Marcelo & Soo

This is our blog for the final project!

http://marcelsooproject.wordpress.com/

- Soo

Universal Digital Literacy

Found this link (Google: “FCC Broadband”) and thought I’d share it. The video could prove useful to our discussion today!

A little humor…

…as you gear up for your class presentations: Death by Powerpoint

Especially this one and this one.

Drawing Documentation

     I have no aptitude for drawing. I think the only person who enjoys my drawing is my two-year-old niece. Even though I am not good at it, sometimes I have to draw a picture for explaining something, or conversely, I have to refer a drawing for understanding something.

     Typical example of it is origami (http://www.origami.com/index.html). As you may have experienced before, when we have to describe in words how to make certain origami, we feel it is a really challenging task and usually end up with recognizing that diagrams (or photographs) are the most effective way to explain it. It is easily noticeable that we just cannot ignore the importance of drawing documentation as much as that of general documentation.

     Configuration drawings of drum sets are also good examples of drawing documentation. This site contains biography as well as cymbals configuration of Peter Erskine who is one of my favorite drummers.  (http://www.zildjian.com/EN-US/artists/artistDetail.ad2?artistID=1120&genreID=2,4) At the upper right side, you can find the drawing of his drum set, and if you click the cymbals, you can even listen to the sound of them! Both nominally and virtually, this is one result of the modern integrated documentation, and I suppose it could be a prototype for the future documentation.

S.Soo

More guidelines for your research paper

Hi everyone,

Here are the notes I put on the board in class today when we were discussing the outline for your research papers. To remind you, even if you’ve already started writing I encourage you to create an outline — it will help you structure your paper and stay on track when you’re writing.

Remember that there’s lots of great writing guidelines in the Badke book, especially chapters 2 and 10 (and the Appendix).

Please email me with any questions. And remember:

I’m looking forward to reading your papers next week!
Have a good weekend,
Prof Smale

Learning Center

The documentation process that I found was on the City Tech website.  I looked at the menu for the things that are offered at the Learning Center.  It occurred to me that many people are now using the City Tech Website to find out about the college so I wanted to see what was being offered at that site.  It has a few sub headings and begins with tutors.  Then it lists the subjects that the tutors can assist students in understanding better.  On the page was information about materials and all the video materials, filmstrips, printed materials like textbooks, and review sheets that were available.  I have seen the review sheets for the different levels of mathematics while being tutored there.  They have seminars for free to learn computing so that students can pass a computer literacy requirement. Finally, the document mentioned the helpful workshops that are given for the CUNY Assessment tests in math and writing.  There are online tutorials to practice for the CPE which we all have to qualify for after we attain 45 credits or more. It was easy to follow and I found it informative too. 

Evita

A few real-life examples of documentation

Erin’s post reminded me that I wanted to post about the three real-life examples of documentation that I showed you in class yesterday:

1. A short handout that’s available at the Reference Desk in the library that explains how to use the catalog to find textbooks on reserve in the library. We don’t have an online version of this handout so I can’t link to it here (but perhaps we should create a PDF and upload it to the library website).

2. A video tutorial that the librarians at City Tech created to demonstrate how to find journals by title using the tools on the library website. Often documentation like a manual, instructions, and guidelines is in text form (either in print or online), but sometimes documentation can be effectively presented using video and/or audio. This video is on the library website — you can watch it here.

3. The guidelines that my colleagues and I created to explain how to use Google Calendar to organize the library schedule, from Reference Desk shifts to library classes to meetings. I can’t link to this one either because it’s on our intranet: a private internal website just for library faculty and staff. Many organizations use intranets to store and maintain documentation of processes and practices of the organization, and you might need to use an intranet in your careers.

See you tomorrow,
Prof Smale

Selecon Pacific MSR

Backwards blog post: Here’s a link to the operation manual for the Selecon MSR light fixture that I showed in class. We were supposed to find our source, blog about it and then discuss it in class. I’m behind in my blogging (we all are) and this is my attempt to get back on track (let’s all do it!).

The operation manual is a technical guide to setting up, operating, repairing, accessorizing and maintaining this fixture. It is not a quick-start guide like the one Professor Smale demonstrated but more of a guide for people who sort of already know what they’re doing. Due to the intricacy of knowledge required for proper operation, this guide is appropriate. As I stated in class, I have done a sort of quick-start guide for units like this aimed at people with less technical knowledge but tailored to particular uses of the fixture they required.
We’ve spent a great deal of time researching this semester and now it’s time to focus on the latter half of the title of our course. The topic is process documentation. The purpose is to make us all more familiar with the term and what it means to document a process. Then, as per our group project, document the processes from a theme in our research paper in conjunction with a related theme in our partners paper. Now… I just need to write my paper…

Research paper guidelines

Hi everyone, here’s a photo of the brief sketch I made in class earlier this semester of the parts of your research paper (drawn while discussing Badke p. 19) so you don’t have to write it down.

–Prof Smale

Google; the american way

For me, results by Google are more useful. The page ranking system works just fine for me and is on par with searches done by keywords. When you get into the realm of searches by subject title, which have been put there by human hands, the results can become skewed or more refined. If internet users are to keep Google searches accurate, though, and link to the important pages which are relevant to the subject(s) at hand, then the page ranking system is in essence adding subject titles to the query. I understand, after doing research for this class, that there is information out there not accessible on Google because the people who own the information want money for it. However, when you need that particular information, you will most likely be a part of an institution that has access to it or be keen enough to know where to access it.

For American searching, I am proud of Google. I am not fond of their censorship in other parts of the world, but, in smart-business practice, I understand why they must do it. The recent activity between Google and the Chinese government is baffling. If the people of the world deem certain information valuable, and show as much by making it searchable, then I would think it is in everyone’s right to know be able to find it. Governments should not censor to keep information out of the hands of its people.

-erin