English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

Individual Activity Report-Chris Kirkwood
Week 14
For: Professor Rivers

This week, week 14, began with a lot of communication with my other team members in order to fine tune exactly what our specific white paper topic would be, we initially had a plan and then decided to alter it just a little in order to just specifically focus on geothermal energy instead of many different types of energy sources. Once we had decided that geothermal heat would be our final topic I began doing some internet searching in order to learn more about geothermal energy as well as specifically ground well geothermal energy. I was not too familiar with geothermal at all so I had to take time to just do some reading in order to have a better knowledge base before I actually started choosing which sources I would use for my research blogs. Early in the week I also spent time reading chapter five on ethics, which was very informative and made me think more about the importance of citing all source information correctly, as well as reporting only facts in my white paper. Toward the middle of the week I looked more closely at the sample thumbnail documents and begin crafting my thumbnail document on Microsoft word. I tried hard to use the as much space as possible in order to maximize the amount of information I could fit on to one page. I had the think about all the different topics I wanted to have about my specific part of the geothermal topic. I also had to search for a couple of pictures that I thought were most effective in giving a visual of a standard ground well. I next looked at my team members thumbnails and made comments about them, I found that one of my group members had an excellent thumbnail, and I hope that we all can agree to use his design for our complete project. In the latter part of week I went back to all of the sources that I had book marked about geothermal and specifically standard ground wells, and I chose the best three and created my research blogs, stating what in the source was beneficial and how I would use in within the white paper. It was a busy week, but I feel like my group and I have a good understanding of the project now.