Windowsill

The online content revisions have been made. I will post the final piece next year when it is developed and published.

Kidde Residential & Commercial
1016 Corporate Park Drive
Mebane, NC 27302
http://www.Kidde.com

Contact – Todd Pendergast, Web Communications Manager
Ph – 919-304-8244
Fax – 919-563-2712
Email – todd.pendergast@fs.utc.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New California Resolution
Inspires Community Initiative

Community and industry leaders unite to help educate families during
California’s first Carbon Monoxide Awareness Week.

Mebane, NC, November 12, 2007 – A partnership that includes Safe Kids Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health; the Sacramento and Los Angeles County Fire Departments; and Kidde, a leading fire safety manufacturer; will hold two press events to help educate families during California Carbon Monoxide (CO) Awareness Week.

At two press events, Kidde will donate 900 carbon monoxide alarms alarms to help protect Californians from the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The first donation will take place at the Los Angeles County Fire Department Headquarters on November 13, from 10:00 to 10:30 a.m. Kidde will donate 450 carbon monoxide alarms to SAFE Kids Los Angeles. The alarms will be distributed to low-income families by the LA County Fire Department.

A second donation will happen on November 14, from 2:00 to 2:30 p.m. at the Sacramento Fire Department’s Engine One Building. Firefighters will receive 450 alarms, which they will distribute to the local community. Fire department officials and carbon monoxide poisoning experts will be available to speak about the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning.

CO Awareness Week was approved by the California legislature in September. The measure urges the State Fire Marshal, fire departments, public schools, and other organizations to initiate activities during the week to help raise awareness about this silent killer and explain ways that families can protect themselves.

Awareness is Key to Prevention

Carbon monoxide is the leading cause of accidental poisoning deaths in the U.S. and kills more than 2,000 people a year according to the The Journal of the American Medical Association and the Centers for Disease Control.

“It’s important to recognize the lethality of CO exposure,” said James DeCarli, SAFE Kids Los Angeles and the LA County Department of Public Health. “Carbon monoxide poisoning fatalities are at least two to three times greater than hospitalizations, illustrating how severe exposure can be. We need to do all we can to educate families about how to protect themselves and getting alarms into families’ hands is a great start.

The easiest way to detect carbon monoxide is with a CO alarm, yet an estimated 71 percent of U.S. homes do not have one. Experts recommend installing CO alarms on every level of the home and near sleeping areas.

More information about carbon monoxide and California CO Awareness Week is available at http://www.KnowAboutCO.com

About Kidde
Since 1917, Kidde has earned a trusted reputation as the world’s largest manufacturer of fire safety products whose mission is to provide safety solutions that protect people and property from fire and its related hazards. Kidde offers a wide range of fire protection products including smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, fire extinguishers, escape ladders and other accessories. Kidde is part of UTC Fire & Security, a leading global supplier of fire safety and security services serving government, industrial, commercial and retail industries. UTC Fire & Security is a division of United Technologies Corporation (NYSE:UTX) a diversified company that provides high technology products and services to the aerospace and commercial building industries worldwide.

Writing for Digital Media is a great course. I highly recommend it. As with anything, there is always room for improvement, so I will try to help in that endeavor.

Improving, Enhancing, Changing

I think the course closely follows the official course description. I can’t find any critique of the class not living up to the description.

My experience was very rocky at first, exciting in the middle and exhaustive by the end. I was amazed throughout by the number of posts that people made to the discussion board. The amount and the quality of the discussion often surpassed that of a typical brick-and-mortar class. On the one hand that is great, as it’s hard to see more discussion as a bad thing. However, it was overwhelming for me to see people making three or four posts a day, when three or four quality posts a week seemed fair. The discussion board was mentioned in the course description, but it probably should be emphasized much more, to prepare students for what’s expected. I made my peace with it as the course went on by easing back on my standards in order to make more posts. I don’t know if that was a good trade off or not.

The blog format is a natural idea for this course. I was nervous at first that all of my assignment feedback would be made public and that could be awkward, but this didn’t become an issue. I found the free WordPress program to be lacking in many ways. It had strange glitches in the WYSIWYG department and didn’t really support a more advanced HTML alternative. I was caught somewhere in between. Maybe it would be a good idea to give a summary or critique of the various publisher options for newbie bloggers.

My main problem was with the pace of the course. With the numerous weekly readings, discussion requirements and written assignments, there wasn’t much time left to really reflect on the ideas or hone new skills. Many times I felt like I wanted to take another long look, but the train was leaving the station and I could barely catch up to jump back on. If one makes the effort after the class to go back and re-read everything and apply it to daily work, then this problem may be mitigated. The great breadth and depth of this class create the break-neck pace, but maybe cutting back a little in each would be worth consideration.

The Readings

The blend of practical and theoretical readings seemed just about right. It’s clear that some theory should be discussed in a graduate level class, so the question is more about how much.

It seems like the theory was strongest when it weaved in and out of the practical material. The usability modules are strong in this regard. I found myself enjoying the ride, as the content of the text flowed from “how to” to “what if” and back again.

The module about interactivity also had a good balance. The text offered practical advice, links and research on the subject. The Aarseth reading gave me pause, as it questioned some of the hype surrounding digital media and interactivity. That pause really helped me hone my critical thinking and introduced a touch of sobriety in a technology-intoxicated realm.

There are three aspects of digital media that make it ripe for theoretical discussion:

1. Things are moving so fast in the information age, that the theoretical discussions seem to add perspective. We need to stop once and awhile and take a look at it all from 40 thousand feet.
2. Digital media has so many implications for our society and the way we communicate and live, so it seems only natural to discuss theoretical implications.
3. Digital media can be a lot of fun. The “what ifs” in the field of new media are fun to explore and debate. They elevate the discussion.

Additionally, Brian Carroll suggested a fourth aspect:

“Change with digital media removing boundaries or distinctions between producer and consumer, sender and receiver, publisher and reader, theoretician and practitioner. These once-sacred roles or divisions have been thrown into the wind, made irrelevant.”

I wouldn’t suggest changing this balance, but I think it was helpful when discussions or readings were identified upfront as theoretical. This helped me shift the old intellectual gears before I hit the gas pedal.

Looking back, it feels like I learned a lot. I knew it would be hard to record it all, so I will skim through my notes and posts looking for clues. Maybe this will unearth the evidence of a change in my writing and my understanding of digital media.

Writing Well

I was surprised to find that I had lost sight of many of the principles and basics of writing. The text began with history for context and then moved to principles. Although I had learned principles many years earlier, I hadn’t seen it much since, and that’s the problem. Years of working on deadline in “good enough for government work” settings had diminished my writing skills, so I have re-oriented myself to these concepts. How do I know? Since taking this course my writing process has slowed to a crawl, as I question the brevity, clarity and accuracy of my writing. This has been uncomfortable, but it’s making a difference, even if it has yet to materialize in the final product. It would be useful to read this chapter at the beginning of each week to avoid potholes.

“I can’t overemphasize the need to be specific, concrete and clear. This is the most commonly fallen into pothole in writing,” from the textbook.

The Workshop and the Nuts and Bolts

My ego took some heavy blows during the early part of the course. My writing was full of grammatical errors, and there was nowhere to hide. One thing I noticed was that I learned more from being an editor for my workshop partner than I did from re-writing my own work. This seems strange to me, but maybe my defensiveness clouded my vision as I tried to assess my mess. I was more able to be dispassionate as I checked with Mr. Strunk and Mr. White and tried to help my partner. I still don’t fully understand the proper use of the colon and the semi colon, but I feel a new found desire to master it.

New Media vs. Old Media

Hallelujah! After the painful rite of passage that was “the workshop,” I could sink my teeth into some new media study. The chapter transitioned well by emphasizing the timeless nature of writing principles, regardless of media. I am not a journalist, but the topics of credibility and focusing on audience needs applied to my work just the same. I learned a lot about the differences between the print and digital audience. I had always heard that the web audience is impatient, but never really took it to heart. Now when I write and design I’ll consider Jakob Neilsen and the Eyetrack studies that validate assertions about the digital audience.

Screen Writing

Some of the material on screen writing and design was familiar, but it was also clear how much I had forgotten. The chief value to me was how integrated the material was. Writing, visual style, usability and information architecture were all touched on and formed a coherent perspective. I hope to refer back to this section every time a new project begins.

Wearing Many Hats: Journalism, Public Relations, Advertising

These modules seemed tangential to what I do, and I thought they might be less important. However, after working through all of the modules, I became more aware of the trend toward convergence in digital media. It became clear that as new media participants we often wear the hats of the journalist, the designer, the technologist and the marketer.

Questions

The “many hats” issue brings up a big question for me. What am I going to be when I grow up?
It seems silly, but in a way this is still the question. In an age of specialization, what does it mean that a digital media career incorporates so many skills and roles? What does it mean that everyone is a content creator now? How does this affect me as a professional content creator? This course provided a lot of answers, but some questions remain unanswered.

Conclusions

Before this class I was a bit overwhelmed by all the divergent paths in digital media. I feel like the biggest thing I have now is a big picture view of what it means to work in digital media. I feel like I have taken a high speed train trip across the country and now I have to collect and apply the information I saw along the way. I keep saying how I hope to refer back to the class material. I think this is where the practical value of the course will become clear. Have I become a better writer, designer and communicator? Maybe a little, but the real effect may come as I apply the ideas of this class to my daily work.

I added the FAQ page to the interactive website prototype. Most of the the questions pertain to site usage, but I felt the need to add additional CO safety information from my company, in order to provide enough education about this health and safety issue. In its final form, the website will generate the answers right beside the questions as they are clicked on or hovered over.