Saturday, January 20, 2007
Chapter One Recap by Ryan and Daryl
Over the past half a decade many advancements in the field of technical communications have been made. Technical communications have been becoming more involved in our society, especially in the modern day workplace regarding genre, communities, technology, and ethics. Each of these plays a major part in how businesses use technical communication. For example, when you are trying to push your idea onto someone, whether it is a co-worker or a customer, you are going to have to adjust your approach based on how you think they will react. This is changing the genre of your communication. In addition to this the chapter mentions how communities, technology, and ethics effect the workplace viewed through a technical communications standpoint. The chapter also discusses how advances in communication in the workplace have made more productive and higher quality of work. This is by knowing how to communicate and get the best out of workers. Another part of technical communications are the constraints. They must be dealt with in order to complete your task. Time constraints limit the amount of time that you will have to finish your document. The subject, audience and type of presentation are also constraints. You will need to adjust your approach to satisfy your audience and presentation style. Whether you work independently or in a group affects your approach. As an independent you are required to do all of the work for the project which can take more time. Group work can take less time but, may be more difficult. The collection of data and the use of technology may also be a constraint because the information and technology may not be readily available. Noise or interference comes in a variety of forms and is a constraint in every environment. There are many constraints that need to be dealt with in order to make your technical documents successful.
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22 comments:
When you really think about technilogical communication and it's advancements if truely is mind boggling. You'll notice that the younger a person is the more likly that person is able operate computers and other communication devices. Less than a fifty years ago TVs were the newest invention that changed the world as we knew it before and now, I beleive, the world has been changed again by the internet and our abbility to communicate with anyone when ever we want to. We do however need to know when to keep it professional. With sites like facebook and my space it is easy to consider technical communication as socializing. It can be that but it must not be forgotten that when in a professional setting, even though email is fast and easy, we must remain professional, in order to elimanate as much mis-comunication as posible.
Technology over the years, I do agree, has advanced peoples abilities to communicate easier and better. With the new technology, as was stated in chapter one, we can produce higher quality work in less amounts of time. Although there may be constraints that affect workplace communication, we do have to admit that the new technology over the past has made communication much more affective for companies. Take for example what Samantha had mentioned about facebook and myspace. Although a lot of people may use facebook and myspace as entertainment purposes, it can also be used on a professional level as well. Many of us probably use it to either get a hold of classmates for school purposes, or may even use it to contact coworkers on a professional level.
Technical communication has now become a very major and effective field. And it’s essentiality in workplace has reached heights. It has major part in both social and business world. I agree how above posted response mentions about the use of technical communication in a way of presentation and approach, acting for a mass, convincing audience. How the approach differs while working individually or with a group is also one of the constraints of technical communication. I have some experience working in a group and even individually and I think working in a group is difficult but it is the best way to produce the best outcome. I worked in a group project and we had lot of problems because some of us didn’t work as everybody agreed, some didn’t follow the deadlines but when all of us committed, we had a very successful project result.
In my opinion that was a good analogy of the first chapter. They outlined the key points in the chapter without making it long. Technical communications is a key to any diverse size of company. I strongly agree with the statement, “how we have used technology to advance are technical communications.” It also helps improve the quality of work in any corporation. It is vital for a large corporation to have technical documents, oral presentations, and visuals in order to perceive important information. Lastly, I think that time constraints are key to being prepared. Without these key communication skills, companies today would be scarce and unsuccessful.
There was a stat in the first part of the chapter that found 86 percent of small business owners believed that oral communication skills were important. Why isn't that number 100 percent? Without effective communication skills work cannot be done efficiently. Innovative ideas may not be properly introduced either. I cannot think of one job I have done in my life where communication was not important. Nowadays with advancements in technology, communication has become even more convenient. When I was a UPS driver I used to get text messages on my handheld computer notifying me of delivery updates for customers. Without advancements like that someone would had to of found me on the road to tell me the news. Technical communication is a recent phenomenon and should be interesting to study as the semester goes on.
It is amazing how much our society has become technology-based and how much our generation has become reliant on the technology. Problems arise, however, when we don't use technology correctly or rely too much on technology when we communicate with others. There have been complaints about how emails can be misleading and misinterpreted, which is especially serious in business. People don't always understand that emails should be stated even more clearly than phone calls and voice messages because a lot of the meaning of a message is expressed through body language and voice inflection, and these can't be expressed by email. There are also complaints that people think that if they use powerpoint presentations they don't have to make clear verbal presentations. Technology doesn't communicate, people do.
In high school we spent two weeks on a project dealing with how people react under pressure, in a quiet setting, in a loud busy setting and with people of different age groups. Also in sociology we discussed how peer pressure has an impact on how people react and perfrom in groups. I really enjoyed experiencing this first hand. It opened up my view on how I study and how I react in group projects. We found and compared the results with people.
I now know to do my homework in a quiet area by myself with no distractions. Which I knew before but the stats really showed and improvement.
In my last job I did and saw this. I worked in the engineering department of a local manufacturing plant. The engineers and I would communicate different when we were out on the floor with the workers, talking with the other engineers, or talking to a customer. Even talking to the customers the communication would change drastically. If the customer was a still looking at us to do the job we would act different then if it was a long time customer coming back for another product or to get questions answered. Communication was also different using e-mail. It differed from co-workers, customers, or venders.
Catering documents to your intended audience is important in the workplace. I was in a meeting recently going over sales for the prior year for the company. The person giving the meeting had the sales worksheet which he and the accountants who made it understood well. However, the rest of us in the meeting were not familiar with it. This caused us to have to take time out from the meeting to go over how to actually read the document. I have also read documents that were outlined well for the audience intended and that made things go much smoother. Also, communication I’ve noticed varies greatly depending on who you’re addressing. People within the business community who know the lingo are spoken to differently than a customer for example.
I can see how technical communication in the workplace has its advantages and disadvantages. Since society has become such a technological driven world, one will notice that there is much less oral communication, which I think is a major setback. Whether communicationg through email, instant messanger, or facebook, this type of communication can sometimes send the wrong impression to co-workers. Despite this drawback, I do agree that technical communication can increase productivity in the workplace, and communicating through email is both efficient and effective is used properly and on a professional level.
Technical communication has made all of our lives much easier. At the same time it has become more complicated when we are forced to keep in mind things like genre, the audience, and other constraints mentioned in the chapter. It is also essential to keep up to date on modern technology. It is very important to go to college now days because it is nearly impossible to get anywhere with out a degree, plus this is where you learn to use the technology that is available to us. As was stated earlier, I believe it is important to remember that we must communicate our information and not become to reliant on computers because they do fail sometimes.
Technical writing has become very important in the work place these days. Due to the new technology that has increased our abilities to communicate one an other faster and over larger distances in many ways. Communication is key when it comes to running any type of business. Without proper communication, even the simplest tasks can become a lot more difficult to complete than normal. Technical communication has helped us advance in being more effective with being more precise in our regular work. Such as e-mail based communication, this is very important that very clear like if someone where talking to you in person.
not only has technology become more popular in the work place, but also in social aspects. I think that this is a great advancement for our society. Not only does it give you a broader audience to communicate with, but it is also much quicker, than say a letter being mailed. I look back five years ago in high school, at that point I hardly knew how to search the web, let alone send and recieve e-mails. I never saw a good reason to learn more about the technology. However, when i began college it became a daily tool. I agree that the outcome of a project varies, depending on if it is individual or a group project. When working alone it does take more time but you do not have to check in with other people or have difficulty with agreement on the material. On the other hand, working with a group is faster there can be problems when not everyone puts forth effort. i think group work is better because you have several different ideas to make an original project. Overall, technical communication is a growing tool for communication because it allows people to be contacted quickly and efficiently around the world.
Technical communication has been around since the need for people to communicate with each other. This is because certain tasks and fields of knowledge incorporate technical communication more so than others, merely by their complexity. Today’s world requires a quick and efficient work place for companies to thrive and compete. People have incorporated new technologies such as email and the internet to communicate faster with each other. Employees who cannot communicate effectively in the required format are usually replaced by people who can. This is why technical communication is so important because it is essential in almost all business. In my experience of various jobs that I have had, I have been required to know various term that allowed me to perform specific tasks. This is much more efficient than having to be shown what to do every time a certain problem or situation arises.
From my experience at McMurray Hatchery technical communication is very important to business. Nearly all of the orders placed are either over the internet or sometimes phone. Without the internet orders would take longer to place and would require more employees to take phone orders. Once an order was placed all the information would be sent into the computer system and after the order was filled there would be a shipping label printed for it. All of the shipping information would then be available to the US postal service electronically. Without this technology the ordering and shipping process would take much longer.
I think that everyone in this class, as well as this University can rely to this chapter. We, as college students, are forced to use technical communication to communicate with others. We use technology everyday to email other members of groups, teachers with questions, or even take exams online. I have a feeling this class will be very important to me as a student, as well as a future employee, because it will be absolutely essential to have a good grasp on how to technically communicate with others. Another important thing that will be learned in this class, as the chapter states, is how to deal with constraints and noise. There will always be times when the communication tools that are available to you will not always work properly. It will be very important to learn how to deal with these constraints.
Billy Gerber
There has been several ways that technology has reared it’s head in the work place, often times that is the place where we first begin to experiment with different types of technology. My dad owns his own business and has ever since I can remember, I have personally watched the changes and improvements that have happened in the way he runs the business because of developing technology. When he first started out there was minimal computer work done, all the blue prints were done on paper along with other plans and drawings, now because of technology everything is computerized down to which measurements go where and so on. My dad has had problems with the use of new technology in his business and will continue to because machines aren’t perfect, and most likely cannot be everything you want them to be.
Technical communication has been an essential part into getting data and information across to people more quickly and effectively in workplaces and schools. Although there are those disadvantages with the constraints we always have to be careful with. I agree that the way you adjust your approach to addressing your type of audience in a meeting or presentation is very vital. Often time’s technical communicators would have to work together as a team and put their ideas together for the workplaces. If each individual or audience perceived things differently then you, more then likely they wouldn’t be able to use the information to perform an action or make a decision based on its content. Not only you are dealing with this constraint but it also affects the meeting or presentation to be less efficient in lack of time.
My boss is about 35 and he never attended college. He has learned to do things without technology growing up. Now that he has this job there are a lot of things that he has to learn because of the advancement of technology. He thinks that these procedures are very slow, but that is because he is learning it for the first time and his other way is faster to him for now. There are a lot of things that I am teaching to use, simple things even such as email.
It is funny that technical communication within the workplace was this week’s topic because just the other day, a co-worker was complaining to me about all of the poorly written work related e-mails she receives. I think that because e-mail, as a form of occupational communication, has become so more common and so frequent, people forget that it still deserves the same time and effort as face to face communication. Yes, e-mail is quick and easy but sending out a sloppy note to co-workers, to me, says that they lack pride in their work, as well as basic technical communication skills. Technology is no excuse for laziness.
January 21, 2007 7:32 PM
It is funny that technical communication within the workplace was this week’s topic because just the other day, a co-worker was complaining to me about all of the poorly written work related e-mails she receives. I think that because e-mail, as a form of occupational communication, has become so more common and so frequent, people forget that it still deserves the same time and effort as face to face communication. Yes, e-mail is quick and easy but sending out a sloppy note to co-workers, to me, says that they lack pride in their work, as well as basic technical communication skills. Technology is no excuse for laziness.
January 21, 2007 7:32 PM
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