English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This week has been mostly about organizing our collaboration, choosing our topic, and writing the proposal.

Overall, the first week in Group 8 went well. The group consists of me (Dean Basso), Adam Persohn, Adam Waters, Lindsay Petrovi, and Michael Sheridan. Some things that we accomplished in week one were picking our topic, organizing our group, establishing a Google documents page, and setting group meetings. The topic was chosen to be oil dependence and renewable energy solutions. We were very skeptical on picking this subject because of the popularity of “green” topics, but we went with it anyways. We found the topic to be very interesting and very informative.

The purpose of our first group meeting was to pick a topic, choose roles, and get the ball rolling on developing our white paper. We were very productive with good communication and ideas flowing. Each group member played an active role in the discussion and everyone stepping up to complete specific tasks. If our group meetings continue to be this productive we should have no trouble successfully completing this project.

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

Topic
Our white paper will cover wireless internet security for home networks. Unsecured wireless is a problem because it leaves your network open to a wide array of malicious uses.

This week, after completing the weekly readings assignments and individual tasks pertaining to white papers, I was introduced to all of my group members via email for this classes final project. We used this opportunity to brainstorm concepts and ideas for white papers that we could create, and eventually decided upon the topic of sustainable energy. Our group felt that this was a topic that we could find plenty of information and sources on, and that through our research we could eventually construct a very strong and informed white paper.

This week, in addition to the reading responses and blog posts that pertained to the project, I spent a lot of time e-mailing with my group and planning out the project. I found three sources dealing with wireless security to contribute to our list of potential sources on Google Docs.

I also spent some time talking with Pat about our proposal and brainstorming about the best way to proceed with a project of this size. We concluded that it’d be easiest if the entire group had a quick “meeting” via AIM or in person (if possible) so we could all be on the same page before doing more work.

After watching the posted videos, reading the Thompson Handbook, and reviewing the sample Gantt charts, it looks like there are several steps we’ll need to lay out in order to create our research plan and Gantt chart.

This week our group has accomplished several tasks related to our white paper project. The greatest accomplishment was setting up a means for communication. We have decided that the best way to communicate with each other is via email. To do this, we have been sending out group emails so that everyone is aware of what is going on. Ultimately we feel that this will prove effective throughout the course of this project.

To get started this week, our group members e-mailed and traded
contact information. We spent most of Tuesday brainstorming and
narrowing down our topic choices, and finally settled on dealing with
wireless security for home networks. We then started to brainstorm
how we might tackle the project and divide up responsibility for both
the proposal and the activity reports.

We settled on using Google Docs to post and share information as we
work, and then decided that one person would be responsible for
writing the bulk of our weekly report and posting it to the course