- Brief Introduction
- Beginning of Class Writing Assignment
- Click on the title of this blog post, “Week 11,” scroll down to the comment area, and write at least 250 words in response to this week’s readings. You can summarize the readings, you can relate the readings to your own experience or something else you have read or learned about, etc. Any writing of 250 words or more that are related to the readings are fair game for this weekly assignment at the beginning of class.
- Post your comment after 15 minutes even if you don’t reach the 250 word minimum threshold.
- Why we are doing this: It helps you organize your thoughts before discussion and it gives you regular writing practice.
- Discuss the readings assigned for Week 11.
- Discuss internships
- How are they going?
- Discuss the Professional Portfolio
- Include at least 10 deliverables (can be from internship, classwork, or your own initiative)
- Each deliverable needs an accompanying reflection of at least 250 words that describes the document’s purpose and context, your rhetorical strategy, and your methodology of creating it (i.e., workflow).
- In the coming classes, I will demo two different ways to create your portfolio so that it is public facing and easily linkable on your resume, LinkedIn Profile, etc.:
- Google Docs with a sharable link (an example)
- OpenLab/Wordpress website (an example)
- Weekly Log
- Remember to add an entry to your logbook for each week until the end of the semester and keep all of your logs in a single file (Google Doc, Word docx, OpenOffice odf, etc.). Include the first date of a given week for each entry at the top of the page. Write at least 250 words about your current or past experience as appropriate. For example, if you are currently in an internship, your logs should record your experiences, thoughts, challenges, solutions, etc. that you find significant each week. Or, if you have completed your internship, your logs can be about experiences, projects, interactions with people in the workplace, challenges, solutions, etc. based on your past experience. And, if you are continuing in a new internship for additional experience, you can write about that, too. The point is to write at least 250 words per entry with one entry per week about your experience in the internship.
- Why we are doing this: It helps you articulate your work experience so that you may better reflect on, consider, remember, and act on those experiences as you transition into the workplace. Additionally, it gives you extra writing practice, which research shows will automatically improve your writing ability.
- Review readings and homework for next week.
- Look through your course work and internship work for examples of your writing to include in your professional portfolio. This can include deliverables that you wrote by yourself and as part of a team. Have at least 5 on hand for next week’s class when we will work on the reflections for these deliverables during class.
In “he Rhetoric of Reach: Preparing Students for Technical Communication in the Age of Social Media,” by Verzosa Hurley and Kimme Hea talk about the outcome of posting on social media without being careful how you write/ advertise it out to be. It refers to an article posted on social media that seemed “sabotaging” for an unsavvy user’s career, the article was about how to get fired. The article states that in 2011, 274 million Americans have internet access, 81 billion minutes were spent on social networks/ bogs, and nearly 64% of time spent on a mobile phone was to be on an app. Clearly demonstrating how powerful the phone and web 2.0 is. This article also discusses how social media can be taught in Technical communication and how it can be used in favor of technical writers. Hurley and Hea also discuss why critical theory is important to social media teaching and learning. The article is advocating for technical communicators to be careful of social media usage but not be frightful of it.
the first article on meeting and their impritance was something very relevant to me. I learned that its vital for a productive workplace environment to conduct in-person meetings because they add a different more productive value to the employees and employers relationship with eachother. They are able to express verbally what they think is working and what needs revision and a plan to execute upon concluding the meeting. I too saw the value in having an in-person meeting vs an email. It was alot harder for me to gather all the points in the email and move forward with a course of action. I saw that keeping track of everything I need to do and checking in on my emails is not easy, and I’m more likely to forget something.
The second article on technical writing students and media discusses the importance of learning how to implement social media into technical writing. It is more common now to learn different social medias and use them as tools to communicate information. This is because more people are on social media.
Monster and Career Builder that post articles and elaborate on how social media can sabotage someone. There are always articles that float around as an influential person such as politicians and in this day and age – influencers. For quite a bit, even when I was in High School I heard about the line of companies being able to access your data and wanting a clean profile. The article states that there is a law that states companies can not ask for log ins for applicants. The term pedagogy comes up again which means theory. I think it’s important to be mindful of the new incoming generation’s societal behavior towards these newcomers. Social media sneaks its way into our daily lives, including our professional ones. The article states that instead of just responding to the technologies and media, students should engage with it. As society uses different lingo, that may or may not be “swag” or “lit” it creates an impression and works its way into our usage of the English Language mindless of the punctuation and spelling. Social media users have an alteration in writing methods, for instance writing to be read but instead there is so much clickbait and false titles because now the content is so that users can be browsed.
In the New York Times Article, “Meetings. Why?” discussed the need for meetings and about remote meetings in regards to productivity. One method mentioned for managers to build interpersonal relationships with subordinates is remembering everyone’s birthday. It is a useful meeting is knowing what to do, executing and steps moving forward.
The Rhetoric of Reach: Preparing Students for Technical Communication in the Age of Social Media is an article about social media and what it can mean to technical writers and its possibilities. Social media plays a big part of social life. Lots of people use it and it can tell people things about you. You need to appear professional so you will possibly keep your job or advance. Anthony Weiner who was a politician accidentally sent a racy image to everyone via the reply all button and not just one person. This photo caused great harm to his career and was spread around. Time.com named him as one of “10 Politicians to Follow” and that twitter which was quickly archived and retweeted ruined him. There is potential that social media can really harm you. There are positives and negatives to social media. Social media is important and people should learn about its use and how to use it. Technical writers need to adapt social media into their skill set. We need to teach and learn about social media to be more successful.
How to have a good meeting is an article about why people have meetings and how to improve meeting with the history of meetings. Ancient Egyptians had meetings and four thousand years later we still have meetings. Now meetings can be digital. The article talks about President George Washington and his meetings including what became the cabinet. Meetings can be a tool to keep people on the job. Those that were trained and had effort put on them by employers would stay if they feel valued. Humans being treated like machines is not a good idea and managers need to build relationships with their workers. One idea is remembering everyone’s birthday. Another thing is meetings which acknowledges people. Meetings are “a tool for getting more out of workers”. It is recommended that meetings should be small to prevent “social loafing,” or people attending but not participating in the meeting. It is recommended that there be a mix of introverts and extroverts.