Again, this is where rhetoric/dialectic process comes into play. Everyone in the same team should be able to go back and forth with their ideas and inputs in order to generate a consensus that allows the tech to reach a wide variety of audiences. What good does an amazingly written instruction manual do if nobody is actually reading it and putting it to use?

One main purpose of tech writing is using multimodal communication in order to reach a variety of potential audiences. This can be done using a dialectic process to make information more accessible without oversimplifying it. Perhaps stick to one genre in order to figure out what will work and then by testing and prototyping the tech in multiple scenarios, you can infer what audiences it reaches.

When I am searching for potential internships and job openings, one of the first requirements is "must have effective writing skills." A lot of students who chose a technical career have a difficult time honing their writing skills because they were taught to memorize information and simply regurgitate it on an exam. I understand employers are looking for candidates with a variety of technical skill sets, but let's not underestimate the value of a great writer.

I can relate to this because everyone's writing styles are different and not everyone on your team has the same prose and you do. This is where the dialectic/dialogic process comes into play where you go back and forth with your teammates, listening to every angle, in order to generate a consensus. Using persuasion to figure out which of the potential "solutions" or "resolutions" are the best and why? This can be difficult when timing constraints and issues are taken into consideration. But the goal in the end is to reach multiple potential audiences without oversimplifying the information.

I can relate this to the Schryer article "Records as Genre". Writing involves unique talent and creativity that does not always communicate information the most productive way possible. Writers can get caught up in crafting the perfect writing that they forget that it's meant to be utilitarian instead. This is a great example of genre's purpose in tech writing. By identifying what type of document it is (memo, essay, instructions manual, etc.), you are able to follow a set of appropriate guidelines and conventions. Following a set of guidelines or conventions when writing allows for your readers to easily identify what type of document it is and it's purpose is no longer hidden behind fancy prose.

Tech writing has evolved immensely from generic instruction manuals to now utilizing interdisciplinary skills. It's not just about knowing how to read and write sophisticatedly or eloquently, but you also have to tune and hone your CIS skills as well. Relating this to rhetoric, the key to success here is learning all the sides to tech writing and keeping up to date with all the latest tools in tech in order to be simply good at it.

The medium is the avenue through which the modes flow through. I agree with this statement because we tend to look at technology for its face value but we never go deeper to learn about its components/tools. For example, we know how to use an iPhone but do we know much about iOS? Relating this to our discussion of rhetoric/dialetic process, it is important to know every component, tool, or side used to make up a technology in order to successfully use to its full potential.

I understand that technology is constantly developing and its difficult for teachers to keep up to date with the latest tools or softwares and become an enough of an expert themselves in order to accurately teach a class on it. But if jobs are demanding for college graduates to know how to use these tools in order to get the desired job position, than perhaps a class that particularly keeps up to date with tools and technology should be offered. The whole point of college and investing $1000's of dollars on education is to be well taught and prepared in the career that you have chosen.

A way to see the difference between tools and technology is that tools such as website developing softwares (including Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop) are used to put together the technology a.k.a. the website.

Tech writing has converted into multimodal technical communication. Modes of writing include: linguistic, gestural, visual, spatial, and aural. Digital media is all of these things at once!

As we have discussed in class, tech writing has definitely developed over the past couple of decades and is no longer what it used to be. What once was a field limited to writing instructions and manuscripts has now gone digital and has converted into multimodal communication. Through this, information has been made more user-friendly and accessible to many audiences. Tech writing is certainly no longer limited to just writing itself.