For our service learning project my group and I have decided to take existing flyers that almost home humane society uses to educate and inform their clients. The flyers were basically a couple paragraphs on a plain white sheet of paper, no pictures, special fonts, bolding or anything to catch the readers attention. The reading that I felt was of great use to our project was the brochure and flyer powerpoint presentation.
As with the white paper project, our group is always one step ahead of whatever we are supposed to be doing for the week. After meeting with Brenda, from Almost Home Humane Society, our group has received the current documents that they would like reformatted and also information that we are going to use to create our own new document for them to use. Today, our proposal was due so we have that under our belts, so this week we are focusing on the design, layout and creation of the existing and new documents.
This weeks readings included: Social and Cultural Issues: Copyright, Plagiarism, and Fair Use of Others’ Writing, Gender in the Workplace and Ethics Editing Checklist. Copyright, Plagiarism, and Fair Use of Others' Writing is an important article that provides very useful information when it comes to any form of writing. The following line basically sums up the entire article: "Give credit where credit is due." If the information provided isn't your own then you need to make sure and cite the correct source. The article also gives a list of rules that might help: 1.
For this week we have a few helpful and informative readings to look over for our 3rd project. Proposals: Content and Organization is helpful because it describes exactly what your proposal should contain. According to the article: The two main rules for organizing information in a proposal are these: (1) Do what the audience requests and/or expects. And (2) Use the main body of the proposal to make the argument for your project, and put supporting details in an appendix. You must provide data in support of your arguments. Visuals are a high-impact way to include evidence in your proposal.
Fortunately, the group I was a part of for the White Paper project worked very well together, therefore we are going to work together on the Service Learning Project. For the White Paper we addressed the problems Almost Home Humane Society is facing with their Open-Door Policy, which deals with taking in stray animals. Almost Home Humane Society is lacking the funds and kennel space to take in stray animals, therefore they are having to close their Open-Door Policy. Our Service Learning Project can be the creation of a brochure or website to inform and persuade potential pet owners.
For this weeks reading journal I have read following section on Proposals in PWOnline: Overview, The Rhetoric of Proposals, Types and Contexts of Proposals,Content and Organization, Proposal: Biomedical Engineering Design Project. The Overview section basically defines the term "proposal." The PWOnline refers to a formal document which proposes to do some project in the future and which requests organizational support for doing the project. Proposals are generally persuasive documents.
As my group presented today and I just completed our group evaluation, another project is rapidly approaching. We don't have any assigned readings this week other than familiarizing ourselves with the next project: The Client-Based Service Learning Project. For this project, groups of 2-4 members will be asked to locate a real world client and negiotiate a reasonable and mutually beneficial writing project which will be completed by the end of the semester. Students are encouraged to work with non-profit organizations, academic departments, and small businesses.
Prior to doing this reading response I checked to see what everyone else was writing about because we don't have any readings assigned. It seems that only one person has done their reading response and they just discussed the peer review sheet we are assigned to complete. In previous classes I haven't taken peer reviews as serious as I do in this class, but I also feel as if the peer review sheets we complete in this class are much more in-depth and can really help, if you take the comments for what they are worth and realize everyone is just trying to help you.
There are only a few days left until our final White Paper is due and our group is definitely on top of things and has been since day one. Our White Paper rough draft is going through the peer review and critiquing process, which is proving to be beneficial to the creation of the final White Paper we will turn in Friday. Our group is working very closely to make any changes and put the final touches on our paper. As mentioned above we are taking the peer reviews very seriously and making the appropriate changes that our classmates and teacher have suggested.
My group and I have been ahead of the game since the start of this project. We started our research as soon as we formed our group and held our first meet that very week. Because we had a jump start on the project we are now able to really concentrate and focus on the specific parts of the project that are due, such as the rough draft due Friday. Class on Friday gave us an opportunity to set up guidelines for what is due and when it is due by for this weeks rough draft.