of the topics at hand. This effort was also appreciated by Jessika, with whom I had a brief but interesting ethical/political discussion during her feedback on the […]
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Intercultural Communications: DMIS Paper
You can find my paper here. During the second week we were introduced to the DMIS Model as a way to describe a spectrum of acceptance towards other cultures differing from one’s own as a few specific ‘stages’. Our assignment was to write a paper on this DMIS Model. We were to answer a few set questions as well as describing our own position in the model. Discussing the model with a few classmates I realized there were more people who identified themselves to be on the left side of the model, more ‘ethnocentric’ or ‘mono-cultural’ as it were, than I initially expected in this minor. However, after talking with them it turns out most of their issues with other cultures aren’t necessarily present on a personal basis. They seem to mostly be grounded in fears and insecurities regarding the unknown as well as concerns about the increased stream of migrants. In that sense, despite seeing myself mostly in the last stage, ‘Integration’, I do also see the more ethnocentric side in me when it comes to recent issues like the migrant crisis. I have yet to get feedback on this paper from the teacher, I will update this when […]
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Improv Class
One of the first classes we had was an improv class. The point of the class was to get us to think more freely about characters and personalities, and to help us find a more dynamic and organic approach to creating them. We were given exercises where we had to keep saying the same word or phrase in a circle, which was meant to make us think about all the ways the intonation and delivery of the words that someone could use. It also reminded me that the way the words are delivered is almost as important as the words themselves. There were a lot of other exercises, from a form of charades to acting out some improv situations given to us without letting us discuss it beforehand to coming up with a full-on improv stage act where we had to come up with a basic storyline. The one that stuck with me most, however, was the vocal exercise, as it seemed like the most vital bit to nail in a chatbot that would only be interacted with through voice.
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