CS 147: Team Project Development and
Professional Ethics
Writing Assignments
- First, read these instructions.
- Submission:
For the first writing assignment, email your documents to
the TA. For all later assignments,
you will post your documents to your
section of the course wiki.
We will use this naming convention:
if your pseudonym is JarJar, call your file JarJar-W1.1 for
writing assignment W1.1.
- [Due 9pm Jan 22] Writing Assignment W1.1: "For Dummies".
In this assignment you will explain a technical idea to a
non-technical audience. Start by choosing one of these topics:
- What is a file?
- How does a magnetic hard disk work?
- What is paging?
- What is a device driver?
- What is a compiler?
- How does a digital camera work?
- What does programming mean?
You will write two explanations, each not more than 250 words.
You should write the first explanation for an elderly relative:
use an informal, engaging style. You should write the second
one for a more formal, perhaps august, non-technical audience
(the Senate Intelligence Committee, for example).
- [Due 9pm Jan 29] Writing Assignment PR1.1 (Peer Review of W1.1).
You have each been assigned to review the writing assignments of three
of your peers. Submit your review using the Wiki.
- [Due 9pm Feb 5] Writing Assignment W1.2.
Submit your second draft of writing assignment W1. Your draft
should reflect at least some of the suggested edits from peer-review.
If you disagree with the peer-review, explain why - you can
put down this explanation at the end of the draft.
- [Due 9pm Feb 5] Writing Assignment W2.1: "The Sentence".
Write a single sentence, which you can make as long as you like,
that describes your company. You can think of this sentence
as the lead sentence on the homepage of your company's website.
The sentence should succinctly describe your company, what
it does, what it sells, why it's different - anything that
makes your company look good.
- [Due 9pm Feb 5] Writing Assignment W3.1: "The Paragraph".
Describe your company in a single paragraph, no more than 300 words.
Think of this paragraph as the executive summary of your business
plan. This paragraph should appeal to investors and try to
answer some of Mario's questions
as possible.
- [Due 9pm Feb 12] Writing Assignment PR2.1 (Peer Review of W2.1).
- [Due 9pm Feb 12] Writing Assignment PR3.1 (Peer Review of W3.1).
- [Due 9pm Feb 19] Writing Assignment W2.2.
Your second draft of W2.1, "The Sentence".
- [Due 9pm Feb 19] Writing Assignment W3.2.
Your second draft of W3.1, "The Paragraph".
- [Due 9pm Feb 26] Writing Assignment W4.1: "The Biz Plan".
Write a complete business plan (max length: 5 pages). Your plan
should start with "The Sentence", followed by an executive
summary ("The Paragraph"), followed by the body of the business
plan. We will expect the business plan to contain real numbers,
references, examples of competitors' websites, and anything else
you think will strengthen your business plan. Again, your
plan should generally answer the kinds
of questions that Mario has posed.
Your business plan should include financial data: anticipated
expenses and revenue over the next three years, and also your
exit strategy: how you expect the investors to make a killing.
Your projects will need to be backed up with supporting arguments
and justification.
Although you have developed the content and details of your business
in a team, you will submit your own business plan document.
- [Due 9pm Mar 5] Writing Assignment W5.1: "The Tech Plan".
Write a 2-page technical plan that describes, technically,
what is involved when a user interacts with your site. You can
think of this as a high-level document specifying your technical
needs to a third-party software contractor who will develop your site.
Again, you will write this as an individual, even though you've
discussed technical details in your team.
- [Team submission, due 9pm Mar 19] Writing Assignment W4.2: "The Biz Plan".
Second draft of the business plan.
The second and third drafts of the Biz Plan are
the only writing assignments
that can be submitted as a team. You can either merge the drafts into
a nice final draft, or better yet, pick the best one so far.
- [Due 9pm Mar 26] Writing Assignment W5.2: "The Tech Plan".
Second draft of the technical plan.
- [Team submission, due 9pm Apr 2] Writing Assignment W4.3: "The Biz Plan".
Final draft of the business plan.
- [Due 9pm Apr 9] Writing Assignment W6.1: "Future Turing Award Winner".
Imagine you are a science or technology writer for the Washington Post
in the year 2020 and your task is to write a readable profile (about
1000 words) of that year's Turing or Nobel prize winner. Invent a person and a
biography, and write about the problem this person solved to get
the award. Your write-up should include some interesting biographical
tidbits, an explanation of the technical problem and why it's
important, and an account of how the problem was solved.
Of course, you can make up all the details: we will not worry
about technical realism.
- [Due 9pm Apr 23] Writing Assignment W6.2: "Future Turing Award Winner".
Second draft of W6.1.
- [Due 9pm Apr 30] Writing Assignment W7.1: "The Brochure".
This is an easy one. Simply put together into a single webpage
the following: The Sentence, The Paragraph, and some screenshots from
your website. Because the server machine may be taken down,
this will serve as a record of your work and as an example to
future classes. Submit a ZIP file to the TA containing the one HTML file
and associated images.