The first face-to-face meeting in a mixed-mode course is almost always uneventful. In my experience, much time's taken up in the form of a Q&A in which the instructor and students figure out together the course parameters, what's (mis)understood about them, and respond accordingly. Despite the clarifications provided in both M1 and M2, I think we're still in the middle of a rocky start.
In particular, I'm concerned about some students' early overemphasis on technology over technical communication. I am to blame for at least part of this, given the technology autobiography assignment and perhaps the focus of Gentle's Conversation and Community. But this is not a course on how to use Twitter. Using technology is part of the course, yes, but these uses are in the service of something else, i.e., technical communication. Blogging and tweeting are required parts of this course because they can help facilitate discussion and further our understanding of technical communication. Posterous and Twitter are not ends, but means. Technologies like these are tools; technical communication is often about those tools.
Of course, this perceived overemphasis could be an overreaction. I asked a lot of students these first two weeks and they had to manage much of it on their own. With almost all Posterous and Twitter accounts up and running, we should soon move beyond limited discussions of technology and get more into the particulars of technical communication.
We won't be writing papers; we will be producing documents. We may not be making arguments, but we will be relaying information.
I don't want to conclude with any kind of negativity, though. I also don't want to close with the last word. There are a number of students who are not in possession of this overemphasis on technology and I want to highlight them here.
From M1:
Now I think about goals of technology and how I want myself represented or anything that I am involved in on the web. There is great planning of the overall design to attract visitors to the site. It enables people to get their voice out there as well as any information that would be vital for an audience.
The idea of content that is more valuable because of its usefulness is liberating and exciting. I do believe information should be researched and have credibility, but the idea of users contributing so equally is new and innovative to me. It’s a sort of real-time dialogue, even if it’s actually asynchronous, because it’s still so fresh compared to feedback and response time in the past.
This is the new expectation: that real conversation can be initiated so that the producer may anticipate questions and provide quick and accurate answers. It now makes sense to me why blogging and joining twitter should be required in this course. Nowadays, making connections and receiving constant updates on information or stories is important.
Understanding users’ needs and desires is a must in order to be a successful writer of documentation.
In terms of user-friendly content provided on such platforms, be it a blog or otherwise, the content provider must keep the user’s needs first and foremost in mind and, armed with such an understanding can deliver content successfully. These ideas have caused me to reconsider simple features of my Posterous blog such as the theme, ease of use, number of words used, etc. I should think more deeply about my blog as a personal contribution to our course’s online community and keep this community in mind when creating posts, tags, and adding any outside content.
While user interface is now focused upon in modern technical writing, a gap still exists in communicating information about portions of the device with which users don't typically interface (i.e., all the stuff inside) from the developers to the people who need more information than the typical user about those parts of the device (such as someone who is trying to fix it when it is broken).
According to McMurrey, technical writing is usually written about a well known topic, such as a major. When using technical writing it is important to make sure you know who the audience is. In other words, it is very important that the way your writing is worded is easy for the audience to understand.
Basically, I found that she was giving technical names to processes and tools that I use daily—I have watched hours of theatre makeup tutorials on You Tube, uploaded countless pictures to Flickr, learned how to set up a Linksys router via a blog, subscribed to the TED.com RSS feed, etc. I do not know where I learned to do such things—it was certainly not in the classroom or a textbook.
I realize how important it is to the world of science, technology, business, and the field and career I want to go into. No matter what line of work I go into I’m sure it is going to require a lot of writing and most of it will be technical. This class will be useful for my future in helping to build a clientele and in establishing a name for myself to show people that I care about what it is that I am doing.
I always thought of technical writers as being those people who write instruction manuals for complicated technology that no one understands. I now know that even doctors are considered technical writers.