Better Blogging

While I have been taking a break from this julie@century blog this summer, I have been working with another blog with my online tech writing students.

The course ended yesterday, and I have to say that asking students to write and share blog posts has been a *terrific* learning experience for them, the best blogging I've read since I've been using this assignment. Here's how it works:

• I asked them to sign up for Google Alerts to get messages about "Technical Writing" in the news (analogous to the in-class discussion we would have if we were meeting f2f). The news stories show up in their email inboxes, usually 4 or 5 a week.
• I put the instructions for how to set up this alert right in the syllabus -- it's a first example of instructions, which is the second assignment students write for the class. (A syllabus is a piece of technical writing, after all.)
  
• I have created a private blogspot blog for the class, and I add new students to the blog every semester. I keep adding students instead of creating a new blog for each class because I want students to see what others have written over the years -- examples of good and bad blog posts (practicing genre analysis!) help them write their own.
• Students should post eight times in the eight-week semester: 4 times before midterm and 4 times after midterm. Commenting on 3 classmates' posts can substitute for one of their own posts. They can decide when to post, but only one post per day counts. (I used to ask for weekly posts, but students would forget. And one semester, students posted all their posts at once, which defeats the purpose of getting them to think and share.)
• Posts are worth 10 points each -- totaling about 1/10th of the points for the course.
• I don't check spelling, grammar, mechanics -- the only comments I make are about analysis: simply summarizing or copying the news item is not sufficient. Students must post what they *think* about what they've read.

Overall, this semester the students have realized that technical writing is all around them. Some profess to have more respect for technical writers, seeing for the first time all the hard work that goes into creating documents at their workplaces. Here are some example student posts, just as they appeared (weird formatting, spelling errors, and all -- be sure to notice that one Ethiopian student liked a W.B. Yeats quote!):

You can Learn Writing Style- What is Techncial Writing

I received this article in my inbox this morning and thought it would be interesting to read through it since it pertains to what we have learned in our online technical writing class. This article was written by: stevesheriw. he describes technical writing as a way to inform, instruct or persuade, argue within a document. He also goes on to say that what ever you write is some form of technical writing as in resumes, memos, letters, reports, instructions, etc. Some of these forms of technical writing styles were some of our required assignments for this class which made it clear as to why they call it technical writing. Steve also points out that there are 7 steps to consider when writing a document, these steps are; Purpose, audience, content specific to it's purpose and audience, write clearly and precisely, make good use of visuals, and last but not least; be ethical in your writing.

Where have I heard this before, oh yeah, I read about it in the reading assignments and the introduction of our handbook.
http://www.technicalyp.com/?p=372

Top 5 Technical Writing Skills That Pay Big

http://technicalwriting.phoenix-blogs.com/top-5-technical-writing-skills-that-pay-big/

The article goes over the top 5 tech writing jobs that pay big- the reason that I enjoy the article is because over the past semester I have truly payed respect to technical writing. It is a field that will be around forever to meet the needs of people from all types of society. The top 5 payed jobs are as follows:

- Information design

- Information architecture

- Training material development

- Illustration

- Typography

Everyone in the class should appreciate what a vast field technical writing is. It effects everyone (especially college students) in their day to day lives! I have enjoyed the short and challenging semester of technical writing, and I truly believe that it is something that everyone should have a basic understating of. Writing skills are a necessary thing in a society that is based around commercialism.

Technical Writing involves many things that need to be considered before writing a plain draft and Audience analysis is one of them.

This article points out about the kind of audience we need to consider while writing a document. There are 3 main types of audience: a non technical, a semi-technical and a technical. Gender and age also plays a role. As a technical writer we need to focus on the audience’s interest. When considering translation into another language for the document it is even more important to write a simple but clear language to avoid meaning changes. All those information make it clear that it is hard to write a document for multiple audiences. Satisfying all the readers is a hard task.

I liked the statement of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) used in this context: “Think like a wise man but communicate in language of the people” Not only in technical writing gives this success but also in other fields of life.

http://www.bukisa.com/articles/321195_why-keeping-your-audience-in-mind-while-technical-writing-is-important