During the beginning of this week we worked on the changes that were suggested by Julie and Deb on the layout of the newsletters. Our team met with Deb Lukens on Wednesday to finalize the details of our writing. We were able to get information from both Deb and the students at Beacon Academy. The students provided their point of view on the articles that we were including the in the newsletters which gave the writing a personal touch. We also included some pictures from their trips or community work and it improved the look of the newsletters.

Our group has meet with Deb Lukens and came up with a project of developing two newsletters for Beacon Academy. This week we had a couple of meeting to discuss the details of the newsletters. We have also emailed each other through out the week to keep each other informed about our work and share ideas. The online meeting that we had on Tuesday was very productive. We were able to plan out our week and come up with lots of ideas for the newsletters. We have each taken a couple of topics to write about. I have chosen to cover the St.

The reading assignment in The Thompsons Handbook was very helpful. The chapter covered how to understand your writing assignment by looking at the different items that all affect your writing. Some examples are the topic, the audience, the style, the content and the criteria. These all affect how you develop your writing. I liked the section about how you can develop content in context. It stated that Ethos, Logos, and Pathos can be used to develop your subject.

Our project has gotten off to a good start. We have gotten in contact with our client, Deb Lukens. She is the director of Beacon Academy, which just got approved as a charter school. We look forward to helping Deb and Beacon Academy with during this important time. We plan on meeting with Deb on Monday, April 7, after school is out. We will discuss the project and what she needs us to work on. We will also provide weekly memos to keep her apprised of our work and progress.

This project has been an interesting experience. To have a group of people come together in a short time and develop a complete white paper is a hard task. I think that our team did very well and created a great white paper. It required us to have some face to face meetings so that we could better discuss how to work on this project. We divided up the work evenly and every one gave input in how the white paper should look. After doing all the research and writing the first draft, we found out that our final copy had to be reduced in word count.

Resources – Next 4

http://www.messagelabs.com/resources/whitepapers

I am researching the topic of email security for our white paper. When discussing email security, companies have to consider protecting their network from things coming in by email and information that is being sent out by email. So far I have broken down email security into the areas of preventing spam and email fraud, protecting information that is being sent by email, and securing the devices that access the email.

Resources:

“Enterprise Email Encryption Buyer’s Guide 2007” August 2007
Published by Osterman Research

Our team has gotten off to a good start. We emailed each other through the week to discuss ideas for a team name and white paper topic. Each group member provided ideas and suggestions for these items. On Wednesday night we had a group chat on AIM to finalize our decisions. We choose the group name of PEER, Inc. as an acronym of our first names. We also choose the topic of “The Changing Nature of Email in the Workplace”. We are starting to discuss dividing up the research assignments and group structure.

Through out college and in the work place, I have been a part of group projects. Most of my group experiences have gone quite well. Each team member has brought something to the table that helps the group. Some of my experiences have not gone as well and the group did not function well. In these cases the group did not have any direction or there were too many people who wanted to do different things and couldn’t work together. The successful groups were ones that had a strong structure and leadership. I also believe that communication is a key part of the success.

The difference between a white paper that reports on a subject and one that sells a product is not always clear. A well written paper can do both. When reporting on a subject you want to list the issues and theories that are involved in that subject. The same can be done for a when you are selling a product. You want to list the issues that your audience has and possible solutions to those issues. Both types of white papers should site outside sources to support their writing, provide technical detail without loosing your audience, and communicate in a clear manner to your readers.