mervin's blog

Our white paper is now completed and submitted. After receiving the peer reviews we all passed the paper around and made changes to it, trying to cover all the points that were made in the reviews. I think our paper turned out better and looked more professional at the end. Google Docs was very useful for us to be able to edit the paper online and add content to it without having to email the group members a new copy each time a change was made. I don't think communication was much of an issue with this project.

Email has ended out being the best way of communication for our group so far. I've think we've all figured out the basics of white papers now. We've worked out sections of the paper for each person to write over the weekend. We are going to try and find a time before Monday night that we can all meet on AIM and work together to write the executive summary.

Before I started this course I had never heard of a white paper. After reading the articles and sample papers I have a better understanding of what a white paper is and what it is used for. White papers are usually written by a company or organization and present information on a particular subject. They should present the information in an unbiased tone and without extra "fluff".

Our group has made the initial contact with each other and we have all posted to group Wiki. I think email is going to be the best way of communication for us since we all get online at different times of the day. We've read through the project description and now we need to decide on a topic for our paper. Some of us are still a bit confused about this project and what exactly a white paper is, and by reading some of the other project blogs so far it seems that a few other people are as well.

This is my very first time writing a resume and cover letter, so I am sure there is a lot of room for improvement!

The articles from the Purdue OWL website were very informative about the content and formatting of cover letters. The small sections make it easy to look something up for a quick reference, such as how to format the heading and paragraphs, without having to dig through a long article. I think the third article was most helpful in terms of specific information and what to include in the body paragraphs. It also had a lot of examples, which are more helpful to me than just descriptions of what should be included.

Attached is my T-letter for Project 2. I had never heard of a T-letter before (another new thing I am learning in this class!) so I don't know exactly how much freedom there is in creating them or how much detail should be included. The job I chose was a Field Service Technician for LIFE Employment in Lafayette. The listed requirements were somewhat vague.

The first article ("Skeptical Resume Reader") had examples of good and bad objective statements, which was particularly helpful to me. It seems there is a fine line between not emphasizing your talents enough and being too verbose about them. I understand the importance of saying facts and numbers. "Increased revenue by 150% in three months" is more informative than simply saying "contributed to growth of profits" or something like that.

For the usability test I had my friend read the instructions that I have created so far for my DVD player. She has never used it before, though she does have experience setting up her family's DVD players. From the instructions she was able to connect the player to the TV using the included cables, though she ran into a bit of trouble figuring out which jacks to use on our surround sound system. This was something that I had not accounted for in the instructions, since there is a difference between simply connecting the player to a TV or trying to route it through a separate machine.

Chapters 24 and 25 discussed visual content and how to use it appropriately. I think visual content, such as photos, illustrations, and graphs, are very important and can be used to catch someone's attention or add emphasis to a part of the written document or presentation. They definitely need to be used responsibly, though. Images can be more distracting than helpful when they have no relationship to the rest of the content. I believe the book mentioned using clipart in several sections. I actually do not like clipart.