For this assignment, you will write a report reflecting on the iFixit project and what you learned. You will want to pay close attention to the instructions. So you may want to download a copy.

As part of your introduction to Technical Communication, you completed a service-learning project involving iFixit.com.  Service learning is generally defined as a form of experiential education in which you, the student, engage in activities that both address a community need and enhance your learning and development in terms of the course learning objectives and the skills you will need for future success.  In addition, service learning should help to foster civic engagement (individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern) and provide opportunities for you, as a student, to reflect on how the service experience links into class objectives and on why it is important.  Service learning is founded on the belief that “the interaction of knowledge and skills with experience is key to learning” and that “learning starts with a problem and continues with the application of increasingly complex ideas and increasingly sophisticated skills.”  (Thomas Ehrlich, 1996)

For this course, the project was intended to engage you in activities that would enable you to learn and develop skills in the following:

• communicate effectively in a professional context using standard genres such as letters, memos, emails, reports, and instructions
• define and analyze audiences and organizational communication needs and problems
• demonstrate an understanding of the complexity and rhetorical nature of designing and communicating technical information (including instructions)

• present effective, informative, and professional oral presentations

• collaborate with others to manage, complete, and deliver a technical communication project

Assignment

For this project, you will write an individual report that discusses and examines the project in terms of what you did or did not learn and the experience you did or did not gain. As part of this report, you can make recommendations regarding the project and its future implementation. 

Requirements :

The report will be in memo format and 2 to 3 pages in length.  It will use headings to help guide the reader and to separate sections. It will be single-spaced with a double-space between paragraphs (with no indentation at the start of paragraphs). It will use 11pt or 12pt serif font for the body text and a san serif 12pt font in bold for the headings.

1. 1. Start the report with standard introduction (set the context or remind the reader why you are writing the report, provide a very brief outline of the content of the report, and state the main purpose or outcome of the report).
   2. After the introduction describe the background for the project as you understood it. Here are some questions to think about as you generate content:  What was the community need being addressed? Is the need important?  Why has iFixit partnered with Universities? How do students, instructors, and iFixit benefit from the project? What are the costs to students, instructors, and iFixit of participation in the project?  Did the project effectively address the community need? Why or why not? Was the project suitable for an introductory technical communication course? Why or why not?
   3. In the third main section of the report, you will expand on how the project did or did not enhance your learning of each of the objectives listed above. Start the section with an overview of what will be discussed and the main idea of this section.

• Defining organizational communication need—What organization was served by this project? Who were the stakeholders affected by the project and its outcomes? What would you define as the organizational communication need? Was the need adequately addressed? Why or why not. Was the community partner (or client) responsive? Was the feedback they offered useful? How did you benefit from working with them? How did they benefit from working with your team?
• Analyzing Audience—Who was the primary audience for the project?  Describe this audience and explain how the defining characteristics of the audience affected the implementation of the project and its outcomes. Who were your secondary audiences for the project? How did they affect your communication choices for the project?
• Designing and communicating technical information—what did you learn about designing and writing professional correspondence, reports, and instructions? What were some of the challenges you faced? How would you use what you learned for future activities such as those in courses or for employment?
• Testing information—What did you learn about the usability of information?  Summarize the results of your usability tests. How did your participant evaluate the instructions? What changes did you need to make to the instructions? If you could do the project over again, what would you do differently?
• Collaborating with others—When creating the plan for the project, how well did you predict the tasks that needed to be completed, the timeline, workload distribution, and the final outcome? Did the project plan help keep team members on task? Describe your contributions to the project.  What were some of the challenges you encountered working in a team? What did you learn about team work?  If you could advise other students about how to work effectively in a team, what would you tell them?

1. In the final section of the report, describe the strengths and weaknesses of the project in terms of service learning and in terms of the objectives discussed above.  Make recommendations for the future implementation of the project, being sure to offer reasons for the recommendations that link back into your previous discussion. 

I want it to be done in 3 hours 

Attached is an article talks about the Wildness and in this assignment, I have to do the proposal essay about this article. So, I have to choose a quote from this article to do my proposal about it.  In the proposal, you should mention these instructions:

1-     Tell me your place for conversation that you have identified (give me the quotation).

2-    Tell me what you see in terms of an opportunity- were you fascinated/shocked/perplexed? Is there a gap/tension/ambiguity/difficulty?

3-    Then, tell me your complex, unique, specific, arguable claim!

4-    The minimum of 250 words.

’We cannot truly know freedom, nor understand absolute liberty, without wilderness.

The wild will exist long after human civilization. ‘

In this quote, there is something that stole my attention and made me think deep about

it. How wilderness can last more than us as humans. We should not fight against nature

because the result will be obviously total lose to human race against nature. So, we

should learn how to live with it instead of demolishing the beautiful jungle and the

astonishing coral reef which is the main source of oxygen

[ya1] 

The quote I chose is highlighted:

“what I have learned from nature”

Some of my fondest childhood memories are with my parents hiking around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One memory is particularly vivid. I was six and on the trail to Abrams Falls after a summer rain moved through the forest. The sun was just again peaking through the canopy. As my folks and I moved along the trail I noticed water droplets on the leaves of a rhododendron. We stopped for a rest next to the woody plant along the bank of Abrams Creek. I sat down, letting my hands feel the damp Earth, laden with bryophytes. I studied the beads of water on the plant before turning my considerations to the creek. My love for nature began young.

In the wild I am always in awe of water. Water, in its many forms, occupies every part of the forest. Clouds are among my favorite forms water takes. There is nothing like standing on a green mountain bald on a cool spring day — the clouds steal the show. Whether weeping grey or puffy white, when the land is again bursting with life, clouds hug ridges and occupy valleys in ways that can only be described as breathtaking. I once had the holy experience of camping in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina on a late Spring evening at over 5,000 feet. As I hiked to camp I moved across mountain meadows covered in a thick fog, but my destination sat above the clouds. That night around a roaring bonfire, in the company of budding plants and a vast array of newly awakened wildlife, there was a piercing, radiant starry night above, and a sea of clouds cracking with lightning below. All of the heavens witnessed Earth’s wonder.

From the clouds, in the chill of January, snow seems to continually fall over temperate Appalachian forests. In the winter, snow dusts the landscape, coating evergreens and the naked limbs of deciduous trees. When running old trails in this ancient terrain in the depths of the season, ones own breath is often visible as it escapes the lungs. If, like I often do, one follows this vapor in the white landscape, it is hard not to notice the depth of the mountains this time of year. Though peppered in white, something about the winter makes the Appalachians appear dark. Perhaps it is exposed ancient metamorphic rock, thick ice that clings to steep mountain ridges and the bare grey bark of trees, but the color avoids a description. The mountains are mysterious and beautiful beyond words.

My favorite time in the woods, however, is Autumn. Fall air is always brisk, the sky is often a beaming cerulean blue, and it is of no mystery why the southern Appalachians are long described as “smoky.” A thick mist settles in the mountains in the fall and the forest changes dramatically daily. Some of my favorite moments of solitude, and thus my life, are experienced in the mountain lowlands in late autumn. Under the splendor of November hue, on the banks of a stream I am often lost in thought as I watch water carve its way through ancient rock while, at the same time, laying the sediments that will tell future travelers of our place in history. I swear one can feel the terrain, littered with a mosaic of detritus, soaked in a thick mist, and carved by the river continuum breathe this time of year.

Natural places are of incredible importance. John Muir once wrote: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” This is a statement of deep ecological truth.

Nature is wild. In the wilderness one is wild. On an early September afternoon a few years ago I escaped for a lone stroll in the woods. I worked my way up and around Curry Mountain, had lunch on a rock in the shade of a great Eastern Hemlock and was making my way back home when I came across two black bear along the switchbacks. They saw me before I saw them. There was a quick dash, a scattering of leaves and I saw the black fur of a cub run down slope – it was then I noticed the mama bear. Standing in front of me some 20 yards away was a rather large beast who was occupying the trail. We stood in silence, staring at one another for sometime until she let out a slow growl. I raised my hands to the air and loudly proclaimed, “I mean you no harm, bear!” She turned and quickly disappeared into the brush.

Knowing they were still near I kept talking loudly

to them as I slowly made my way through the switchbacks. As time passed I picked up my pace. Before I knew it I was whooping, laughing madly and running through the woods. I was jumping over trickling springs, tree roots and piles of rock. I was full of joy, my heart pounding furiously. I was myself, simply a human in purest form, all labels stripped away, no worldly burdens — just an animal, wild and alive!

This unbound freedom is possible only in the wild. There await holy experiences everywhere in nature. Whether it is moments of silent, still reflection, or adventurous swimming in the roar of a river, swallowing its current, pelted by rain, breathing hard and laughing under the chill of a night sky with brothers, natural spaces provide us with a liberty that cannot be experienced in urban corridors. Untouched landscapes are the cathedrals of nature.

We cannot truly know freedom, nor understand absolute liberty, without wilderness. The wild will exist long after human civilization. We have only a precious moment on this Earth, the blink of an eye regarding the eons in which we measure geology, to understand boundless freedom. In the wilderness there exist only the fixed laws of nature. There are no economic systems, no political powers, no established authority, but rather an anarchic freedom we are blessed to experience. In open spaces we are free to live, even if just briefly, absent of control or administration from the Leviathans of civilization.

This freedom alone is enough to protect wilderness landscapes, for ourselves and fellow species — nature for nature’s sake. Wilderness can exist without us, but we are doomed without it. May we preserve wild lands – coasts, deserts, forests and mountains – so we may preserve what makes life worth living: Liberty.

Imagine the forest. Suddenly, with a crack of lightning and thunderous boom, from dark, weeping clouds, falls a torrent of water. Plummeting from the vivid horizon towards the lush, ominous hue of green Earth, the cascade crashes into a mixed canopy of poplar, oak, hemlock and spruce.

A rich, harmonious chorus fills the brilliant forest. A howling melody of pattered rain pails the rhododendron, splats the trillium, showers the fern, soaks the detritus and beads the moss before saturating the damp, woodland floor. Beneath the soil, among mycorrhizae, annelids and abundant microbes there is a pull downslope, a burst from a spring and the rush of a high country stream. Along twists and turns, crags and ridge, falls and flow there is a longing for, and final jubilation with, the communion of rivers roar. Among carved rock and knotted limb, the journey across the watershed begins long toward the basin. What a great, dangerous adventure!

Nothing but a dizzying wonder awaits beyond every fall, rapid and maelstrom eddy. As clouds recede the Earth breaths a mountain mist, illuminated by the sun, that instills natures heart breaking splendor. Oh, be free young, wild torrent! In wildness may you travel deeper still! Rush along your crooked channel walls, carve the valley, shape the open plain, welcome the delta, bask in the sea, rise to the heavens and fall once more!

Imagine yourself in this forest. A human animal. An individual. Sitting, legs crossed on a moss laden log. The water showers your spirit. Soul happy! You stare into the canopy. There’s an unbreakable smile on your face. You laugh, roar and howl!

 [ya1]So, in your essay, you’re going to want to look for:

freedom

wilderness

civilization

How does he use each of these terms?

What’s the relationship in his writing between these terms?

What can we do with that relationship? How does that relationship make you feel? 

these are the professor comments that told me to do.