English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

During the final week of our white paper project I have done a couple of things. After our initial meeting we discussed possible changes to make to each of our following sections flow better in the overall scheme of the paper. I needed to fix my section by focusing on the benefits, drawbacks, and conclusion of Google Documents. During my section of the rough draft I made a debate/comparison between that and Microsoft SharePoint. I realized the error in doing this and corrected my section for our final paper. I had to rework my entire section but that was OK with me.

During our final week of our white paper project our team decided to give it our all to finish out the semester with a bang. The first thing we did was review the comments Nathaniel suggested to make our white paper shine.

This week I spent my time focused on writing my rough draft. After our first online group meeting, we divided up the parts of the reports. I was supposed to write my section comparing Google groups to Microsoft SharePoint. I decided the best way to handle this would be to split up the sections of my part into different categories. I felt that by doing this I can compare them better while informing our target audience about how Microsoft SharePoint does things better than Google Groups, without directly telling them that. I did some more research on my topic before I started to write.

This week I spent my time researching material for my research blogs. I did not realize that three of them needed to be done so I figured I should finish all them right away so I had time to work on other aspects of this project. Since I did not know about these research blogs I thought my teammates would not know about them either. I sent an email out and it seems they did not know either. I researched three different topics that ranged from the competition of SharePoint to the various features it has to offer. I learned quite a bit and I know it will help when writing our rough draft.

For my third research blog I decided to look to see what was wrong with using SharePoint. All programs have their flaws and I am certain this one is no exception. By reviewing the flaws we can be prepared for a couple of things. For one, we can review them to make sure that they are credible complaints and not something someone said to bring the image of Microsoft down. The second is that if they are creditable there might have been an update to the program in case someone asks.

For my second research blog I had found more information about SharePoint. The Microsoft Office website has a lot of demo videos for users to browse through to help them with any trouble they might have. This would definitely help train employees as well as get a feel on how to use Microsoft SharePoint. I watched a few of the “getting started” videos and felt that they were helpful. The voice in the video sounded nice to the ear as well as helpful. He talked slowly so that the actions on screen could match up with the user at home trying to duplicate the results.

Well for my first research blog I decided to see what SharePoint had to offer the consumer. Since I had never used it before I figured this would be a good start. The one piece of information I found was an Excel spreadsheet listing the features of the different versions of SharePoint. It seems that the 2007 version is the best. They added new features and improved on just about all of the current features offered in the 2003 version. Just by reading through the descriptions it seems like this product would really help people in the business world.

According to TCT’s chapter five is about ethics. Ethics are the systems of morals that guide our society to act properly in any given situation. I believe ethics are part of a foundation towards people acting properly in a well formed society.

This week was a lot easier than what I did last week. Since I had some free time I worked on our gantt chart. While I was working on it I looked at the schedule to what we have due for the next couple of weeks. I then told my teammates about it through an email saying I would submit it later if they had any changes they felt were necessary. Ten thirty P.M. came around and I did not receive any emails from my teammates with changes so I submitted it to the English 421 website and called it a night.