English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

The final week of the project went pretty smoothly. Early in the week during the group meeting, in which we reviewed the comments on our draft and the front page post of general concerns, I gave my feedback on how I thought we should approach the revision of the layout and content of our white paper. After the meeting, I conjured up an image to go along with section covering the area I researched (Internet Explorer).

With research mostly complete and a rough draft due Friday, this week was spent writing and organizing the content.

Per our group's, this week was spent mostly working on research. My goal this week was to carry out my personal plan for research on Internet Explorer, which included figuring out the browser of an IT professional and then using those criteria to search for information on Internet Explorer.

I've actually made some major headway on finding content that could make a featured appearance in the group 6 white paper. The content includes some data on the number of vulnerabilities on each browser, and some details on network security control features.

The general theme that seems to surface in my research on Internet Explorer is that the browser is simultaneously the most used and most criticized browser available. This means, for one that it's a little hard to find unbiased info about IE. Secondly, because IE is the most widely used, it is also a sensible target for malware developers who want to affect as many machines as possible.

I've always felt like ethics are a matter of doing the right thing; knowing what to do is easy, it's just that sometimes it's hard to commit to doing it. I like to think that right and wrong are simple and intuitive. However, after reading TCT chapter five, I do think there are some subjects in the topic of ethics where right and wrong take a back seat to what's legal and what isn't.

An example of this is the new concern I have after completing the reading about trademarks and my instructions project on Excel spreadsheets.

Once again, there was not editing to be done on the final project, so I didn't have much to do for that role. I continued to focus instead on trying to organize a plan for our content.

Last Sunday, I created a content outline for our initial topic, energy saving solutions, and posted it on Google Docs. The outline was the primary tool for deciding a direction for and delegating our research in our meeting last Sunday. I also initiated a "contacts" document for our group last weekend.

In my initial research efforts, my goal has been not necessarily to find information to include in the white paper itself, but to look for information that will help me proceed with my research. Our white paper will compare three web browsers for an IT department that is trying to choose one of them for use on its company's computers. Before doing the research on each of the browsers, we wanted to determine what current concerns of IT professionals are that would affect their browser decisions.

The beginning of a research project can be intimmidating and overwhelming. It's tough sometimes to know where to start. The biggest message I took from Part 3 on research from the Thompson Handbook was about getting organized.