English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This week was another uneventful week in terms of getting things done for this project. I had spent a majority of this week in Daytona Beach partaking in the NCA Cheerleading National Competition. I briefly did some research on our topic while in Florida. There was some talk about narrowing down our audience for this project but I didn't participate in that very much. The group chose to target small not for profit organizations as our audience, but like I said I did not participate in these discussions.

Our white paper project seemed to really take shape and get off the ground during this past week. Last week, we deciding upon a topic and established a general definition of our audience. We chose solutions to America’s oil dependence, focusing on sustainable energy sources and smart grid technologies. Initially, our audience was defined as “American political leaders”. The instructor feedback from our initial proposal suggested that this was vague and too broad for the sake of this project.

Once again, there was not editing to be done on the final project, so I didn't have much to do for that role. I continued to focus instead on trying to organize a plan for our content.

Last Sunday, I created a content outline for our initial topic, energy saving solutions, and posted it on Google Docs. The outline was the primary tool for deciding a direction for and delegating our research in our meeting last Sunday. I also initiated a "contacts" document for our group last weekend.

On Sunday last week, I participated in our group chat during which we created our Gantt chart and set out a plan for how to divide our solutions. I volunteered to cover the introduction/problem for our White Paper.

Monday started with the group needing to renegotiate our proposal a bit. I participated in these e-mail conversations and e-mailed our re-proposed problems and solutions to our instructor.

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.

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.

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