Author: mo.c

I do think I write differently than the beginning of the semester. I was writing assignments for assignments but now, I think more before starting to write. I think about the genre, the rhetorical situation so that it decides my style and tone of writing. Although I was doing this before I took this class, I only think about the tone of writing. Now, I know why I would do this. In the concept of genre, I would write in different way as different genres for my project in school or after graduated.

The developing of the schema is worth of the time. We had to do research on the genre in order to develop the schema. In the process of doing this, I became an expert of the genre. It’s similar in program to make an “abstract class” which is a frame of something that can be used in similar situations. Writing in XML is an interesting concept for a writing class. Normally, I think writing is less technical and I was wondering that if I can learn something useful for my future from this class. However, the first thing that I learned was the language of XML. As an info science student, I learned many programming languages but I didn’t have any chance to know XML. The format of writing in XML is always a guide and frame for me to write. I was trained to create a frame before writing in China so I think writing in XML is familiar and useful.

For all three projects, I liked the second one most. I enjoyed doing a research on one type of genre and I did not have any experience on it before the project. Feasibility report is a useful genre for me as an info science student no matter I work for a company or start my own business in the future but I didn’t have a chance to get familiar with this type of genre. The least favorite project is the project 1. I didn’t have a clear definition of my major yet and most of my major courses are computer science related. I haven’t had a chance to take IS classes yet and I can’t distinguish two majors and I don’t know what kind of jobs are designed for IS students. All my Co-ops were CS jobs, I felt a little bit hard to get a discipline topic for the assignment. The time is a little bit tight that I didn’t have a chance to be in a study-pace. The writing of design entry is helpful that I need to keep writing in paragraphs at a rate of one per three days so that I won’t forget how to write for a writing class. Also, design entry normally helps me to think about the projects and readings and the process of assignments. It helps me to know more about the expect on assignments.

I’m going to think about the rhetorical situation and add some peer review when I write for the future projects. Thinking about rhetorical situation helps me decide my tone and style about my writing and the genre of the writing. Adding peer review is useful because the comment from classmates shows different understanding on the assignments and makes me rethink about my writing.

I used the schema as a guide that I won’t miss anything in the cover letter. Also, I didn’t develop the schema, thus, I need it as a guide but to find out what does it need as well. I think I used the genre in an appropriate way that I write the cover letter to apply a job that I found in NEU COOL. I feel like the schema has too many elements that I don’t know where I should put some common words like “and” to. Also, it feels hard to use some of the schema, there are some elements like and , sometimes it’s hard to make a sentence apart into those elements. However, these elements helped some time to get all the information in the cover letter. After reading the peer review, I feel like the definition of the cover letter is a little different from what I understand but it seems like making more sense to me. The cover letter is to describe things not from resume. Now I know more what I need for my cover letter. The understanding of the schema is the same between me and Tammy. Also, according to the peer review, I know that I will need to add something to show that I really want the job and my sincerity. Thus, I will need to think more about the genre.
I think the schema has been specific enough for a cover letter. I don’t think it needs any changes. I feel different to use this schema other than the schema from our group for project 2. I’m more an expert in the schema for feasibility report, but for this project, I need to do some research on the schema but still sometimes confused. I feel like it needs definition in the closing statement.

I used the schema as a guide. All the elements not only are the structure of the genre but also a reminder of the information that I need to provide for a feasibility report. I didn’t have enough experience of this genre but I’m an expert of it now. I didn’t have any difficulties on the syntax of XML, but I had a little trouble in using “lvl” and “n”. After several tries and reading other group member’s XML, I figured out how to use these attributes to organize and beautify my feasibility report. The “Uptake” article was helpful so that I know my genre’s desired uptake genre and the genre will uptake from. Group’s research helps a lot since we have Seth who had experienced with this genre already and easy to get examples and interviews. The decision of the genre was quick and we had our team design entry ready pretty soon with Seth’s resources. We had everything decided fast as we communicated well to get everything done. I didn’t feel any difficult working with our group. In fact, all of our group members are very easy to work with. It will be hard and lack of time if we don’t have the group to do the research together. The design of this assignment is good since we have two parts, one is the group one is individual. I like the way of all the assignments in this class which is a kind of different from my other classes. After this project, I know the genre of our group and I know other group’s genre as well from their presentations. I’m also looking forward to the next project.

After the presentation, I’m thinking to choose the genre of cover letter from group 4. A cover letter is useful for everyone when seeking a job. I will graduate in 2017 May which means I will need to know how to write a cover letter after that. We don’t need a cover letter for any Co-op jobs but I will need this for the job seeking after the graduation. The audience of a cover letter is the job interviewer. They need reading the cover letter and resume to decide whether need me to have an interview. The genre that I will need to uptake from is the job description. From the schema, I can know the structure of a cover letter and it’s very useful to give all the information organized. The schema template file is clear and I think I will do a little research on presenting the academic knowledge such as computer programming language. The example is clear since we are all technical majors which have similar requirements.

Since our group’s schema is feasibility report, the first step I did was to set a topic which is the Waitless App. I feel like my situation is perfectly for the feasibility report. I had this idea of developing the Waitless App for a while and this feasibility report is the perfect genre to propose my idea in a formal way. Writing this report makes my mind clearer of the functions of the Waitless. The schema helps a lot to organizing my words and report. The schema doesn’t have a page of explaining why do we need this App. I put the explanation in the exclusive summary which I’m not sure if it’s appropriate. The feasibility page has difference types where I can easily express my idea in different field whatever it’s a technical way or a financial way. After the peer reviewing, I found out that how to use the schema to make my sub-contents in the table of contents page which is great that I don’t need to figure it out later. It makes the report looks more organized and clearer. The schema of success criteria needs definition because I was a little confused to use this schema. Also, the timeline page and the estimate cost page is not the same as what I thought. Using the schema is mostly the same as long as I understand the definition and the purpose of each element. The schema for the first project is kind of short and less complicated than this project so it feels like easier for last time. However, the schema we have for this project organize the whole report which is good for me to write it. I would like to discuss about the success criteria and the report pages later.

My group’s genre is feasibility report. A feasibility report is a genre that studies the project and analyze it to see if the project is feasible or not. The genre that feasibility report might uptake from is project proposal. The purpose of a project proposal is to propose an idea of something. It needs to show that what has been proposed is a good idea and can increase revenue of the company. A good project proposal not only propose an idea, but also a marketing analysis and trend analysis. After the proposal has been proved, we need a feasibility report to show the feasibility of the proposal. If the proposal is lack of feasibility, it may need a change or a recall. There are a lot of things that a feasibility report needs from a project proposal. For example, the idea, the exclusive summary and the application overview are mostly from the project proposal. However, to complete a feasibility report, it needs some more fields such as process needs to be followed, technical feasibility and risk analysis. All these fields need feasibility reporters to do a research on and analyze on.

The next step of the feasibility report is the decision. The audience which could be a bunch of managers or maybe board of directors, after they reading the feasibility report, they need to make a call to approve or not. After the decision, the action will be taken. If the feasibility is a good one which shows the benefit and the risk, gives all the data in a good possible way and a bad possible way, it will lead the audience much easier to make the decision. A feasibility report needs to show the best case and also the worst case in order to make the report more reliable. The decision is not only an approval, but also a paragraph which contains the reason of the decision. What shows in the feasibility report generate the decision.

I had my second Co-op in EMC2 this Spring which is a data storage corporation. My job was to code in Python to test hardware. I have a cube and also a workspace in the lab. Beside taking about our work, we also chat about our lives some time. We had our own language which I could not understand anything in the first weekly meeting and that was the third day I started my Co-op. We had some software and website to do our job with is something similar with Oxygen and GitHub we use for this class. As an information science student, I’m more like a software guy but what I need to do was to test hardware which I didn’t have any experience with. Most of my coworkers are electronic engineers or computer engineers. I was the only female and the only software major. After 2 months, I was able to understand the hardware and develop software for testing. I think the work space was in an interdisciplinary level. If the problem was a hardware problem, I may not have the answer but if it’s a software problem, I had some ideas which was useful. I think this is the kind of job that I want to do after the graduation. I may not very outgoing but I do like to learn things and apply them into the work. I can learn things everyday and find some secret function about the website or the software and tell my coworkers. We always help each other and since I was the only female in the group and there are fewer females in this field, I feel my words mean something. I may look thing in a different way. Coding is kind of interesting when I can apply it not to the homework but to the real world. I still talk to people a lot, not only by emails but also face-to-face talking. I can’t face to my computer whole day without making a sound, I’m not a robot, but this job forced me to talk with my coworkers and solve the problem together no matter it’s a hardware issue or a software issue. I was happy that I could work in EMC2.

I read Seth Bakes’ annotated bibliography. He’s major is Computer Science related so that he defines his discipline very technical. The problem he found is the website for Co-op search. Although I’m also in College of Computer and Information Science, my major is Information science which is less tech than CS major. He found out that the website has a poor user interface and poor navigation for the user. The resources he found are also very technical which can be hard to understand if the reader doesn’t have any experience in website design.
The way that he uses tags in XML is similar with mine but he has only one field for his background, summary and relevance. I made my tags in more details. If read XML file only, Seth’s file is easier and cleaner than mine which makes me think if it’s better. The citations are different than mine, I used APA for my citation style while he uses MLA style.
This comparison helps me know how other students write their annotation. If I have a chance to make some changes to my own annotation, I would find a resource for methodology. In my case, I found the problem of parking, however, all my resources are topically related. I didn’t use methodology resource but I had some examples from other city solving this problem. I think I should find some article about city planning.

The process of the first writing project is a little surprised me when I need to use XML for a writing class. I thought writing is something that I need to describe my thoughts clearly, XML won’t make any differences. However, not as I thought, writing in XML did help me for annotating bibliography. Using XML as a coding language is not hard for me as I code for other classes. But writing in XML is different. What appears in Oxygen doesn’t look right and I can’t do any spelling check, formatting check (formatting check here is the format of an essay like spaces and punctuations) and words count. I had to commit to master when I was done for the first draft and check the formatted file online to see if I need to change anything. The schema which we discussed in class helped me think about the sources. Before, I may just write something, but by using schema, I can write and think. It makes my writing more fluently and more logical. I might have some redundant meanings of my essays before but schema avoids it. For using Oxygen and GitHub reminds me about my Co-op. I had similar process for submitting code in my Co-op this spring. I need to edit my code first, make sure it’s working and submit it to the workspace that my group shares. Every time when I submit something, I need to note it. The process is the same as I do for this project, sync, write description, commit to master and sync again. I need to find sources first and then using the schema as a guide to annotate it. GitHub keeps tracking the changes that I made and I think it’s going to help for group projects so that we can sync and edit and track the changes. Using Oxygen is not a problem for me and I’m glad that I can learn and use XML for this class.

Information Science is basically about how to manage information and make the information to be used in a better way. Computer science classes which I have to take, gives me the solving problems skills in a logical way. In other words, Information Science helps things “make more sense”.

What I found not making sense is that most of street parking in Boston are 2-hour limit parking. If you have a car, you must know that it’s hard to park around the city. Even if you find a street parking spot, it’s normally a 2-hour limit parking. It’s not enough for visiting a friend, traveling around the city or having a meal in a popular restaurant. What can you do in the city within 2 hours?

All the parking space near Huntington Ave are 2-hour parking, if you have a class right after another class, 2 hours won’t be enough and you don’t have time to move your car. A ticket would appear on your car. The only place that have 4-hour parking is Ruggles Street near West Village, but we are sharing that street with Wentworth.

I know that school has parking garages for students and staffs. I still remember that one day in 2014 fall, when I had an 8am class with my friend who drives but he was still late for the class. 8am class shouldn’t have a lot of traffic and he was coming from Allston which is not far from school. He told me that it took him 15 minutes to find a parking space in the garage. I didn’t have a car back then but I knew students need to buy the parking permit which is not cheap for a college student. It shocked me at that time and I begun to think that it’s not worth to buy a parking permit. I got a car in fall 2015 in case I need it for my Co-op. I started to drive to class occasionally. I had to find a parking space for 20 minutes. Even I found one near Huntington Ave, I need to move my car every 2 hours because the street parking there are 2-hour-limit parking. This summer, I thought there should be fewer students on campus so I drove on the first day of class. It took me 10 minutes to park the car that I didn’t need to move it every 2 hours. But if I want to park in the garage for Summer2 Day Parking only, it’s going to cost me $230, which only four days a week that I have to come to school.

2-hour limit in Boston is not a reasonable time for parking. If you stay in the city for couples of years, you would know that it’s hard to park with enough time not only around Boston University in Allston but also Harvard and MIT in Cambridge. Thus, I think all the 2-hour limit parking around universities should be changed into 4-hour parking.