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Rescheduled due to Hurricane Michael!

Join us for the Can You Hear Me Now? Podcasting as a Teaching Tool webinar with Jennifer Goode.

10:30 am Pacific / 11:30 am Mountain / 12:30 pm Central / 1:30 pm Eastern

Thursday, October 18, 2018

About the webinar

Podcasting is one of the fastest growing areas of content production today. How can technical communication instructors capitalize on this rapidly expanding technology? This session will demonstrate how students can develop technical skills, increase content knowledge and understanding, and refine communication skills as they create podcasts for their course projects. It will also introduce the tools and technology necessary to set up your own course podcasting project. Finally, the session will share instructor and student reflections from a recent course that used podcasts as a major course project.

We will be recording the webinar, so feel free to enjoy the presentation knowing that you can see the recording at a later date.

Intended Audience

The content will be introductory (e.g., > “101 level”) and will also be valuable to practitioner level attendees.

About the Speaker: Jennifer Goode

Jennifer E. Goode, Ph.D., is an instructor in the Department of Technical Communication at Mercer University in Macon, GA. She is the founder and director of Mercer’s Distance and Online Teaching (DOT) Lab, a collaborative initiative to support faculty development needs in the area of online teaching and instructional design. Dr. Goode has previously served in corporate, government, and higher education organizations in the areas of computer-based training, online course administration, and content management.

Dr. Goode earned her Ph.D. and M.Ed. in Human Resource Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned her B.S. in Technical Communication from Mercer University.

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Join us for the Saying, “Yes, and…?” to Leadership Opportunities webinar with Ben Woelk.

10:30 am Pacific / 11:30 am Mountain / 12:30 pm Central / 1:30 pm Eastern

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

About the webinar

What If?

“Yes, and…?” is the hallmark of improv comedy. It’s also key to our growth as leaders. What if we said, “Yes, and…?” when approached about taking a leadership role in an organization?

For many of us, our first reaction to leadership requests are, “No, because…,” or perhaps, “There’s no way I can do that!” We live in an increasingly fast-paced culture with many opportunities on which to spend our time. Many of us can be quite guarded when considering external commitments. Sometimes being guarded is warranted because of our current level of obligations; sometimes we just have an automatic “No” response. We know what saying “no” provides us: security, peacefulness, free time, and a comfort zone.

Let’s look at what saying, “Yes, and…?” has done for me and what it may do for you.

We will be recording the webinar, so feel free to enjoy the presentation knowing that you can see the recording at a later date.

Intended Audience

The content will be introductory (e.g., > “101 level”) and will also be valuable to practitioner level attendees.

About the Speaker: Ben Woelk

BEN WOELK (ben.woelk@gmail.com), CISSP, CPTC, is Vice President of STC. A frequent conference presenter, Ben has received numerous Society and local awards, including the 2017 STC President’s Award. Ben’s 20+ years techcomm experience includes management, SW and HW documentation, ISO 9001 documentation, instructor-led and web-based training, end user communications, and policies and procedures. Find Ben on his website, Benwoelk.com, or on Twitter as @benwoelk.

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Join us for the “Teaching Technical Writing to Engineers: What Works?” webinar with Noel Atzmiller.

10:30 am Pacific / 11:30 am Mountain / 12:30 pm Central / 1:30 pm Eastern

Thursday, December 6, 2018

About the webinar

This session is intended for technical communicators who have been tasked with providing technical writing training to engineers (and other highly educated, technical individuals). Attendees receive information about 10 lessons learned that they can use when developing and leading their training sessions.

We will be recording the webinar, so feel free to enjoy the presentation knowing that you can see the recording at a later date.

Intended Audience

The content will be introductory (e.g., > “101 level”) and will also be valuable to practitioner level attendees.

About the Speaker: Noel Atzmiller

Noel Atzmiller began his 34-year career in technical communications in the petrochemical engineering and construction industry. During his career he has produced many documents for other industries including natural gas transmission, I.T. and oil/gas. Noel has authored several articles that have been published in corporate and oil/gas trade publications. In 2010, he was awarded the Best of Show at the STC International Communication Summit in Dallas, Texas. His award-winning document chronicled the first 75 years of Baker Atlas, a previous division of Baker Hughes. Noel is currently the Manager of Technical Publications at Baker Hughes, a GE company. At Baker Hughes, Noel helps authors by providing many services including document editing and presenting training sessions for writing conference technical papers. Noel has travelled to Baker Hughes offices in nine countries and to many offices in the US to lead these technical writing training sessions.

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Join us for the Technological Adaptability: Formalizing a Vital Skill webinar with Melonie McMichael.

10:30 am Pacific / 11:30 am Mountain / 12:30 pm Central / 1:30 pm Eastern

Thursday, September 13, 2018

About the webinar

We talk about it all the time, yet we have no specific word for it. We know it is a needed and valuable skill, yet we do not teach it. We see it as part of our technology skills, yet do not recognize it as a skill on its own. What is this nebulous ability that is so important to our field yet so little quantified? Technological adaptability is the ability to learn technology quickly or deal with technology issues efficiently and with confidence. A skill in and of itself that can be learned and taught, most of us are required to demonstrate this ability to excel in our field. The goal of this session is to establish the significance and application of technological adaptability to our field, to provide our field with a common language to discuss technological adaptability, and to assist the individual in assessing and expanding on their own adaptability skills.

We will be recording the webinar, so feel free to enjoy the presentation knowing that you can see the recording at a later date.

Intended Audience

The content will be introductory (e.g., > “101 level”) and will also be valuable to practitioner level attendees.

About the Speaker: Dr. Melonie McMichael

Having been in the field of technical communication for 25 years, Dr. McMichael has experience in both industry and academia. She worked as a technical communicator in Austin’s high-tech sector for over a decade, including multiple stints at AMD as well as contracting work for 3M and working as a lone writer for a small software company. She held multiple roles in the field that ranged from production through writing to print buying. In 2010, Melonie earned her PhD in Technical Communication and Rhetoric from Texas Tech University where she taught for five years. Since 2011, she has taught at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs in the Professional and Technical Writing emphasis. With over a decade’s worth of workplace experience and another decade teaching technical communication, she brings both scholarship and industry knowledge to the classroom.

Working in the field as a desktop publisher in the 1990s when technology was changing rapidly, Dr. McMichael was required to become technologically adaptable herself. After entering academia, she found that technology was seldom being taught in technical communication programs, primarily because of the changing nature of technology. Looking over her own experience, she created a course that addresses that issue and has been successfully teaching technological adaptability to professional and technical writing students for six years.

She consults on all things technologically adaptable under the company name Technodaptability, LLC.

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