English 420Y - Business Writing Online

I wanted to provide some notes on the Service Learning Project that may answer questions arising in the groups. First, I can see from my email box that you are actively trying to contact each other, and that you all have very busy schedules that are difficult to coordinate. Email and instant messenger are both good tools, but we have also instituted wiki pages that allow each group to post content that members of the group can read. I see some of you are taking advantage of this, and I recommend all the groups use them to post comments, messages, and files. The wikis are available through links here:

http://www.digitalparlor.org/su07/420Y1/weber_service_learning_groups

Secondly, I wanted to talk about the documents you will be producing. Both documents are brochures for the Clinton County Humane Society. One is a general introduction/publicity brochure for the public to inform them about the Humane Society. This brochure will probably be your typical bi or tri-fold page that is easy to scan and read. The other is a pet care brochure that will be handed out when the Humane Society does presentations, so it should be readable by a general audience including elementary school children. This brochure may be longer than the first, depending on the information your group decides to include. Because the email from the Humane Society included only general information about Pet Care, I recommend using the links below to find more information. Non-profit agencies are probably the best sources:

http://www.hsus.org/pets/pet_care/

http://www.avma.org/care4pets/

http://www.aspca.org/site/PageServer?pagename=pets_home

For the production of the brochures, I recommend Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Word. InDesign is specifically designed to produce documents like this, but it is harder to use. Word is easy to use, but it is often difficult to produce sophisticated and professional looking documents using it. Still, by maximizing the features of Word, students in the past have done good work. Your group should figure out which software expertise the members share, and decide on an appropriate software choice.

I am still working to get pictures from the Humane Society of their facility as well as some stock photos of pets. I apologize for the delay. In the meantime, I recommend using royalty free image sites that provide great photos for professional use. Please do not use Google Image Search, because that could cause copyright problems for the Humane Society. Free image sites include:

http://www.freeimages.com/photos/

http://www.imageafter.com/images.php

http://www.dreamstime.com/

I know it is a challenge to do a project like this online. I appreciate the hard work students are putting in, and I know the Humane Society is grateful for your work.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Ryan