Boston College Telecommunication Technology Explainer Project In this article, you need to explain a topic you are interested in. (Tell me what is your top
Boston College Telecommunication Technology Explainer Project In this article, you need to explain a topic you are interested in. (Tell me what is your topic before writing and I need to have the permission of my professor)you need to include 3-5 examples that will answer your question and list corresponding 3-5 sources.I attached the requirement of the article and a student sample for you. To: Amy Carleton
From:
Date: December 7, 2017
RE: Project 3 Context Memo: Faster Future: 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G, and … 5G
For the explainer assignment, I chose to write about the telecommunication technology,
because the topic is hot everywhere in the past few years. For instance, mobile carriers
constantly try to convince users that they have the best technologies in their hands. They
all advertised that their networks were almost ready for the next-‐generation 5G systems. In
addition, it seems that many of my friends have heard of 5G. They all know that something
faster would be coming soon. Unfortunately, when I asked whether they understood the
fundamentals of the systems, almost no one could give me answer. I also chose my topic
due to my interest in digital communication and signal processing, the areas that I focus on.
Before writing this article, I looked online to collect the ‘right’ information from different
sources. To my surprise, I found that I misunderstood many concepts of how each
telecommunication generation works. I found one good source with beautiful illustrations
from one big mobile chip manufacturer, Qualcomm. It provided me a very clear picture on
how the system worked and gave me an intuition on how I should translate technical
languages to general audiences. I have collected information from each generation
separately. After I collected them, I tried to find the transitions between them.
The target audience of this article is for people who are interested in technology in general.
I expect the article to be in the two-‐column basic technical magazine format, which I have
mocked it in my submission. I hope the article is suitable for those who routinely read IEEE
Spectrum, a magazine for general audiences who are interested in technology. The article
does not require any prior knowledge in digital communications. At the same time, I try to
make the article approachable and not boring for them. As I talked to Amy, I had inserted
many historical anecdotes and examples along the way from the start point to the end
point. Those anecdotes must be topics that most of people share common experiences.
They are getting more important at the halfway of the article, as people might get lost
there. I decided to insert a Steve Job’s announcement on iPhone 3G to better visualize the
3G era. Moreover, I have created some illustrations by my own, hoping they can clarify
some confusing ideas, such as FDMA and TDMA.
As I wrote, I found that there were many important ideas that the readers should know if
they really wanted to understand the subject. At the end, I decided to insert most of
important topics into my article. Due to a massive amount of information, a good strategy is
to make significant words bold, so that the readers can catch eyes on them and do not get
lost. The by-‐product benefit is for those readers who just want to skim through and read
only the parts they want to read.
All in all, I hope that the article at least clarifies the difference between telecommunication
technologies and delivers the right information to the readers. At the same time, I expect
the readers to enjoy historical anecdotes and developments of telecommunications. I also
hope they appreciate their smartphones and the technology behind them even more.
Project Three: The Explainer
Length: 1000 or more words + context memo
Audience: Public (must define a specific public audience)
In your second project, you wrote for a reference audience, which we defined
as an audience that needs general information on a specific topic. For this
assignment, you will write an explainer piece for an audience that is
interested in information that complementary to a larger context.
An explainer article is a kind of academic piggy-‐back article accompanying
a larger piece or series dealing with non-‐academic issues. Explainer articles
are needed when a public debate or event seems to open the door to the
misunderstanding of technical or academic issues, and so the public needs to
have the technical or academic issue clarified. Recent examples of such
issues and explainer questions include the rebuilding of the World Trade
Center site (how do architects design safe buildings?), the ongoing
controversy over how elections are held and monitored (how do electronic
voting machines work anyway? Why do we have an electoral college?),
political nominations of ambassadors and judges (what are the normal
contexts for recess appointments? What kinds of questions should a
nominee have to answer?), the Abu Gharib scandal (how does the US
interpret its obligations under international law on the issue of torture?), the
environment (what did Steve Irwin’s life say about endangered species?) and
so forth.
Explainer journalism has become very important in today’s 24/7 media
culture where stories break quickly—often so quickly that readers haven’t
had a chance to catch up with the story. That said, explainers focus on the
“HOW” and “WHY” of a topic (whereas traditional journalism focuses on the
who, what, when, and where).
Good examples of explainer journalism can be found in The Guardian’s
Pass Notes, Nate Silver’s Fivethirtyeight.com, The New York Times’ The
Upshot, Vox’s Explainers, and the MIT Media Lab’s Readfold.
❂
Though not lengthy, this paper is likely to be challenging in specific ways.
Popular genres such as explainers are various yet tightly constrained. Most
important for this class, your example of public writing needs to transmit
some specific scientific knowledge — that is, knowledge that tends to be
closely held by your discourse community — to a targeted public audience.
This is not a chance to abandon your discourse community or write just
about what concerns you; rather, this is an opportunity to put your
discourse community into a larger context of public need and service.
Although explainers printed in different venues may vary greatly, they have
some things in common. In addition to the overall features we look for in
21W.035, we will look specifically for the following elements:
•
A concise introduction (or lead) that sets the stage for the rest of the
article, including both its subject and its context.
•
Appeals to audience investment: these may include a human-‐interest
dimension, careful use of tone (including humor), invitations to
understand the academic field and its importance for them, and so
forth.
•
Effective highlighting of salient details.
•
Syntax and vocabulary used at a level consistent with your proposed
audience.
•
A high level of clarity.
•
A responsible and careful attention to possible counter-‐perspectives,
qualifications, and limitations.
You may find that some of the values you are trying to exemplify conflict
with each other. For example, you want to explain your point concisely to a
non-‐expert audience. This calls for a kind of language use that tends toward
generalization. Yet you also want to attend to counter-‐perspectives and so
forth. Yet how can you do both? How can you be responsible toward the
nuances of the field while maintaining a rhetorical stance consistent with
appealing to a general audience? This dialogue among values will constitute
the major rhetorical challenge of this project.
Because you’re writing toward a target public rather than to the (non-‐
existent) general public, I’d like you preface your document with a memo to
the class in which you put the work in context and explain the rhetorical
function of this piece. If there’s something specific about your audience that
will not come across in the document itself, this is the place to explain that.
A note on documentation: Although public writing tends to be documented
less rigorously than academic writing, I’d like you to follow academic
practices of citation in the draft. The final version of the paper can be
submitted in a more stripped-‐down form if full documentation would
conflict with the rhetorical setting of the document. You should explain any
unusual documentation choices in your context memo.
Outcomes Assessment Sheet
The Explainer
Grade:
At
standard
Exceeds
Outstandin
g
Chooses subject appropriate for public audience
Subject choice shows understanding of current
state of the discipline
Chooses genre appropriate to discipline and to
the need of a specified public audience
Contains a concise introduction that sets the
stage for the rest of the article
Develops appropriate appeals to audience
Shows effective highlighting of salient details
Uses appropriate and consistent level of syntax
and vocabulary
Demonstrates consistently clear writing
Shows responsible and careful attention to
counter-‐perspectives, qualifications, and
limitations
Demonstrates careful negotiation among
possible conflicting rhetorical values
Uses appropriate citation conventions and
explains any departures from typical practice
Fulfills length and genre requirements
Poor
Low
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