Advice for Future Students

Dear Future Students:

Overall I feel that I accomplished the tasks at hand in Mrs. Rogers' class. If I have any advice for you it would be to make sure you pick a good group for your client based project. My group was able to work very well together, but it could have been an awful time had we not picked people that we could get along with as well as come up be able to come up with a good proposal. Everyone has had that awful group experience, and you defiantly don't want that to happen in this class. You work with your group a lot, therefore you must have similar schedules. It is also important to choose a diverse group of people with different backgrounds. This will help when creating your proposal. By having a diverse group of people you can come up with many different ideas in the creation process.
Some other advice would be to take the resume writing seriously. This is something that you can and will use in your future, so take advantage of Mrs. Rogers being there to help you out. If done well it can get you your dream job, but if not done well can harm you. The interview is also very helpful. If you pick a job/graduate school program that you are seriously interested in, the process will begin to prepare you. Overall, have a good time in the class and learn all you can about business writing. It is very important and can make or break you in the future.

Have a good year,
Johnsie

Challenger Explosion

For our ethical research Amber Misenheimer and I chose to do the Challenger Explosion in 1986. I hadn't ever really learned much about the explosion other than what my parents had told me. I knew it was a big deal though, and it really hit home with my mother since she was a school teacher as well. Through researching and looking further into the explosion I learned more about what had actually happened. There was an issue with the O-rings that seal main joints of the rocket booster together. Right when the rocket was beginning to launch black puffs of smoke were seen showing that something was obviously wrong. The ethical lapse comes into play when before the flight a few of the engineers were saying that something was wrong with the O-rings and that the launch should go on. With the flight having been delayed multiple times already the managers weren't having this argument. It was also showed that some of the engineers reported the problem with the O-rings but that they didn't report it in a way that others could take as being as serious as it really was. One paper stated that normally the managers say that the flight will not go on unless they can prove that everything is alright but that in this case the managers said that the flight was going unless they could prove ultimately that something was completely wrong.

This is the basis of what we have found and we will report on the rest of it to our class tomorrow.

Ethical Lapses

This article was very interesting to me. I didn't realize that so many people have encountered ethical lapses. The percentage of people encountering these lapses is much higher than I would have thought. It is strange that only 36% of the people that have encountered the lapses have been distracted by them. In one sense getting distracted from regular business routine is bad because the company will lose productivity but in another sense not getting distracted is bad. By not getting distracted by an ethical lapse people are understanding that they are occurring but not worrying about them. Is this then an ethical lapse on their part for not telling anyone? The reasons cited for why some ethical lapses aren't reported such as lack of comfort or confidence are reasonable but if the lapse that is occurring is large enough new ways should be created for people to have the confidence to stand up for what is right. It could be possible for companies to have people who work on pointing out ethical lapses in the workplace for a job. This is important because if one part of the business is going through an ethical lapse, all parts of the business will be affected in some way at some point.

Writing on the Web

Writing on the Web is different than writing on paper in many ways. First off, people read slower when they are reading text from the Web as well as scan the writing instead of reading it word for word. Since most people scan writing it is important to put the most important information first which is not always true for writing on paper. It is also important to word writing on the Web around directional clues and instead use links to the information you are talking about. Writing on the Web is the same as writing on paper when it comes to tone. Neither should be biased or informal if writing for a business.Graphics make or break writing on the Web where as they don't matter quite as much when writing on paper. They help to make the site attractive and should be used to help the reader get around the site. When writing on the Web you must use certain strategies to ensure access to people with disabilities. Both types of writing also make use of headings and bulleted lists to break up writing and make it easier to scan. Also it is important in both types to consider international users and not use language that they will not understand. You must also document sources when writing on the Web as well as on paper.

The most important things to remember when transforming a document formerly read on paper to the Web are that you should retain the original sequence of page layout. It is also helpful to convert the documents to PDF files, which show the pages on the Web just how they were on paper. You should also make sure the document is in compliance with your publishing guidelines, obtain permission to put the document on the Web if it has images that are copyrighted, contact the site Web master about what format it should be submitted and about how to maximize loading speed of graphics, as well as review the document before it is posted to a public site to make sure that it looks how you intended it to look.