English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This week our group’s main priority was to complete the white paper draft. In order to achieve this, we had to organize our approach and deliver accordingly. I began initiating the process by emailing everyone on Monday. The first thing I suggested we did as a group was to choose a thumbnail design and divide the work properly. Through a series of replies we decided to work on individual portions of the white paper relative to the research everyone has done.

The majority of this week was spent writing and revising the white paper. On Monday, I met with my group online to discuss the writing of the white paper. Once we decided on all of our sections and the format of our paper, I began writing. I got started writing the Opera section of the paper using Stephens notes. On Tuesday, I finished up writing the Opera section and started to write the introduction. On Wednesday, I used Gary's notes to write the Firefox section of the paper and then finished writing the Introduction and Executive Summary portions of the paper.

In week 15 the rough draft finally came together. I began the week by writing my section and putting all of the sources in the research blogs to use. On Monday, our group met online to decide the final structure of the rough draft. We decided to use Adam Water’s thumbnail and have an introduction, conclusions, and three important sections of the paper. On Friday, the group sent the paper to me for me to put the paper together and edit the large items. I began by creating a title page along with the basic layout of the paper using Adam Water’s thumbnail.

This activity report summarizes the progress that I have made this week in regard to the white paper project.

Although there was only one deliverable assigned this week, that is the rough draft, there was much work to be done to complete this document. The majority of the time and work that I’ve dedicated to the rough draft was primarily spent refining the research I had performed for the previous week and composing the introduction of the white paper. This portion went relatively smoothly and I was pleased with the turnout.

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 was quite productive for me. Mainly I worked on organizing my research and producing my part of the white paper for the rough draft. I analyzed each of my sources and picked out the most credible ones. Then I went through and decided which would be best for the scope of what I would be discussing in the paper. After that I pretty much had all of my sources narrowed down and had decided what information I would be using from each.

This was a busy week for me again with school and work, but I found time to get it all done. Really the only thing that we had to do this week was to prepare our rough draft of our white paper. I had previously done my research blogs so I pretty much knew what I wanted to put into the paper, but I had to put in the right format. Basically what I did was take all of the information from my research and put it into the same category for each phone. For example I put the size and weight together, colors together, and all of the different hardware and specification information together.

This report is the summary of my individual progress toward the White Paper project, using research from the previous weeks to create a rough draft for the White Paper itself, starting from last Monday (April 20) to today (April 26).

This week was spent finishing up research, creating a detailed outline, and ensuring that everyone was on the same page. All group members agreed that a detailed outline should be completed by Monday so that writing could begin. I finished my outline for Opera and made sure everything was in order to simplify the writing process. The rest of the week was spent talking with group members to ensure we were all on the same page.

This week, each group member worked to complete their own section of the report so that everything could be compiled before Friday. After reviewing our individual drafts from last week, we realized that some characteristics weren’t covered for all products. Also, our formats were not consistent with each other. During the first couple days, I revised my rough draft so that the information was adequate enough for the reader to make an informed decision from our paper.