Your blog post on process documentation

For Monday, your (final!) blogging assignment is to find one example of process documentation and share it with the class. Your example of process documentation can take any form: a video, a web page, or even a printed manual or document. It should document how something is done thoroughly enough so that any viewer or reader fully understands how to do the process successfully and arrive at the same results that are demonstrated. Documentation of a process helps standardize the process of doing, making, or building something. Process documentation is often performed in the field of software development. Software writers document how they accomplish specific tasks, and in what order, so that other teams can replicate the process without “reinventing the wheel” each time. Good process documentation also starts by stating the goal or purpose of the process and lists all equipment and skills that are necessary to the completion of all tasks.

Here is an example of a video that documents the process of medicating a pet cat:

This blog post from the University of Virginia Scholars Lab documents the process of geocoding places on a map using ArcGIS software; that is, how to match a list of street addresses to points on a digital map that can then be edited or shared in a variety of ways.

Notes from today, and reading/blogging for Wednesday, November 23

On Wednesday, we’ll discuss the practical applications of documentation and come up with a definition of process documentation. Your assignment is to find one example of process documentation in any format, read it, and write one blog post in which you describe, summarize and critique it. Be prepared to discuss your example in class! If you use a video or other media as an example, embed it into the course blog. Please read the following 2 articles that discuss issues in process documentation:

Edge, “Write it down! The importance of documentation
Robinson, “Documentation Dilemmas

By the end of class on Wednesday I would like to establish groups for the documentation project. Each group will consist of three students and will propose an information resource, an educational game, or a media outlet and document the process of research. I will post guidelines for this project later this week.

Continue to work on your research paper; you should get a graded draft back by the end of the day Wednesday. The final version of your research paper is due Wednesday, November 30. A few people still have not turned in the outline or annotated bibliography; remember that you must submit all parts of the research paper to get credit for the project.

~Prof. Leonard

News Flash – anti-piracy bill in the Senate could censor the internet

Those of you writing papers on topics related to intellectual property, freedom of online communications, and the government’s role in monitoring the use of the internet would do well to keep up with this bill, “Preventing Real Online
5 Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual
6 Property Act of 2011,” or the Protect IP Act. See current news articles for analysis, opinion, and more (and let me know if that link is broken).

Enjoy~
~Prof. L.

Notes from today, and reading for Monday, 11/21

Today we talked about the rationale for documentation and citation. Your questions about the Hauptman reading brought up some issues that may never really be answered, which to me is evidence of careful thinking. In some cases, as for the question about common knowledge, any answer depends on the audience and context.

Remember, your research paper draft is due by 10 a.m. on Monday, November 21, either as a print copy handed in at the beginning of class, or as an attachment to an email to me sent by 10 a.m. Monday. You must submit each part of the research paper (proposal, annotated bibliography, outline, draft, final) to get credit for the paper. If you have questions about the assignment, please get in touch, and please do not wait until Sunday night.

On Monday, we’ll continue our discussion on documentation and address standards, methods and styles for citing text and non-text media. Please read chapter 9 of Badke and  browse the Purdue OWL’s APA and MLA Style sections. We will also talk a little bit about the final documentation project & presentation.

Slides from today are available here.

Have a productive weekend!
~Prof. Leonard

Being inspired

No matter how much we try to create something of out own we still need some sort of inspiration. Regarding who we are it does not matter. the R. Hauptman passage gives us some form of clue when it comes to using someone else work as long as you give them credit for there work. It does not matter who you are but at the end of the day to create something you will need some form of idea that was previously engineered and look upon that to see what can you do to either strengthen it or make it better. You may try and not use someone else work but sometimes to better explain something, you need another individual to better capture the meaning of what you are trying to convey to the audience. By giving the credit deserved to whom ever that you are quoting is a good idea because it lets you use someone elses work without jeopardizing your masterpiece.

Notes from today, and reading for Wednesday, November 16

On Wednesday we’ll begin to discuss the rationale for documentation and citation. Please read Hauptman pp. 7-13; if you missed class get the book on reserve in the library (call number PN171 .F56 H38 2008), as well as Howard, Hot Type: A Modern Scholar’s Ailments: Link Rot and Footnote Flight

The research paper draft is due one week from today, on Monday, November 21 at the beginning of class. Please get in touch early if you have questions or issues about the research paper draft — do not wait until the weekend.

Slides from today are available here.

~Prof. Leonard

Gained knowledge from LIB1201

Conducting research before this class was like a game of roulette, I was either lucky to find reliable sources or not. However, after all the readings in Badke and the assigned readings the professor assigned I have become more comfortable with researching and confident in finding exactly what I am looking for. I have already applied my knowledge from this class to my other classese in all my research paper, and as I mentioned before my research has been successful and writing my papers have been much easier. I never felt like writing an outline would be helpful before this class as well and I have been incorporating this in my researching strategies. Overall, I have gained a lot on researching and finding reliable sources from this course and I will continue to use it in my future academic years.

Advanced Research

Before this course I knew what google scholar was and what it was used for. I however did not know how to use it effectively. Limiting keywords, shortening phrases and even searching for topics related to the direct subject matter were a couple tools of trade I am able to take away with this course. Even though my research project is turning out to be a little more difficult than I originally planned it is a good challenging experience for me to now have to use these library catalog databases and expland my research methods. This is definitely something I will be using to write any extensive research papers I may have in the future in my other classes and I feel as though this experience was helpful.

-Tarik

Research Journal

Based 0n what we’ve discussed in the past week, i’ve learnt just how ineffective google scholar is. I got nothing from the site, it didn’t help in the least. I also learnt about city tech’s vast research database made me proud to be a student at this school (for once). I also experienced first hand how unreliable it can be, because it didn’t work when i needed it to. I also learnt how effective worldcat can be, just a tad effective for books only. It has a neat feature that lets me see what books are available in the city tech libraryThis is something that is actually helping my research right now actually. I plan on taking out an online restraining order against google scholar, it has to stay 5 clicks away from any site i’m visiting at all times. I plan on going back to the research database more often(hope it’s working now).

Research Blog

Everything that we learned the previous week about advanced internet search, searching library catalogs and searching article databases was very helpful to me, not only for this class but for my other classes as well. I did not know about a lot of those search engines. I find the google scholar the most accurate and most informative of all, I got a lot of interesting articles on there about designing and architecture which were of great help to me for my other class. I also like the google books, a lot of books that I had to use for some of my classes, I found those books on google books. I learned a lot about internet search which will always be helpful whenever I have to do another research paper.