Posts Tagged ‘college’
My college uses IE6
A room full of PC’s in my college are using IE6. That’s ok with me if it’s deliberate and for research purposes or teaching people web design problems / limitations etc… but if you’re using IE6 along with an old operating system and old computer, well that’s just not cool…
A couple of weeks ago i blogged about itisdown.com – a new website i’m working on. Since then i’ve been busy working on smemon.com but itisdown.com is now ready to go live next week.
As part of a college module assignment i had to touch on portfolio / experience / achievements in IT which got me thinking…
I started a portfolio section on this blog last year but haven’t really updated it. There’s actually quite a bit of stuff i don’t have listed under my portfolio section from logos, to random designs to fully completed websites for clients.
It really is something i must look at and think hard about when i’m redesigning this site. Getting myself in to the routine of adding something to my portfolio on a daily basis would be very beneficial down the line.
Even if it’s just a quick 2 minute sketch of circles and squares, it will get me using photoshop & get me thinking. I’ve already proven i have the discipline to blog daily but if i could come up with a custom design daily, that would really strengthen this blog and my own design skills.
It’s not easy though… anyone can write and anyone can design but not everyone has the time to do both. This is the simple formula to success for this blog;
- Unique Blog Post + Unique Design = Happy readers
However this is what it translates in to in the real world;
- 1 hour + 30 minutes = A hell of a lot of time every day for little / no reward
So i’ve a lot to think about and i’m doing it out loud, but i’m pretty confident it will all help improve smemon.com in the long run…
Before i’d sat any of my exams or even handed in all of my CA work to certain subjects, i blogged about how i felt ‘exams are business‘.
In that post i made predictions about what i’d get for each subject. Now i wasn’t expecting to get everything spot on, but i was expecting to be be accurate with my overall average mark. Here’s how wrong i was (in % terms) with my predictions.
- database management systems 0%
- broadband technologies +2%
- sys admin +4%
- web applications +11%
- project +17%
- training & support +17%
Overall difference from what i predicted +8.5%
I passed everything (as i expected). I predicted an overall average of 58% and my overall average was in fact almost 67%. So i was out by just under 9% which is quite a bit, but then again i made those predictions before i’d even sat the exams. Once i’d sat the exams i knew i had done slightly better than i’d estimated, but i would have added maybe 5% on to my prediction of 58%…
So overall, i’m happy. Underestimated my results in everything. They’re actually my best set of results since the first semester in first year…
- year one semester 1 70.8%
- year one semester 2 57%
- year two semester 3 61.5%
- year two semester 4 57%
- year three semester 5 66.8%
- year three semester 6 ?
As you can see from the chart above, traditionally i do worse in the latter half of the year and that’s almost ‘deliberate’. Whilst i never want to repeat any subjects, i make a real effort not to fail any subjects at christmas because it would hang over my head for 7/8 months until i’d get a second crack at it. By that stage, i’d have forgotten all the material too, so i’d effectively have to start teaching myself the course from scratch….
With summer exams, if i fail one, the material is still fresh in my mind and there is only about a two month gap to repeating it, plus you have no other subjects to focus on in the mean time, so if you’re going to fail exams, it’s always better to do it in the summer.
Anyway, i don’t think i’ll have any problems this summer… it sounds stupid but i do feel things are getting easier and not harder (as you’d expect)…
One possible reason for that is that we’re slowly starting to do more theory based work now… when i first started college, practical work was alien to me as i was coming from the leaving cert system where final written exams are the be all and end all. But my college course was very hands on…
Although practical work is more interesting, it can be incredibly frustrating and can have a knock on effect in exams (if one thing doesn’t work, you can’t complete other questions)… e.g. if you can’t connect to a network, you obviously can’t share or transfer files…
If that was a written question, i may not know how to connect to a network, but i might know how to share files so i could pick up some marks… so theory based work and written exams probably suit me best – blogging also gives me a huge advantage when it comes to written exams because i’m so used to putting things in my own words… i do it daily and have done for the past 3 and a half years so that can only give me and edge when it comes to answering questions.
If i understand something, i get the marks – no doubt about it… that’s why i can tell straight away when looking at a paper how i’ll do… If i know the answers, i’ll get close to full marks because i can explain myself.
Anyway, 30 modules down now, just 6 to go and i’ll finally have a degree and something to show for the past few years.
This coming monday i’ll be starting back at college after Christmas for the last time in this current degree. So far, i’ve taken and passed 30 modules and now i’ll have just 6 left to complete in order to pick up a “Bachelor of Science in Computing in Applications & Support“.
photo credit: Gildas Le Mentec
What happens after that all hinges on me passing these last 6 modules, so now is not the time to be focusing on anything other than these 6 modules… at least until i’ve weighed them all up and worked out how hard or not i’ll need to work in order to pass them all…
Take out rag week in early march & 2 weeks for easter and i’ve 13 weeks of college to go until exams. We’d normally have another mid term in february and a week off before exams in May, but this year we have no mid-terms which means it’s a hell of a long year for everyone… an extra 3 or 4 weeks in college -v- last year or the year before.
