Tag: instructional design and technology

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Happy Thanksgiving 2012!

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

Today, in the United States, it’s a holiday. Thanksgiving is a day that we Americans celebrate to remember the sacrifices that the first English pilgrims made after their first year of survival in the New World. The celebratory tradition started with those pilgrims sharing the bounty of the harvest they reaped with the Native Americans who lived in the area and taught them some of the survival skills, and gave thanks for everything that came their way. Many generations later, we Americans, use this day to remember and give thanks for what we have as Americans. We celebrate with family, friends, and a huge feast.

OK, so that’s the general idea of the holiday–or at least that’s what it’s supposed to be. The legend or fairytale has been marred over the years with the realities of those who were cast out due to religious oppression in their own country coming to this one and taking horrible advantage of the native people, eventually driving them out over time and making the Native American nation into a minority that is still, to this day, trying to culturally and literally survive. America, for all the pretty stories of pioneering, didn’t always get there in a nice and clean way with hard work. There are some ugly stories too. I just wanted to put that out there, just in case anyone thought that I was unaware of any atrocities in our nation’s history and had notions of any overly lofty American ideals.

But for a moment, let’s just run with those lofty ideals for a moment, and get back to the core idea of how Americans celebrate it now–Americans of all races, religions, cultures, ethnicities and creeds celebrate. Thanksgiving is a nice concept of a holiday, no matter how one celebrates it. I’m sure there are other holidays in other cultures that have something like it, where it’s just a day to celebrate family, friends and whatever good fortune has come by in the past year. There’s been a lot of bad things that have happened over the centuries, and even more recently. Heightened wars in the Middle East, poverty and starvation in different parts of the world, and even closer to home, the devastation of what Hurricane Sandy did to my home state and area. This is a day that I’m thankful that the worst thing that happened during Hurricane Sandy was that a tree fell on our house and ruined part of the roof, and that I didn’t lose my home or more importantly, my family.

It’s a time to realize that while no life is perfect, and all people have their own issues, that some good things can come out of life, and to be grateful for those good things, whether they are big or small.

For me, it’s been a very interesting year. While I’m sure I’ll say more as the year draws to a close, I’ll just summarize the good things I’m thankful for this year, as much of it does deal with my entry into the technical communications world. I’m thankful that there was a program at NJIT in technical communications, and that I could graduate with my Master’s degree in the topic this year. I’m thankful for the professors and students in my program who helped me get out more into the social media world to make my voice heard, and continue to support my endeavors post-graduation. I’m thankful to have met so many people through social media–Twitter, this blog, Facebook, etc.–who are professionals in the technical communications world who have mentored me as well as become my friends. I’m thankful for the opportunities I’ve had through these associations, such as the chance to go to Adobe Day, have my webinar, do the NJIT promotional video, get my teaching job or meet other professionals in person. I have learned so much, and continue to learn so much from all of them. But most of all, I’m grateful for my husband and son, for without them, none of this would be possible. Allowing me to be me, allowing me to continue to learn and grow, and supporting me every step of the way is so important to me. Without those two wacky guys of mine, I would not be in the technical communications field, and would not be continuing to pursue a technical communications career.

So, whether you are in the United States partaking in a big holiday, or it’s just another Thursday or Friday (other places, it’s Friday already from the time I’m writing this!), take a moment and remember what it is that you are thankful for, even if it’s just being glad the be able to pursue a technical communications career that is growing and expanding each day, and that you are part of the great changes that are happening in this world–one little bit at a time.

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Being a specialist or a generalist? Which is better for a technical communicator?

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

I feel like I’ve stepped into quite the conundrum by entering the technical communications field. As I continue to search for full-time work, a problem that I seem to find almost everywhere I go is that technical writing jobs in my area seem to require that one be a specialist in their field, or do very, VERY specific types of work. Both before and after my technical communications studies, I had always been taught that with few career exceptions, being a generalist was more often a desired skill set, simply because I couldn’t get stuck in one specific direction and find little to no work. Having a broad range of skills and abilities made one more marketable, flexible, and thus desirable as an employee. I know the last place that I consulted for full-time appreciated that generalist ability of mine, because I ended up being the go-to person for web editing, web design, and general graphics design. There were those who had the title of “web publisher” but didn’t even know basic HTML, and I actually did.

However, I’m finding that as much as I did my best in both my career and my graduate studies to study a broad range of subjects, including social media, e-learning design, content management strategy, UI strategy, and technical writing and editing, to name a few, I end up as a Jack of all trades, but master of none. However, it seems that because I don’t have specifically five years of medical or proposal writing background in XYZ software, I’m useless. I was recently criticized for having an “unfocused” resume because it was so broad. When asked what specialization I wanted to follow, I listed all the subjects I mentioned above and then some others. I feel I have the skills to start out in any of those fields if someone gave me a break to go in any of those specific directions.

One of the things that stuck out in my mind from Adobe Day at Lavacon last month was commentary by the panel at the end of the morning, in which the group said that one of the issues right now in tech comm is that there are too many tech comm specialists instead of tech comm generalists. When I heard that, it was music to my ears, and I felt vindicated for taking the approach I had with my career! I’ve already taken steps–specifically getting a Master’s degree in Professional and Technical Communication–to provide myself with an education on understanding all the available possibilities in the technical communications field, and be able to adapt to it. However, one of the other challenges listed in the panel talk was the general resistance to progressive change. I fear that the resistance to change is far more widespread than anticipated, based on my own experiences. Every job listing and every recruiter I talk to seems to want to pigeonhole me into one specialty, and I don’t want to do that. The reason I went to graduate school was to allow me to gain opportunities beyond my knowledge of content management alone, and allow me to flex my editing, writing, design and e-learning muscles some more.

Perhaps because I’m a “newbie,” I don’t understand this strict adherence to being a specialist in only one kind of tech comm. Becoming a specialist is a double-edged sword. On one side, being able to work in a niche field makes your skills more desirable for that niche. However, on the other side, it limits the kind of work one can do if there are layoffs or one finds him/herself out of work.

Since I’ve been looking for full-time work for almost a year now, I talked to my husband recently about this idea, and questioned whether I should commit more to one particular area of technical communication than another. While I’ve done a lot of content management work, I find it constraining when I want to be able to edit what I see as just plain BAD writing, and I feel limited to not flex my brain muscles on all the things I’ve learned in grad school in the last two years. I’ve tried to immerse myself in the tech comm world and the e-learning world to varying degrees, but again, I find myself as a generalist since I don’t have any job to help me hone my professional focus as of yet. Even so, I wondered if I should just resign myself, and just try to figure out what specialty I should focus on, perhaps in the hopes of increasing my job prospects. After voicing this concern, my husband vehemently disagreed, feeling that it was better just to continue to be able to look at a little bit of everything and do a little bit of everything, as it broadened prospects by giving me multiple directions to follow.

It makes me wonder how other graduates–whether they are from undergraduate or graduate school–find a job at all. How is someone supposed to be able to do a technical communications job with little to no experience? How the heck can they become specialists without first being generalists given a direction from their first jobs? I know I have the flexibility and know-how to go into many jobs, but it’s autobots that read my resume instead of people more often than not, and autobots don’t understand the value of what I can do and my ability to learn on the spot. I’m sure I’m not the only one in this rut, and yet there doesn’t seem to be any flexibility on the part of employers. There are plenty of us who are more than willing to be dedicated employees with a strong skill set foundation, and we aren’t given a chance.

So, what is better? Being a specialist or a generalist? Write your opinion in the comments below.

For me, I’m still torn, and my problem is that if I do need to be a specialist, I don’t know what direction to follow, because I like so many aspects of tech comm. Should I find work as a full-time blogger, pursue my desire to be an instructional designer, go back to content publishing and management, become a technical evangelist, become a teacher or trainer…or what?

(If you know of any telecommuting/remote jobs or jobs in the Central NJ area along these lines, let me know!)

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What Does Knitting Have To Do With TechComm and m-Learning?

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

I’m so glad that this is now my 200th post on this blog! TechCommGeekMom has come a long way since it started out as a class project in grad school, now hasn’t it? For this particular post, I’d like to share my thoughts on something that I’ve been thinking about for the past two weeks or so.  It reveals one of my hobbies to you, but hopefully you’ll like the analogy.

As you’ve seen in the subject line of this post, I’m going to be talking about knitting and how it relates to tech comm and m-learning. Now, I know what you are going to say. Knitting is for grandmothers who make ugly stuff for everyone, and you are obligated to wear it when she comes over and visits. You couldn’t be wrong. Knitting has had a huge upsurge in the last ten or so years, and more and more people are adopting it as a hobby. It goes back to the 9-11 attacks, when people were trying to get back to a sense of security and home. I think with economic times, it’s also a relatively easy and inexpensive hobby to have (unless you are a true diehard like some of us).

Knitters these days make more than clothing items, accessories and toys, but it’s become an artform unto itself. (Ever hear of yarn bombing?)  I can’t remember when I started knitting exactly…but I’m guessing it was around 2004 or 2005. I know I was knitting in 2006 when I went to California for a convention for the now defunct Body Shop At Home businesses, and met Anita Roddick, as there’s photographic evidence of knitting in my hands during the event. In any case, it gave me a chance to learn something new that spoke a whole other language of its own, had a different vocabulary, and I got to work with all sorts of colors and textures in the process. For someone with sensory integration issues, it’s a great outlet for sight and touch. Even the rhythm of knitting up something has a calming effect, and following patterns forces my brain to focus.

So what does all this have to do with tech comm and m-learning? Well, as I thought about it,  there’s definitely an analogy that could be made about the benefits of knitting and how they lend themselves to these topics.  All this first came to me after I had spent the day at Adobe Day, and later took a small soujourn into the city of Portland with four fabulous technical communicators who also happen to be knitters. They had invited me to go on a yarn crawl with them (similar to a pub crawl, but in search of high quality yarn instead of libations), and I readily accepted. We only made it to one store, but we had a great time checking out all the high-end yarns and knitting notions available.

Pardon us drooling over the yarn!
Five technical communicators who
are also knitters! We know!
At KnitPurl, Portland, OR, during LavaCon
L to R: Sharon Burton, me, Sarah O’Keefe,
Marcia R. Johnston, and Val Swisher

As I reflected on Adobe Day, one of the big themes of the morning was the idea of using structured content. Without structured content, all of one’s content could fall apart and lose strength. An architecture needs to be created to make it work. Well, knitting is like that. If one doesn’t follow a pattern, and just knits in a freestyle, haphazard manner, instead of a nice jumper/sweater, one could end up with a garment with no neck hole and three sleeves. Without the structure of a pattern, and even reusing good content (or stitches, or groupings of stitches describing appropriate methods for structure), the whole thing falls apart. The beauty, too, of reusable content in content management, just as in a knitting pattern, content that is produced well, is solid, and the reader can understand clearly and concisely will produce good results, and can be recombined effectively in different instances without losing its meaning.  Take a look at a sweater or knit scarf you might have. You’ll find that each stitch makes sense, even when you look at different pattern of how the cuffs and collar differ from the sleeves and the body. But it all fits together.  In my mind, this is how reusable content can be used.  Very tight, well written content can be reused in different combinations without losing its context and form if done correctly.

The other way I thought of the analogy of knitting again had to do with how one learns how to knit, and how it relates to m-learning. Knitting fair-isle sweaters, Aran sweaters or lace shawls doesn’t come on the first day of learning how to knit. Heck, I’m even still learning how to do all these techniques! It comes with learning a foundation–namely the knit stitch and the purl stitch–and building upon that foundation. Any piece of knitting you see is all a matter of thousands of knit and purl combinations to make the item. But first, one has to master the simple knit and purl stitches by learning how to understand how to gauge the tension between the needles, the yarn and your fingers. Once that is mastered, then learning how to read the “codes” or the knitting language of K2, P2, S1 (that’s knit two, purl two, slip one), for example, then the real fun begins. Knitters have to pay attention to details in the directions, because knitting can be a long task. Except for tiny baby sweaters or sweaters for dolls or stuffed animals, I don’t know any sweater that could be hand knit in a single day, even if it was done from the time the knitter woke up until the time the knitter went to bed. It just couldn’t happen, even for a fairly experienced knitter.  So, each part of the knitted pattern must be learned or read in chunks so the knitter can understand where he or she left off.  Talk to me about lace patterns especially, and it’ll make more sense. But each technique takes time to master, and most knitters learn these techniques a little bit at a time. Whether a knitter is self-taught or taught in a conventional learning environment, nobody learns all there is to know about the most advanced knitting techniques on the first day. Just getting knitting and purling down takes a while. It’s an arduous task to learn to knit and knit well, and to be patient enough to see a pattern all the way through.

Just like in m-learning, things need to be learned in small chunks for comprehension. Information has to be short and to the point so that the reader, just like the knitting pattern reader, can take that information, mentally digest it, and then work out how to use the information. There is definitely trial and error in both m-learning and knitting; if one doesn’t succeed, then it’s possible to go back and try to re-learn the information and correct it, and in doing so, retains the information better.

Now, if one happens to be BOTH a technical communicator AND a knitter, then these are easy concepts. Reusing content, breaking down information into smaller portions for better learning retention, structuring the content appropriately and consistency comes both with our words and our stitches.

A variety of tools can be used in either case to create the content. For technical communicators, it’s the use of different software tools that help us achieve our goal. For knitters, different sized needles, different kinds of yarns and other tools can be used in the process. Is there only one way of doing things? Of course not. Is there any single tool that will do the job? Generally, no. This is the beauty of both technical communication and knitting. In the end, the most important tool is the mind, because without the individual mind, creativity and intellect cannot be expressed. When all of these tools and factors work together, it is possible to create a fantastic piece of work. When this combination of factors aren’t followed, it can look pretty disastrous.

So, next time you see someone with a pair of knitting needles in their hands, look carefully at the workflow that person is following. You might learn something from it.

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Welcome to TechCommGeekMom’s First Advertiser!

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

Just a quick note to have you notice something new on the right-hand column of my blog. It’s an ad for our first advertiser, Adobe!

I’m very excited to have this relationship with Adobe, who have been just huge supporters of TechCommGeekMom.com since the blog first started. Please be sure to click on the ad and check out the Technical Communications Suite 4! I did a review of TCS4 back in July which has been received very well, so here’s your chance to check the product itself out!

Hopefully this is the first ad support of many more to come.

If you, someone you know, or your business is into technical communications, education or e-learning, and are interested in advertising on my blog, let me know!

I am an equal opportunity blog here, and I would like to be able to help present the best products on the market when I can, and I’m off to a great start.

Thank you, Adobe!

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Remote and Mobile are not the same thing…but could or should be.

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

TechCommGeekMom is back! I’m sure you didn’t notice that much, but I was away for a week at the beach (or as we Jersey gals say, at the shore) in South Carolina, and while I wasn’t totally away from technology the whole week, I didn’t stay in touch with it as much as I usually do either. Hopefully, I can make up for some of that this week!

Just because I was away, it didn’t mean that I wasn’t thinking about tech comm, e-learning or m-learning while sitting on the beach. Quite the contrary. I had things going on related to all those topics that I still needed to keep up. And sitting by the ocean, listening to the waves, as well as traveling in lots of places far from home and working somewhat remotely got me thinking about the topic of working remotely and mobility, or rather mobile working.

I was actually put to the test in some respects during the trip. There was some important business correspondence that was going on during the week, and I had only my iPhone and trusty iPad, and spotty wifi to enable me to communicate with the “outside” world. I didn’t have the comforts of working from home with my laptop and reliable wifi connectivity that I have at home. (I do live in “Einstein Alley”, after all, so reliable wifi is almost a requirement where I live!) If I went to one of the Starbucks near where I was staying, then there was good wifi, and I could catch up with some of that correspondence. But if I was in my hotel room, it depended on the time of day and which room I was in, which was not exactly convenient.

As we travelled down some country roads before hitting the main highways on our way home, I started to think about mobile learning in these areas. How, in many respects, is this area that I was traveling through any different from any other remote area of the world, where education isn’t always cutting edge, and computers are difficult to access? The mom in me thought deeply about the educational part of this. If I lived in an area that was distant from a lot of technological access, but wanted the best education possible for my child, how would that be achieved?

My imagination first made me think about remote education. What is that? It could be online learning, or even just something static, like the equivalent of a correspondence course. How would that work in a classroom or standard educational system that is not near any major towns? Connectivity is the key for that. Having that connectivity would be greatly needed for the students to learn. Learning about what is happening in the “outside world” will open the minds of students not only to new ideas, but also how to bring those new ideas to their community. For example, would learning a new technology help with growing crops or improving productivity in some sort of service or manufacturing process prevalent in that community? I’m sure it would.

In my opinion, the Internet has always been an educational wonderland, much like how television and radio opened up possibilities and expanded our knowledge of the world. To deny that to the students of today would be a disservice, especially since so much more information is available through the Internet than radio or television alone. How does something work? A student can watch a YouTube video about it.  Who was Salvador Dali? A student can find Wikipedia and other sites that talk about the artist and see photos or video of his works.  Confusion about how to do algebra? Students can watch a video on Khan Academy. Newspapers from all over the world are online, and students can learn difference perspectives on world events as a result. There are so many possibilities!

But is mobile the solution to having a remote education? Yes and no. I think with the examples I showed above, a standard desktop or laptop can help achieve those activities quite easily. In many remote districts, I imagine that there isn’t the money in the school budget to provide that many desktops or laptops, but gaining that exposure would be worth the expense if it could be done.

To add mobile functionality to the mix would definitely enhance this process. Having a tablet computer such as an iPad or Kindle, or even using a smartphone would increase the learning capabilities. It would allow for more interactive learning. It would allow students to take their own video and photos to share with others. Learning could be done in the classroom, or even on a field trip or outside the confines of a classroom–including at home. All the benefits of mobile versus desktop would come to the forefront of reasons to use mobile for learning. Additionally, as smartphones are often more readily available and purchased, even in remote areas, mobile is possible and accessible in those hard-to-reach locales.

So, one has to understand that remote learning is not the same as mobile learning. Simply because one is out of reach from centers of society doesn’t mean that education about the outside world can’t be accessed, but with Internet connectivity, that experience is enhanced greatly. Correspondence courses of yesteryear (and modern day as well) show that you can be away from a learning source, and still gain knowledge needed. Online courses have been proving that in the last two or three decades as well. However, mobile enhances the e-learning experience greatly, providing greater flexibility for how a student can learn and when he or she can access information to learn. With the proliferation of smartphones and tablets exponentially growing every year, even in remote areas, mobile will enhance and promote changes in that the remote learning process, and in turn, the m-learning industry will change and grow.

So, my question to you, dear reader, as a tech comm or e-learning/m-learning professional, how are YOU going to help those learners who are far away from conventional resources? It’s something to think about when writing or creating courses or documentation that will help the end-user.  Mobile documentation is different because it can reach even more remote areas than ever before, but how it’s created and used is key in how successful it can be in helping those end-users, whether they be students or various professionals. Look at the photo that is at the top of this blog posting. How will you provide information to the inhabitants of that small island? Think about it….