March 4

Page history last edited by Nick 3 years, 2 months ago

ADVANCED TECH WRITING (ENG 3773)

Notes for 03-04-2009

Topic of Class

Today in class we pretty much just continued on with what we started on our PBWiki's. A bunch of students did not create some pages that Prof. Gold had told us to made so the goal for today was to get everyone up to date with their PB Wiki's or PageFlakes or whatever they had not created. Early in the class we had a bunch of technical problems with the projector which kind of set the class back a little. As far as teaching the professor used today's lecture to get everyone up to date and on the same page.

The professor brought up that he wants us to use images in our text. He brought up the point that people can publish there own topics using blogs. We will be talking about copyright a lot in the future. (If you don't have remix, get it, even though we aren't using it for a month or so). Creative Commons gives you a chance to publish work for non profit, depending on what kind of creative common you choose. It gives you different types of attributes to use and kind of standards. you don't have to pay for the image but must get credit for the image. Another type is that people have to share it the same way you shared it and no different. The professor has talked about the kind of licenses you can use while sharing and using images. He went on flickr and showed how to save the file to your computer and when you use it to give credit and a link to the picture.

There is an assignment for Monday where you can find on the main page on the course wordpress. Follow all instructions carefully.

Read pages 1 and 2 on the new book, a concise guide to technical communication.

For the project, the basic thing is going to start with us picking a techiniical subject or process or thing. For instance, if yoru intersted in displays or projects, choose one as the subject. To write a manual you want it to be easy for the user to read and understand. Add fun and make it entertaining. First stage is to critique what is already out there. What things exist out there that we can explain to people? Than we started critiqing it.

Example

When setting up your PBWiki you might want to add a certain page to it. The examples Prof. Gold gave us was to create a introduction kind of page to show who you are and what your all about. Another would be to create a My Projects page to a link of the projects we have done so far. Prof. Gold put up Kwesi's wiki to give an example of another thing to do with the My Projects page. He added more than just a link to the project, he pointed out that the links he put on the site were to the his winner to the project, and reviews that other people had given to the projects we have done. Prof. Gold suggested that we should rephrase the links to talk more to the audience , to someone who might not understand what we did and things like that. We are speaking to the public, not just people in this class. Another example the teacher gave us was him showing our work off to other professors, that we need to make it clear what the project was about and things of that sort. To look at our wiki's as a class porfolio.