Most of this week's readings focused on presentations. I found the readings in PWOnline and the power point to be very helpful. The section on informal presentations was nice because it talked about the different ways to structure a presentation. Often times we do presentations in "steps" or the problem followed by several solutions. It will be nice to have a change of pace and do a presentation in a different style.
Once again, my group and I are are ahead of schedule. We did not meet as a group this week. Instead we conferred via e-mail on the opinions and corrections needed on our rough drafts. We met with Brenda, from Almost Home Humane Society, on Thursday, August 17th, to show her the rough drafts of our handouts. She liked them, and is very anxious to receive our final copies next week. She also wants them in .PDF format so they can make more copies in the future.
I enjoyed the article on the ethics of writing. Ethics is a very important part of professional writing. As we work on our third project, it will be very helpful to keep ethics in mind. Ethics should govern how we work as a group and what kind of paper we produce. By following ethical techniques, our teams should work efficiently and not have one person doing all the work. Also the team should be able to help out a struggling member. According to ethical writing techniques, our project should not cause problems between us and any organization.
After doing some preliminary research, I have found to organizations that will be good clients for our service learning project. The first would be to continue with our White Paper and work with Almost Home Humane Society. The main thing that I would like to work on them with is the adoption awareness program. This could be anywhere from making brochures and fliers to making better adoption kits. This will all depend on what the humane society is looking for.
Due to the presentations this week, the reading load was fairly light. The two assignments that we did have were about our upcoming project. The first was about the project and it's guidelines. The Client-based Service Learning Project will be a very interesting one. I look forward to working with a real world company and helping them with some sort of communication document. I'm especially excited about the potential of continuing with our White Papers.
Due to the day at the computer lad, there was not much reading this week. I did enjoy the Powerpoint presentation on good and bad presentations. I often times use animations and graphics in my presentations. I learned that if either of those are too many or cheesy my audience will pay less attention to me and will think less of my credibility. Using what I learned from the Powerpoint, I think that my group will produce a successful and professional presentation.
My group as been ahead of the deadlines be about a week. We started research before we had to, and by the end of last week, we each had completed at least 500 words for our assigned sections. Over the weekend, Tim inserted the text into our layout and completed most of the design elements. The rough draft of our paper was completed by Monday night. Because of this, we did not meet on Tuesday as usual, instead we proofread the paper and e-mailed Tim any of the minor corrections that were needed. I am very proud of the finished project and am looking forward to hearing what my peers think.
My group has been working really well together on the White Paper Project. We have decided that meeting every Tuesday in person is the best way to make sure that everyone stays on task. We also decided that any issues not resolved in the group meeting can more than likely be accomplished via e-mail and Google Docs. We have decided that the best solutions to the problem at Almost Home Humane Society are to apply for federal grants, raise adoption costs, and raise public awareness on the responsibility and cost of pet ownership.
So far, this class is going really well. The employment project turned out really well for me. I feel that I have finally perfected my resume and cover letter. As for the second project, I feel really good about it too. My group is working on a topic that we are all fairly passionate about. In general this class is going very smoothly and I can't wait to get more involved in the second project.
So the White paper project seemed pretty useless to me at first. But through the samples and PWO readings, I now see how important a white paper can be. They seem to be like a term paper on steroids. It will be fun to work together with a group to see how we'll all blend our styles together. This project should be a lot of fun.