July 2nd: More Inroduction to Technical Communication

Maintain a Webpage all Semester

Some of you are already experts at this, and some of you are brand new. I want you to create a webpage for this course. Let's try to get one up today.

Accessing Your 'H' Drive Off Campus

UNC Charlotte has a great way for you to store class files and other stuff. Whenever you log into the UNCC system on campus, your 'My Documents' folder is a remotely stored section of the server. You can also access this storage space when you're off campus!

Do you want to learn how?

My First User Document

I'd like for us to all have user documents that explain how to put up webpages for UNCC students. The final product isn't graded, but I expect you to put forth some effort on this assignment (part of your webpage grade). I would like you to start thinking about how to show someone through words, graphics, etc. how to accomplish putting up a webpage.

In order to do this, you have to decide where to start. After you figure out a resonable starting point, you will want to create a series of steps first before doing screen captures.

How do you do screen captures?

[ALT] + [Print Screen] [capture the active window}

Try it out.

Technology Journal

This semester you are to keep a "Technology Journal." I have five prompts for you to write about this term. Please do these as close to the dates for which they're assigned, so you don't fall behind.

Focus on Chapter 1 in Tebeaux & Dragga

Ch. 1 is an introduction to what technical communication is. It's short, but it's foundational, so we should discuss it a bit.

• What is technical communication? What is technical writing?
• How is technical writing received--do audiences want to read?
• Who needs to understand technical communication?
• Where (in what industries) do we find technical communication?

Technical Writer Outlook (from BLS)

Focus on Chapter 2 in Tebeaux & Dragga

Ch. 2 brings us to two of the most important ideas to consider when approaching ANY communication situation--Audience and Purpose.

• Reader-based vs. Writer-based prose

• Limit interpretation and ambiguity

• Ethos: the presentation of one's credibility or character

• (pp. 16- 20): Writing process(es)

• Grammatical correctness, while important, is NOT as important as having a clear message

• Re-visioning vs. editing

With a partner, please come up with a topic familiar to you and consider the following if you were to write a brochure about the topic:

• Who would be the primary audience?

• Who would be the secondary audience?

• Other audiences?

• How would you gather information about these assumed audiences?

• What is the brochure's main, secondary, and/or tertiary purposes?

• What would be the context for your brochure?

• How could your context change?  Explain.

Assessing Technologies

Let's break for a moment and take out all our technologies. I'm curious to see what "we" carry around with us daily.

HOMEWORK

Don't forget to keep up with the syllabus. You should read Ch. 12 in Tebeaux and Dragga and read the supplemental résumé reading for tomorrow (7/3). Also, don't forget you'll have a syllabus quiz on Monday.