Class experience to help in the future

There are two main items that were invaluable this semester (among other things learned):

Remediation and how that plays a role in technical writing.
Importance of maintaining web design skills as a technical writer.

Remediation is very important to consider in terms of technical writing. The lesson that I learned from this concept was the media that is used in technical writing documentation. How can older media be transformed into newer media and what implications are made? I think of how hard-copy documentation can be transformed into on online format as a way of remediating the information. In this age of technology, it seems that online documentation is growing. It is easier to maintain for the technical writers – we can update a page and the user will see our results without reprinting a manual. It is also easier for the customer – information can be tied to an application like the help in Microsoft Word. These ways show the benefits of online documentation but obviously printed manuals are stilled needed. What about situations such as a disaster or when electronic forms are not available? Some people are also still more comfortable with the hard-copy of documentation. But as we transition documentation online and think of how to write differently for an online audience, this also makes me consider how we can remediate online documentation to improve hard-copy documentation. In online documentation we can hide information in a pop-up window until a user chooses to view it. Maybe in hard-copy documentation we can begin to do the same – such as hiding information in appendix that is not useful to all audiences of the documentation. I think this is a very important concept of remediating media and reviewing how each type of media is best used.

It is also very important to keep up-to-date on web design skills and other application skills in general. Once graduating and getting into the workplace it is very important for technical writers to continue learning tools. You cannot expect your employer to pay for an outline a training program for you. You need to take the initiative to learn and train yourself. Maybe your employer could purchase some books that you want and you can train yourself or you can use a help program to learn a new tool at work. However you choose to learn or whatever opportunities are available to you in a workplace or other work related opportunity; technical writers need to keep up on skills.

Extended Critque on Non-Classmate

Here is the site: http://www.angelfire.com/grrl/jen_garrett/2003/05/vocation-ing.html.

What I have learned about this process:
I thought it was difficult to find a decent blog to critique. I wanted to find something relevant to myself or for technical writing, but I think there is a lot of useless blog information out there. Finally, I did find something that it appears was actually written by someone affiliated with the blogger.com site. So my first impression on commenting on someone else’s blog is that it is difficult to find a decent blog to comment on.

Once, a blog is located, I did feel a bit uncomfortable and did not know what to expect by commenting on someone else’s blog. I am wondering what the blog creator will think of my comments: will they be useful? will they understand my comment / or think about why I commented on their blog?

I’m not sure how my blog comment will be perceived but I am not too worried about it. I’m sure it is pretty typical for others to post on blogs that they are not affiliated with – note: no one outside of class has posted on my blog…I typically don’t blog or e-mail people that I don’t know, so this is a new experience for me. I may e-mail that I don’t know but I anticipate meeting them in the future or I am asking them information, but I don’t randomly post my thoughts on the Internet for fun and hope that others are interested. I guess we will wait and see and maybe my blog comment will inspire a reply.

My Response to My Blog Critique

Check out my comment to my blog for the ten lessons learned in class.

Link to Classmate Blog

Here is a link to Chelsea's site: http://readhed.blogspot.com/.

Lessons Learned on Class

The following is a list of items that I have learned this semester:

1. What is a classy web page. The Inspiration section has "inspired" me with the classy web design examples. Hopefully, I can achieve this look in the future.
2. The usefulness of articulation and interfaces. Reading about the process of articulation and how this is used in reference to technical writing was useful.
3. Flash demonstration. It was helpful to see what are some elements that Flash is used for since I am not familiar with the program.
4. Remediation. Interesting to read about how older media can be transformed into new media and the issues that are faced with this process.
5. Photoshop. The creativity that can be achieved with the image modifications tools.
6. Good web site design. That elements such as consistency and organization among other equal a good usable web site.
7. Feng-shui web design principles.
8. That it is important to keep up on your web design skills as a technical writer. Try to become familiar with the new technologies such as JavaScript, ASP, etc in order to know what you need to know about them.
9. It is important to learn not only actual web design - HTML - but the theory. The datacloud and remediation readings present approaches about what I thought were different ways to look at and think about technical writing.
10. How to plan and perform a user testing scenario.

Remediation

The authors of the Remediation text discussed the following interesting concepts for remediation:

• Digital technologies are multiplying faster than our cultural can keep up. This shows how important it is to stay current with new technologies. It is difficult and challenging to move from old media to new media, but we need to embrace this challenge and determine how to integrate both of these technologies into our culture.
• Are older electronic and print media still useful? How can older technologies compete with new technologies? We need to show how older media can have immediacy while competing against the immediacy of new media. I think that older technologies are useful and represent our history and we can learn from this. Hard-copy documentation is beginning to be older media, but I think it is still useful. We can learn in what situations hard-copy documentation is most useful and how to best transform hard-copy documentation into an online format.
• Can hypermediacy, which combines the images of text and images and how we see them, compete with immediacy, which places us in the presence of an item? I think different technologies not only compete with each other but complement each other. While old and new media determine how best to survive in the current digital age, this presents the users of technologies with an opportunity to determine the best uses of each media.

I think the term remediation as defined in the text is best described on page 15…“how we alter older media and the ways in which older media alter themselves to answer the challenges or new media.”

Link to Another Site

Here is a link to another blog:http://digitalcommunique.blogspot.com/. I thought this is actually a good blog that discuss the usage of search engines. Another discussion also discusses the power of blogs. It took me a while to find this blog, because their is a lot of crap on blogger.com and I mean crap.