RachelNa's blog

This week, the final draft of the white paper was written. Parts had been divided up before, and each member wrote their respective section over the weekend. The parts were all put together on Monday and then submitted for review. During the week, we each took turns reading through, and reviewing the white paper, and editing according to the comments posted on this site. Once each of us read through it, we posted it on our groups Google Docs site so the next person could review it.

Now, all the reviews are done, and the white paper has been submitted for a grade.

Our group has been communicating through email, and we have exchanged aim screen names. So far, the majority of the work we have been doing toward the project has been research. We have divided up the research into four categories so that we can each focus our efforts, and hopefully find more useful information. We each plan on writing about these sections within the white paper.

We are trying to find a time that all group members can meet online so that we can discuss what needs to be done, and how to coordinate what we are writing, and fit it all together.

For a while now, I have still been a little unclear as to how exactly a white paper is supposed to be written. After reading these sample white papers, I have a much better idea of what they should look like, and the type of information that should be included. From this, I have come up with a list of some important things to note when writing a white paper.

So far, not much has been completed on this project except for reading the project description and the information in the book about white papers. As of right now, our group is exchanging information and ideas on the best way to divide up and complete this project. We plan on doing our own broad research over the various business applications of GoogleDocs initially, just to get some background information. Once we feel comfortable with what information we want to cover, we will divide up the research into for areas that make sense, and conduct more thorough research.

Attached are my resume and cover letter. Please read through them and give me advice. I had one thing I was not quite sure about. Currently, I am interning for Xerox. I wasn't sure if I should include that, or where I should, because I have not yet completed my internship, and have not yet made any big accomplishments. Once this summer is over, I will have no trouble adding my internship experiences. But since it is only half over, I'm not sure what's appropriate.

For this week’s reading response, I found a couple example cover letters online, and I read through them. They are located at:

http://www.career.vt.edu/JOBSEARC/coversamples.htm
http://www.csuchico.edu/plc/coverltr-ex.html

I have chosen to apply for a position with Field Diagnostics in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania. I found this position posted on Purdue's CCO website, because this is the job search site that I am most familiar with. Attached is my T-letter.

The information and advice included in the posted readings was insightful and very helpful. So much of this information has been hammered into my brain in the past, but I did take from it some new understanding that I never had before. Employers are reading the resume for them, not me. They are looking for key words that will best reflect what I can contribute to the company, not what the company can do for me. The people who review these resumes often have huge piles of them, and so many other worthy candidates to choose from. They have to find some easy way to sort through them.

I chose to use my sister in law, Kara, as a guinea pig for my pottery instructions. Kara had never done pottery before, so I figured she was the perfect candidate. In the instructions, I wrote about how to form a simple vase using a coil technique (which is basically just rolling several coils of clay, and then forming spirals to build a structure layer by layer). Overall, I am very pleased with how she went through the instructions. She might have skimmed a few sections, but she mostly read through them step by step and followed along easily.

To experience some usability testing for myself, I decided to read through the instructions on the alarm clock that I just bought a few weeks ago. It’s a very simple clock, so the instructions definitely were not all that necessary for me to figure out how it works. But, after reading through them, I found that these particular instructions were very user friendly and easy to follow. Each particular topic (like setting the alarm or using the radio) was very easy to locate, and very clearly explained. There were even several diagrams to help me find the correct buttons.