#23883
Administering Teacher Technology Training 
The collection of materials included here are designed to assist those, who for the first time, find themselves administering and developing an ongoing program for training teachers to use technology in the composition classroom.
Carnegie, Teena A.M., Amy C. Kimme Hea, Melinda Turley and David Menchaca. Kairos (2003). Articles>Education>Technology>Writing
#25609
Essay on the threat and promise of ubicomp: It should be clear that ubicomp represents a substantial raising of stakes; that its field of operation is by definition total; and that its potential for harm is such that the user experience is too important to leave to chance.
Greenfield, Adam. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>Technology
#14627
And They Said Computers Were Just a Fad 
Maslowski documents the rapidly changing technologies used by the technical communication profession.
Maslowski, David S. Intercom (2000). Articles>Technology>History
#20105
Applying Performance Technology Principles to Documentation
Technical writers often produce documentation for products or systems without first determining the best document media or even the necessity for documentation. In some instances, alternatives to documentation may best serve the product or system users. This paper describes the field of Performance Technology and illustrates how to apply principles of Performance Technology to decide when to create documentation.
Hayes, Gabby. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Documentation>Technology
#30387
Are There ELF's in Your Monitor?
Technical writers are justifiably concerned with the health risks that their work entails. Although the dangers of poor ergonomics, stress and repetitive motion are well known, the effects of Extremely Low Frequency radiation may also present a hazard. This presentation looks at what research is telling us about this risk.
Devine, Kevin M. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Technology>Biomedical
#21693
Assistive Technology: What Is It?
The term 'assistive technology device' means any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of a child with a disability.
ALLTech (2004). Articles>Accessibility>Technology
#26745
"Backing Up" Doesn't Mean Retreating
Recently, several friends and colleagues have lost important files as a result of viruses, power failures, computer crashes, and miscellaneous other disasters that accompany working with computers. Each person could have minimized the consequences if they had developed and rigorously followed a simple backup strategy for their data. The fact that this happened to experienced computer users in each case leads me to believe that data loss is symptomatic of a broader problem: As technical communicators, our tight focus on documenting how to use a product sometimes makes us forget to document the consequences of using the product.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. TECHWR-L (2006). Articles>Technology>Security
#28183
Baumol's Disease: Is There a Cure?
Baumol would never have expected in 1967 that a technological innovation like the internet would make it possible to create a sealed-off labor force in a third-world country.
Hackos, Bill. Center for Information-Development Management (2005). Articles>Technology>History
#28068
We demand more and more from the stuff in our lives--more features, more function, more power--and yet we also increasingly demand that it be easy to use. In an Escher-like twist, the technology that's simplest to use is also, often, the most difficult to create.
Tischler, Linda. Search-This (2006). Articles>Usability>Technology
#14787
Beyond the Bleeding Edge Technical Sessions
Perlin summarizes several presentations on new technologies given at STC's 49th Annual Conference in Nashville.
Perlin, Neil E. Intercom (2002). Articles>Technology>TC
#25456
Content Management is starting to wrestle with what Clayton Christensen calls The Innovator's Dilemma: the inability of successful companies to adapt to a new, disruptive technology.
Hiler, John. Web Crimson (2002). Articles>Content Management>Technology>Blogging
#28649
Business Decisions in a Digital Enterprise
All about automating, managing and aligning business decisions in a modern, digital, agile enterprise.
#27452
Calculating the True Price of Software
Therefore, the major difference in worldview between open source advocates and proprietary software license advocates is explainable as a differing opinion on the correct value of the volatility of maintenance and upgrade pricing. People who believe that the pricing on maintenance is stable and unlikely to change see greater intrinsic value in the software. People who fear that the pricing is subject to large fluctuations see no intrinsic value in the up-front license; stripped of the options, the license value approaches $0.
Lefkowitz, Robert. O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Technology>Software>Open Source
#26289
Can You Hear Me Now? I'm Podcasting
With a little bit of effort and a microphone, you can use podcasting to talk with millions of people. They key is creating something that is worth listening to.
Janisch, Troy. Icon Interactive (2005). Articles>Technology>Interactive>Podcasting
#19880
The purpose of this workshop is to expose members to the complexities of capital equipment budgeting and purchase. Specifically, the topics include: depreciation, useful life of a product, accounting and company policy. This workshop is for you if your group is using obsolete equipment and you need the skills to sell management on an upgrade for your department.
Caernarven-Smith, Patricia. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Workplace>Technology
#26680
We seem to be constantly chasing the latest and greatest technology, eternally one step behind. Our continual struggle to establish the field of technical communication yet assert dominance over new technological domains seem to be in direct conflict with each other. How can we possibly establish our dominance over a moving target? Instead of trying to peer into future, perhaps we need to look toward the past.
Davis, Toni. Orange Journal, The (2004). Articles>Technology>Audience Analysis
#23886
Collaborative Configurations: Researching the Literacies of Technology
Discusses the electronic literacies of individuals from other countries who travel to the United States to study at colleges and universities in this country.
Hawisher, Gail E. and Cynthia L. Selfe. Kairos (2002). Articles>Education>Technology
#32050
Communication and Creativity are the Future
As our tools become better-developed, the mastery of the tool becomes less important, while the ability to communicate and to come up with creative solutions will become even more crucial. It may be years before we can see any significant development in how we manipulate our creative visions, but I’m confident that focusing on developing your communication and creativity are extremely useful activities, even now. After all, it’s not really about what you have, but what you can do with it.
Contract Worker (2008). Articles>Technology
#28418
Communication in Technology Transfer and Diffusion: Defining the Field 
Provides an introduction to our field’s connections with technology transfer and diffusion. Technology transfer, the complex social process that moves technology from bench to market, drives global economic growth; technology diffusion, the market-driven process by which innovations are adopted and implemented, follows similar patterns. Indeed, technology transfer and diffusion may be considered synonymous with the phenomenon of growth in a global economy.
Coppola, Nancy W. Technical Communication Quarterly (2006). Articles>Communication>Technology>Technical Writing
#20135
Complex Technology Calls for Intelligible Documentation
By means of the tekom guidelines (check list) the technical author can particularly check the documentation of a product. However it is not the product which can be checked by means of this check list, but only the product’s documentation.
Noack, Claus. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Documentation>Technology
#13854
There is much for technical communicators to learn from the burgeoning field of technology studies. Technical communicators, however, have an obligation to exercise patience as they enter this arena of study. Using interdisciplinary theory, this article argues that technical communication must assume the 'burden of comprehension': the responsibility of understanding the ideologies, contexts, values, and histories of those disciplines from which we borrow before we begin using their methods and research findings. Three disciplines of technology study--history, sociology, and philosophy--are examined to investigate how these disciplines approach technology. The article concludes with speculation on how technical communicators, by virtue of their entrance into this interdisciplinary arena, might refashion both their practical roles and the scope of their ethical responsibilities.
Johnson, Robert R. Technical Communication Quarterly (1998). Articles>Technology>Ethics
#21348
As computers and digital devices increasingly insert themselves into our lives, they do so on an ever increasing social level. Designers need to understand the context of use and include the whole of a user's experience into the solution when creating a computer interface.
Shedroff, Nathan. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Technology>Ethics
#29075
Computers and Aging: Marking Raced, Classed and Gendered Inequalities
This article begins with an overview of cognitive psychology research on the effects of aging on literacy and suggests the additional complications facing older adults who consume and produce text within the frame of technology, particularly on-line usage. From an overview, the text moves to patterns corporations are using to target older adults, namely as consumers and as producers. The text then explores the use of philanthropy in the corporate literacy initiatives and suggests that there are complicated issues at hand in attempting to integrate the knowledge of aging and corporate strategies into our technical writing classrooms because we enter this discussion concerned about non-traditional students, older adults who are challenged to participate in contemporary literacy initiatives, and ourselves as aging participants as well. The article ends with suggestions of possible ways of addressing concerns regarding aging. Half the people in the world, one half the people in the world don't have electricity. How are you going to get a computer in their hands, Bubba? They gotta have a little electricity first. You know, you can't go to the bathroom unless you got a toilet. You know, I mean, over a billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. Forget about the digital divide. They, they got to have food, water, clothing, shelter, and a chance for education. I mean, you know, digital divide, you know. Ted Turner cited in [1].
Crow, Angela. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2002). Articles>Technology>Usability>Elderly
#26685
Concerned About RFID Tags? You Should Be
Gives a brief overview about how RFID tags work and examines the threat RFID tags pose to consumers and privacy in general.
Cook, J.R. Orange Journal, The (2005). Articles>Technology>Privacy
#19132
The Rogers report seems to be more than just a report to explain the Challenger accident and give suggestions to avoid a similar tragedy occurring in the future. In a sense, it appears to be a type of apologia. On January 28, 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger, mission 51-L, launched from Florida's Kennedy Air force Base at 11:38 a.m. Eastern Stand ard Time. As the country watched in disbelief, the shuttle disintegrated 73 seconds later in an explosion of hydrogen and oxygen. All seven crew members died. On February 3, President Reagan issued an executive order to set up a commission to investigate the challenger accident. The commission was sworn in on February 6, and presented its report to the president on June 6 of the same year. This report, commonly known as the Rogers Report, after its chairman William R. Roger, had a dual mandate from the president. First to look at the probable causes of the accident, and second, to develop recommendations for corrective action. This was done through a comprehensive investigation involving all of the following: interviews with more than 160 people, more than 35 formal panel investigations, examination of more than 6,300 documents (which included hundreds of photographs and more then 122,000 pages), the generation of almost 12,000 pages of transcript and another 2,800 pages of hearing transcripts.
Holombo, Chrystal. Michigan Tech University (1998). Articles>Technology>Risk Communication>Engineering
