English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

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.

This week our group narrowed our topic choices down to a comparison of routers designed for home networking. After identifying our subject area and audience, I was able to find three popular router options in the $40 - $60 price range that our group will be researching. These include the D-Link DIR-615, the Netgear WGR614, and the Linksys WRT54G2.

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.

The second week of working on the white paper project was an awakening for our group. The first thing we had to decide was what to do about the direction of our project. The first proposal didn’t meet the requirements and we would have to make a large overhaul to have it work. The group all came to the conclusion to pick a totally different topic. We decided to pick comparing/contrasting different web browsers (Opera, Firefox, IE) in an small IT company/department setting. After picking the new topic, research was divided among group members.

This week's tasks for ENGL421 began with the reading assignment and response concerning research. This reading was very relevant to our groups white paper project as our research will begin shortly, and individual research blogs, tracking this effort, will also be due in a matter of time. For my portion of the group's research, I've decided to focus in on an online approach. This seems quite fitting for this course, as it is online, but I think it will also be the most efficient and accurate way for me to gather information.

During week 12 of this project I began by researching how to create a gantt chart, as I was tasked with this. I had a copy of Microsoft Project, so I chose to use it to make the chart. After reviewing the calendar, the group decided which activities were going to be accomplished individually, and those that would be done as a group. I used this information to create the chart, and followed the submission deadlines posted on the calendar.

This week my group met online via AOL Instant Messenger on Sunday. Our schedules conflict a lot so I was the odd man out as I had work during this virtual chat meeting. I was caught up to speed that night with email and a document of the entire chat. Our Gantt chart was completed during the meeting. The next day we needed to shift our subject to allow for options to be presented in our paper better. We all decided by email on three different wireless routers to compare. Today I began my research into the D-Link DIR-615 wireless router.

This week our group had many discussions about what we are planning to do in terms of researching for the white paper. We split the research into four different parts which were problem, solution, technology, and performance. I am doing the performance aspect of the research which will include which wind turbine is the “best” in the category of home application wind turbines. When doing my research I plan to look into the differences in brands and figure out the top three or four brands of turbines.

This week was nothing but a brainstorming and building week. I started talking with other group members about what we are going to have to do for the weeks coming. When it comes down to what I did to benefit the group this week, there isn't much that can be said due to the fact that all that was needed to be finished up was to come up with a subject to base this project on. One of the things that i did this week was start up communications with Zephyrus to talk about what we needed to do to complete the tasks at hand.