Saturday, April 26, 2008

Next Year's Students

I have thoroughly enjoyed having class with Ms. Rogers. The Second Life class setting is much different than your normal class. Meeting once a week for an hour leaves a lot of time for you to do other work or work for this class. Unlike a normal class, it is up to you to remind yourself to do your work every week. In my case, I had class on Monday nights and everything was due the following Sunday. If you don't write your assignments down, you can easily forget about them until the last minute. I learned a lot about business writing and it has really prepared me for my jump into the real world. I hope that you all enjoy this class as much as I did. Thanks Ms. Rogers. I had a great semester in your class. 

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Ethics

Through my research about the Challenger disaster, I learned that the littlest thing can cause the biggest destruction. It took one little O-ring and the cold weather to destroy millions and millions of dollars worth of a NASA space craft and of course the seven lives of the crew members aboard. Every day people witness breaches in ethical judgment and say nothing. This is how small, almost insignificant things like an O-ring turn into a disaster. It really bothers me that this is happening more and more frequently. The easiest way to prevent this is to hire employees with good character. It starts with recruiting. Another way to help prevent this is a drop box of some kind. It would allow employees to anonymously inform management of any wrongdoings. I just hope that we can all learn from others mistakes and not let a problem in the future "snowball" into a huge issue. 

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Response

It is very disturbing to hear that unethical practices are occurring  frequently in the work force. I feel as though there are several ways to prevent this from happening. The first one starts with human resources and selecting good employees. Another good alternative is setting up an anonymous dropbox for employees to write down  concerns or any questionable activities  going on in the workplace. Employees must bring up any questionable activities to someone higher up that can deal with the situation properly. If publicizing the action is necessary then it needs to be brought up to all employees in order to make sure that it does not happen again. Ethical disruptions can be very costly to any company. Managers need to make sure they catch any problems before they cause a major disaster like what happened to Enron or Worldcom. In order to make more money, some people will do anything. You can only hope that you have honest and responsible employees who will not partake in unethical practices or if see them occurring they will report them. 

Monday, April 7, 2008

Paper vs. Web

When comparing the two types of writing, it is important to discuss the similarities and differences between the two. The amount of writing on paper I have done in recent years has decreased greatly due to the use of computers. In my day to day activities, rarely do I ever find my-self writing anything of importance or great length on paper. School work, job related work, applications, and many other types of writing are more common on the web now than on paper. This one of the major differences between the two types of mediums. Fifteen years ago, almost all work, school, and personal writing was done on paper. Now, almost everyone in school or working has access to a computer. When comparing the use of the web vs. paper, the two areas have many similarities and differences as well. One way in which they are the same is that the information does not change. You can read the same newspaper article on a website as you can in the actual paper itself. However, the use of the web has made everything much more accessible from anywhere in the world. It also has made researching for past writings much easier with the use of search engines and other various tools. When transferring from one medium to the other, in this case paper to web, there are several things that are different. One is that with web writing you must keep your wording concise and to the point. Most people just skim through web articles and postings to get the most important information. However, when it comes to reading the paper most people have more time and read the articles thoroughly. 
Of course with any writing, the use of grammatically correct language, writing to a specific audience, and so on are very important in both mediums.