English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This week was spent researching the functions and operation of the Opera web browser. I’ve used Opera in the past so I was somewhat familiar with its functionality, but knew there was a lot more to learn based on the needs of our project.

According to Chapter 5 in TCT there are 3 main types of ethics. There are personal ethics, social ethics, and conservation ethics. When I think about the ethics involved in my previous instructions project the first thing that comes to mind is plagiarism. Many of us were creating instructions on how to use products that I believe most all of which already have instructions about them. It would have been very easy for someone to just look at some existing instructions and copy that down for their instruction set.

Date: April 12, 2009
To: Professor Rivers
From: Isaac Townsend, Group 1
Subject: Individual Activity Report 2

This activity report accounts for the work and progress I have made from April 5th to April 12th.

I set up the meeting we had planned for last week. We meet and layout out tasks and responsibilities for the coming weeks. I also filled in one of our group members who was unable to meet due to class conflicts. I wanted to make sure he knew his responsibilities, as long as what he should expect from the rest of the group.

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

The majority of the time that I haven’t spent working on this week’s work was dedicated to drafting deliverables. First, the Gantt chart was really a team effort. Jeff had compiled a rough draft and with input from all of us, I compiled the final draft. This chart outlines, with approximate deadlines, the preparation and progression schedule that we anticipate for this white paper project.

This week I looked at how we could narrow down our broad audience. I realized that the scope of my group’s white paper was too broad. It would be impractical for us to cover the whole range of schools in our paper on open source instead of Microsoft products. I helped in deciding that we would focus on a smaller audience to help make our white paper more effective. This much necessary narrowing of our white paper will allow us to create a much more effective paper. I was in charge of writing this week’s group activity report. I also began researching for our white paper.

Once again this week my group discussed how we were going to divide up the work for this week through emails and through Microsoft Office Live. We briefly discussed what we wanted for the Gantt chart and divided up who was going to do what. I decided that my main role in the Gantt chart would be to revise and edit it. Once it was posted on the office live website, I took a look at it and after a few minutes I came up with several different ideas about changing it.

The reading for this week was very straightforward and contained most things I would consider to be common sense for most people in term of ethics. I think the Albert Einstein example of being torn between social ethics and his personal ethics is a dilemma that many of us has faced and had to deal with, often resulting in guilt or doubt.

Date: April 12, 2009
To: Professor Rivers
From: Brian O’Leary, Group 2
Subject: Individual Activity Report 2

This activity report accounts for the progress I have made from April 6th to April 12th

Week 13 was focused on deciding how to break up the work for the project and how to approach the audience issue. On Monday, I initiated an AIM chat for everyone to meet and discuss their concerns and desires for this project.

This week went rather well for our group. We were able to identify that we need to refine our identification audience and have gone about identifying our specific audience type for our white paper. Via the responses from our instructor we were able to identify that we will need to research some alternate technologies along with the main technology we will be focusing on. I am happy that we were able to complete the Gantt chart and assign everyone portions of the work that needs to be completed, this will certainly help to keep things on track throughout the next couple of weeks.