TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
To teach tools or not to teach tools; that is not the question.
Here's what's important about tools, and what I haven't seen mentioned in this thread: tools to do what?
Instead of looking at this bottom-up (what are the features of the software and how do they operate?), try approaching the subject top-down (what do I want to achieve as my output and how do I make that happen by using the available software?).
You want to have courses that teach folks to think analytically and systematically about the subjects they are documenting, right? So why not have a course that teaches them to think analytically and systematically about the objects they are creating?
For example, at a meta level, how would you define "document"? Is it a piece of paper with squiggly marks on it? Is it a tree-like data structure with different types of nodes?
What is a style (in the publishing sense, not the literary sense) and what is it good for?
What are the basic elements of publication design (vocabulary), and how do they work together to aid or inhibit communication (readability, semiotics, cultural conditioning)?
What is a character set? What is a glyph? What is the difference between typing and typesetting? (Teaching a respect for the difference may be sufficient, rather than getting into details that can be looked up in a style manual.)
I think deconstructing examples of effective and ineffective publication design, Web design, database design, etc., will get into the students' heads what the goal is. Then it is a simple matter to discuss the approaches taken by various tools (high-level questions: what's the difference between word processors and publishing programs? Between vector graphics and raster images? Between Web and print? Between PowerPoint and anything else?)
Collect Royalties, Not Rejection Letters! Tell us your rejection story when you
submit your manuscript to iUniverse Nov. 6 -Dec. 15 and get five free copies of
your book. What are you waiting for? http://www.iuniverse.com/media/techwr
Your monthly sponsorship message here reaches more than
5000 technical writers, providing 2,500,000+ monthly impressions.
Contact Eric (ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com) for details and availability.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
