Update on My Portfolio

[Update on my portfolio] As of today, I am 90% done with my portfolio. I have selected my first two blogs as my best entries, revised all of my previous documents, and am currently working on my portfolio's introduction.

Between essay 1 and essay 2, I chose essay 2 to resubmit. I was really proud of essay 1 and I would have just submit that and call it a day, but I decided to go with the design project because I felt like I could do a lot to improve that document. I've changed a lot of stuff and am confident that it is a lot better.

Job Posting!

Theres 4 more days of classes and a final! We were assigned Essay #4 today and this is an essential topic that will be carried with us for the rest of our lives. Cover letters and resumes - the documents that will determine our fate of whether we get into our dream jobs or not. This assignment entails 3 different parts, the first is to find a job posting. With a job posting in hand, we can cater our cover letter and resume to accomidate the job posting.

The job posting I found is an internship with Jetblue and I am looking forward to picking it apart in class tomorrow.

Update on Presentation

[Group #2]


For the past week I have been involved in a class collaboration project. This involves a few of my classmates, Kurt, Mike, and myself to teach the class about letters, memos, and emails (chapter 14). As a group, we've split up the sections that we would discuss and had prepared PowerPoint presentations. We've combined it together, but due to an absence of a group member, Kurt and I had made a backup presentation for tomorrow. We've just discovered that our redundancy plan will be in effect as that classmate had just notified us that he had dropped from the class. We have rehearsed the presentation and are within the time limits. We are fully prepared to present tomorrow morning.



BSU Catalogs


Today after class, I went to the BSU's admission office located behind Boyden Hall. The purpose of this trip is to collect various brochures that had been published by the university to gain some perspective on my upcoming flyer. I need to come up with a 2 page flyer that will attract prospective students.

The first thing I'm going to do is break this into 2 different components, the first being the contents and the second being the actual design.

The contents will be organized by classification and partitioned then prioritized from information I find to be more important to less.

[Inspire] This section will be my area to inspire a broad audience to further attain their higher education and a good place to do it is at BSU.

[Brief information on BSU] This section will be brief but will cover the basic information that people will need to know such as campus location, campus size, campus life, commuters, state of the art buildings and technology, etc.

[Academic Programs] this section will consist of brief overall majors that the university will offer to undergraduates, graduates, and continuing education. Since there is just too much information to list, there will be a link for more information.

[BSU Athletic Programs] an overview of mascot, teams (NCAA), intramurals, club sports, gym facilities, and link to the athletic department.

[Others] Brief overview of various clubs, there is something for everyone. Internships, student employment, AAC, and the ways the school assist with disability.

[Admission's Office] This will be the final section providing the address, website, telephone numbers, and month of application deadlines.

The second part of the design will have to incorporate the BSU colors (crimson and white), the BSU logo, and various images that will inspire perspective students. Images will be diverse and hopefully capture the liveliness of campus life.

[Chapter 6, pages 118-119]

I decided to take a trip to Panera Bread for some quality free internet time. I read both chapter 6 and 7 from the Technical Communication textbook. Chapter 6 focused on conducting the research while chapter 7 focused on organizing the information. I really appreciated that those two chapters were strategically placed together.

What I found interesting is the section on research questions and methods. I’ve noticed a trend in both chapters where charts are utilized to clearly organize how to use resources, although I do not agree with a few items listed. The first would be the use of encyclopedias, because it seems to be obsolete, it’s like telling people to pull out their cassette tapes and listen to radio recorded music. I guess honoring the fact that those items still exist is worth the print, meanwhile we can all recycle our old encyclopedias into something more useful, like a handy broom.

Another surprise is that fact that Web 2.0 resources are also listed as a research technique. I find it conflicting when this chapter later emphasizes to evaluate the information to ensure it is correct and unbiased. How can one make sure someone’s blog or their social networking site is deemed as correct and unbiased? Especially when the example provided was, “How are companies responding to the federal government’s new laws on health-insurance portability” and Wed 2.0 resources were listed as a source.  I do not believe there is an APA format for quoting someone’s twitter account, well at least not yet.

Appropriate Research Techniques?