Technical Writing Textbook

When I taught technical writing for Westwood College, we used Technical Report Writing Today by Riordan (Houghton Mifflin), and others for earlier editions. I liked the book, but when I needed to select a book for my class at Red Rocks, I picked Technical Communication (8th ed.) by Mike Markel (Bedford/St. Martin's). I'm beginning to regret that decision.

First, I don't care for Markel's definition of technical communication as "workplace communication" There's a lot more to it than that.

Second, when he presents the writing process, he treats technical documents the same as any writing assignment the students would do for a class. He leaves out considerations of budget, deadlines, publication, distribution, etc.

I didn't care too much for Riordan's definition either, but he did a good job of covering the writing process as it occurs in the workplace.

In Riordan's last edition (9th), the page layout was changed so there are wide outside margins. I didn't care for that or the effort to expand the textbook to cover technical "communication" instead of technical writing despite the title. I also don't agree with his assertion in the first chapter (an addition to the latest edition) that "technical writing is global." I also wish he had a chapter on fliers, brochures, and similar documents.

However, I may go back to his book the next time I teach the class.

Web 2.0 and Teaching Technical Writing

I think I've finally figured out how to incorporate some of the new internet technology (web 2.0) into my technical writing class. I want the students to write formal reports, and I've decided to have them collaborate on that assignment. I believe what I'll do is assign each group one of the following to research and report on:

• blogs
• wikis
• RSS feeds
• podcasting
• free and open-source software

In their reports, they would include how this particular type of communication or technology is or can be used in business, as well as how to find and use it.

Web 2.0

I think I first read a reference to web 2.0 in one of the blogs I subscribed to in Bloglines. According to the article on "Web 2.0" in Wikipedia, the phrase web 2.0, which was "coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a perceived or proposed second generation of Internet-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users."

About a month ago in a blog entry on O'Reilly Radar, Tim O'Reilly offered a definition of web 2.0:

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (This is what I've elsewhere called "harnessing collective intelligence.")

In an article posted in September of 2005, "What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software," O'Reilly tried to explain what is meant by web 2.0. In this article, he explored seven principles:

1. The Web As Platform
2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence
3. Data is the Next Intel Inside
4. End of the Software Release Cycle
5. Lightweight Programming Models
6. Software Above the Level of a Single Device
7. Rich User Experiences

I'm still not sure I understand all of the technical terminology, but I'm interested in learning more. The issue of Intercom I received last week is about web 2.0 and writing.

Apparently, there's also web 3.0.

Using Blogs in Technical Writing Classes

In the September/October issue of Intercom (the STC magazine), there was an article by Tom H. Johnson titled "Corporate Blogging and the Technical Writier." I'm going to be teaching a technical writing class this coming semester at Red Rocks Community College, and reading the article got me thinking about how to use blogs in my class. I don't think I want to go so far yet as to have each student create and maintain a blog for the semester, but I'm considering including a group project where students study how blogs are used.

The article referred to the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki, which is a directory of Fortune 500 companies that have blogs. This might be a good starting point, especially since it includes a list of sample blogs from the companies.

I also read the first couple of chapters of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers before I had to return it to the library. I've reserved it again because I think it might be useful in planning this assignment.

At the end of the article, Johnson referred to a couple of studies that I want to look at:

• "Corporate Blogging: Is It Worth the Hype?"
• "Blogging: Bubble Or Big Deal?"

I've included them in my bookmarks at del.icio.us.

Purpose of This Blog

After Richardson's book, I read Classroom Blogging: A Teacher's Guide to the Blogosphere by David F. Warlick. I didn't find it as useful, but it also helped inspire me to start this blog. I'm planning to use it to keep a record of my reading and ideas relating to my teaching, mostly writing but also some math.

More recently I read Wikis: Tools for Information Work And Collaboration by Jane Klobas and others. It's a great reference to have on hand; unfortunately, it costs almost $60, so I had to settle for checking it out of the library, though I would like to own a copy. The authors created a wiki to accompany the book. It includes an overview of the book and a page for each chapter. I just wish it provided more information, especially the links in the book.

Inspiration for Teaching and Blogging

In November I read Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson. At the time I was thinking about changing careers, but this book inspired me to continue teaching. In the book, Richardson covers

• the read/write web
• weblogs
• wikis
• RSS
• social bookmarking
• images online
• podcasting and screencasting

What got me most excited was reading about blogs, wikis (which I'd only learned of a few weeks earlier), and RSS feeds and the ideas I had for using them in my classes, particularly the research writing classes (particularly ENG 122 at Red Rocks) that I frequently teach.

Unfortunately, I'm not scheduled to teach ENG 122 this coming semester, but as soon as I do again, I want to use what I learned from Richardson by having the students create and maintain their own blogs to record their research and establish an account where they can track RSS feeds from sites relating to their topics. I'm also thinking about creating a class wiki about research, from generating research questions to documentation styles but focusing on reviews of search engines, metacrawlers, directories, and other internet research tools. When I taught ENG 122 last year, I had the students demonstrate search engines and metacrawlers in class. I want to expand that assignment in the future to include, at least, directories, and to have the students in groups develop criteria for evaluating research tools, select the best examples, demonstrate the ones selected, and record their decisions and reviews in the wiki.

I also intend to establish a blog or blogs for the on-campus classes (as opposed to online and blended/hybrid) I teach to communicate with students. There are a couple of full-time faculty members at Red Rocks who have their ENG 121 (essay writing) students create blogs, but I'm not ready to go that far with my classes this semester: ENG 090 (developmental essay writing), ENG 121, and ENG 131 (technical writing). I do think it would be appropriate to do something with blogs and wikis in my technical writing class; I just haven't figured out what.

As a result of reading Richardson's book, I established an account with Bloglines to keep track of blogs related to my work. I also created an account with Furl, but I decided to switch to del.icio.us and will be closing out the Furl account. I used to have a lot of bookmarks for my classes (primarily research related) in an account with MyBookmarks, but when I didn't use it for a few months, it was closed, and I lost all the links I'd collected. At least with del.icio.us, I can backup my bookmarks. I think the tags are interesting, but I'd really prefer a more hierarchical method of organization: folders within folders.