Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Class Summary, Oct 25
There was no class today, and thus there is nothing to summarize. Dr. Tao also said we don't have homework this week.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Class Summary, Oct 18
Today we started with a short Moodle vs Blackboard discussion. Seems most people like Moodle better, for a variety of reasons. For some it gives more detailed information, for others the interface is easier to use.
All the speakers this week were fresh graduates who'd been in the business for a few years at most. Eric Tao says it was planned like this; last week was graduates that had been working in the industry for awhile, this week was fresh ones, and next week will be graduates that have been working for a long time and are in upper-level positions.
The first speaker was Christina Frannie, who did web design. She'd been in the business for awhile before CSUMB, and came here for color/design theory. Her capstone was the site for the Pacific Grove Police Department. She's currently a webmaster/system analyst, but I didn't catch what company she works for. She says that what you know today will not be good enough for tomorrow. She also says that she learns something new every day (I've heard this from a lot of graduates). She recommends we keep up with the industry trends so we continue to be valuable employees. One of the most important things when doing projects is to back up your ideas with examples. She did this quite well for her capstone. She researched a lot of other police department's websites before starting, and had examples for every aspect of the design she proposed.
The next speaker was Francine, a graphic designer. She works on campus in the Alumni & Visitor's Center. We probably won't see her much because she does in-house design for CSUMB. There's quite a difference between in-house design and out-of-house design, and she recommends the latter. She's assured of always having projects to do, but they're always things like "design this flier by 5pm" or "we need this redesigned for 2007 within 2 hours", never long projects. This means she's always doing different projects, and she can't put a lot of effort into any particular one to make it great. Because she's in-house, the school pays for her to work, and she's free to her clients. This makes them feel that her opinions aren't important; she'll say "[based on my years of design education,] I think it'd look better like this", and her clients will insist that she do it their way, even if it's uglier, or wouldn't appeal to the audience. One person's hatred of a particular color could mean that color isn't used, when that color may be the best color for that brochure. Francine can ignore her color preferences thanks to her years of design education, but she's still at the mercy of her clients because she does in-house design.
Margo was the third speaker, and I don't have very much information about her. She majored in art, with only a minor in CST (Computer Science & Technology, I think - the degree is named Telecommunications, multimedia, and applied computing now). She also works in a design firm. Since she's more of an artist than a computer person, she draws out her designs and then transfers them to a computer.
The conversation got around to learning new skills, and Eric pointed out that one great way to keep learning new skills and improve yourself is to keep taking college classes in various things, and most companies have ways set up for you to do this.
Each speaker was asked to give us some general advice. Christina said to talk to students about classes, and specifically don't take Discrete Mathematics and Computer Architecture at the same time - it's too much work. I don't know if that would be true for me; I'm taking Discrete Mathematics, and I find it pretty easy, but then I have a very mathematical mind. Margo said to take extra classes, that way you have more skills to put on a résumé, and you're more valuable to an employer. Francine said to participate in contests and investigate potential jobs before you have to.
Final piece of info from the class: A good mark of success is being able to present your idea to a stranger who doesn't know anything about the field.
All the speakers this week were fresh graduates who'd been in the business for a few years at most. Eric Tao says it was planned like this; last week was graduates that had been working in the industry for awhile, this week was fresh ones, and next week will be graduates that have been working for a long time and are in upper-level positions.
The first speaker was Christina Frannie, who did web design. She'd been in the business for awhile before CSUMB, and came here for color/design theory. Her capstone was the site for the Pacific Grove Police Department. She's currently a webmaster/system analyst, but I didn't catch what company she works for. She says that what you know today will not be good enough for tomorrow. She also says that she learns something new every day (I've heard this from a lot of graduates). She recommends we keep up with the industry trends so we continue to be valuable employees. One of the most important things when doing projects is to back up your ideas with examples. She did this quite well for her capstone. She researched a lot of other police department's websites before starting, and had examples for every aspect of the design she proposed.
The next speaker was Francine, a graphic designer. She works on campus in the Alumni & Visitor's Center. We probably won't see her much because she does in-house design for CSUMB. There's quite a difference between in-house design and out-of-house design, and she recommends the latter. She's assured of always having projects to do, but they're always things like "design this flier by 5pm" or "we need this redesigned for 2007 within 2 hours", never long projects. This means she's always doing different projects, and she can't put a lot of effort into any particular one to make it great. Because she's in-house, the school pays for her to work, and she's free to her clients. This makes them feel that her opinions aren't important; she'll say "[based on my years of design education,] I think it'd look better like this", and her clients will insist that she do it their way, even if it's uglier, or wouldn't appeal to the audience. One person's hatred of a particular color could mean that color isn't used, when that color may be the best color for that brochure. Francine can ignore her color preferences thanks to her years of design education, but she's still at the mercy of her clients because she does in-house design.
Margo was the third speaker, and I don't have very much information about her. She majored in art, with only a minor in CST (Computer Science & Technology, I think - the degree is named Telecommunications, multimedia, and applied computing now). She also works in a design firm. Since she's more of an artist than a computer person, she draws out her designs and then transfers them to a computer.
The conversation got around to learning new skills, and Eric pointed out that one great way to keep learning new skills and improve yourself is to keep taking college classes in various things, and most companies have ways set up for you to do this.
Each speaker was asked to give us some general advice. Christina said to talk to students about classes, and specifically don't take Discrete Mathematics and Computer Architecture at the same time - it's too much work. I don't know if that would be true for me; I'm taking Discrete Mathematics, and I find it pretty easy, but then I have a very mathematical mind. Margo said to take extra classes, that way you have more skills to put on a résumé, and you're more valuable to an employer. Francine said to participate in contests and investigate potential jobs before you have to.
Final piece of info from the class: A good mark of success is being able to present your idea to a stranger who doesn't know anything about the field.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Class Summary, Oct 11
Today we had graduates come in and talk. The first two were Pauline Sung and Erin Salano. They're married, I think. Pauline is from Hong Kong. She started here as an international student, and she did a custom track that focused on both tech and design. She's currently working for Trofholz Technology, Inc., which does government contracts. Her capstone was a database-driven website for her sister's bridal gown business, back in Hong Kong. It sounds like an unusual capstone to me, but it's got all the elements of a professional website, so it worked. Her advice to us is to study hard and talk to our teachers, especially here, because teachers are so open. I think that's true everywhere. It was certainly true at my old college, College of the Redwoods.
Erin is a military guy, and he's got a military job. He's working at DLI, the Defense Language Institute. He's running a college inside a military base. It sounds like the students are getting a good education - they all get a 30gig iPod and headphones, and a Tablet PC. A lot of the material is in audio and/or video form, so the school gets a lot of use out of their investment in their students. They're also rolling out wireless this year, which is tricky inside a military base because the military doesn't like anything that's potentially insecure. He says the Computer Science textbooks are the same everywhere, and we need to push ourselves through the material. That's not true for me; Computer Science is what I love doing, so working hard at it comes naturally to me.
The third speaker was Caroline, and I never heard her last name. She majored in Instructional Design, Multimedia, and Web Design. Lots of majors. She got a job at the Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System, and I can tell she loves it. She's their webmaster - a title they didn't even have when she was first hired. She got hired part-time, and the more she worked, the more they wanted her to do other projects. Everything involved web design, but there are many different things you can do within that field, even for a single organization. She runs six websites now, including a portal for doctors, a portal for patients, and the general website for the organization. She says she learns something new every day in Photoshop or Dreamweaver, and she's worked with those programs just about constantly since she graduated.
Jennifer was the last graduate to talk today. She majored in Instructional Design. She liked CSUMB because there were a lot of real-world projects. Her capstone is a good example of this: she made a flash-based interactive map of a local park's trails. This is the kind of thing that elementary school students could use to explore the park before they take a field trip there. She says the key to capstones is having a group of people. I'm not sure if that means a group to work on the project, or a group of test subjects to help you refine your project. Either way, I can see the benefits.
We had a question-and-answer round, and the first question Dr. Tao asked everybody was what they were looking for when hiring people. Caroline said she was looking for people that overachieved instead of just doing the minimum. Erin said that troubleshooting is very important, as is showing your work to employers. (I could tell that he was good at troubleshooting, and that he knew computers well.) Pauline said people skills were the most important thing. Jennifer said that paying attention and following directions were vital, attitude is everything, and that you should let your talent shine on the job, as well as backing away sometimes and letting other people's talents shine too. Everybody is good at something different.
We also had one staff member talk. His name was John Ittelson. He seemed like a boring old guy at first, but he turned out to be pretty entertaining. He said he was dyslexic - he stays up at night and wonders if there's a dog. He got depressed awhile ago and threw himself behind a bus.
He studied at Chico, which is an infamous party school. He didn't party there though. Ten years after he graduated he went back and taught there. Chico was named a top party school again by Playboy Magazine. He brought a copy into class, held it up, and asked "Where are the parties?"
Somebody in the back row shouted, "Think about it John, you're not invited."
Thanks to that warm welcome, he came to CSUMB and started teaching here.
Erin is a military guy, and he's got a military job. He's working at DLI, the Defense Language Institute. He's running a college inside a military base. It sounds like the students are getting a good education - they all get a 30gig iPod and headphones, and a Tablet PC. A lot of the material is in audio and/or video form, so the school gets a lot of use out of their investment in their students. They're also rolling out wireless this year, which is tricky inside a military base because the military doesn't like anything that's potentially insecure. He says the Computer Science textbooks are the same everywhere, and we need to push ourselves through the material. That's not true for me; Computer Science is what I love doing, so working hard at it comes naturally to me.
The third speaker was Caroline, and I never heard her last name. She majored in Instructional Design, Multimedia, and Web Design. Lots of majors. She got a job at the Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System, and I can tell she loves it. She's their webmaster - a title they didn't even have when she was first hired. She got hired part-time, and the more she worked, the more they wanted her to do other projects. Everything involved web design, but there are many different things you can do within that field, even for a single organization. She runs six websites now, including a portal for doctors, a portal for patients, and the general website for the organization. She says she learns something new every day in Photoshop or Dreamweaver, and she's worked with those programs just about constantly since she graduated.
Jennifer was the last graduate to talk today. She majored in Instructional Design. She liked CSUMB because there were a lot of real-world projects. Her capstone is a good example of this: she made a flash-based interactive map of a local park's trails. This is the kind of thing that elementary school students could use to explore the park before they take a field trip there. She says the key to capstones is having a group of people. I'm not sure if that means a group to work on the project, or a group of test subjects to help you refine your project. Either way, I can see the benefits.
We had a question-and-answer round, and the first question Dr. Tao asked everybody was what they were looking for when hiring people. Caroline said she was looking for people that overachieved instead of just doing the minimum. Erin said that troubleshooting is very important, as is showing your work to employers. (I could tell that he was good at troubleshooting, and that he knew computers well.) Pauline said people skills were the most important thing. Jennifer said that paying attention and following directions were vital, attitude is everything, and that you should let your talent shine on the job, as well as backing away sometimes and letting other people's talents shine too. Everybody is good at something different.
We also had one staff member talk. His name was John Ittelson. He seemed like a boring old guy at first, but he turned out to be pretty entertaining. He said he was dyslexic - he stays up at night and wonders if there's a dog. He got depressed awhile ago and threw himself behind a bus.
He studied at Chico, which is an infamous party school. He didn't party there though. Ten years after he graduated he went back and taught there. Chico was named a top party school again by Playboy Magazine. He brought a copy into class, held it up, and asked "Where are the parties?"
Somebody in the back row shouted, "Think about it John, you're not invited."
Thanks to that warm welcome, he came to CSUMB and started teaching here.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Class Summary, Oct 4
There was no class today, and thus there is nothing to summarize. Dr. Tao also said we don't have homework this week.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Class Summary, Sept 27
This assignment is about what I learned in class on September 27, 2007 (last Thursday). This is the only thing I'm posting this week because we don't have many assignments that involve writing.
There's one other one, but that's just finding a job we might go into after graduation, and I already did that for the Critical Response #1 for my CST300L class. I like this job. I don't think that exact job will still be open when I graduate, but that's the type of job I'm looking for.
Anyway, today in class we talked about project management. In order for it to be successful it needs to
There are a lot of things that can make a project fail: poor communication, disagreements, a chang in the environment or the constraints of the project, people leaving[1], personality conflicts, poor management, poorly defined project goals[2], and a failure to comply with standards and regulations.
[1] In big projects, people always leave. Managers can't stop it, they can only lessen the impact of it happening. Employees should keep good notes, so future employees can read those notes and pick up where the first employee left off. The notes aren't just about what was done, they're also about what was tried that failed. That way those things don't get tried again.
[2] I hate not having poorly defined project goals. I just hate it. I do something, and the person I'm doing it for changes what they want. Now, for every project-like thing I do, I clarify the goals first. That way I can go back and say "no, you said to do it like this".
We were shown several ways to break down our time. I didn't copy them down - stuff like that is intuitive to me. I end up getting it done somehow.
Next we talked a bit about goals. Goals need to be:
Dr. Bude Su talked to us about capstones. She's got a degree in instructional design, which should really be called instructional technology these days. It involves using different strategies to make education effective. There are jobs all over in this subject; every organization could use effective education. Bobbi teaches CST 400 and 401, which involve designing a capstone and then developing it.
Sathya Narayanan does networking. I first met him in my Math 170 (Discrete Mathematics) class. He gave a presentation to the class about how useful it is for programming. Knowing something about the material, and knowing something about programming, I quite agree. He talked to us today about having a job verses a career (a job is just a source of money, a career is a lifelong place to work and grow), and about how more training means more money in the workplace.
Valerie Landau is a web designer. She used to write the game design documents that graphic artists, programmers, etc use to make games. She's been in the computer industry for quite awhile. She was there for the vaccuum tube -> semiconductor switchover. She's used punch cards. She's working on more modern stuff now though. She's teaching instructional design, and she has a side project developing a keyboard in a glove. It should be ready by January, and she's looking for interns to help with the project. She sounds like a fun person to work with.
The last speaker was Bobbi Long. She does communication design and typography. That stuff is useful for more than just newspaper editors - knowledge of typography inspires good logos and attractive documents. Bobbi knows 5 languages, and she's worked on all kinds of visual things - logos, newspapers, brochures, fliers, etc.
There's one other one, but that's just finding a job we might go into after graduation, and I already did that for the Critical Response #1 for my CST300L class. I like this job. I don't think that exact job will still be open when I graduate, but that's the type of job I'm looking for.
Anyway, today in class we talked about project management. In order for it to be successful it needs to
- produce the correct product,
- produce it in a timely manner, and
- do it within the budget
There are a lot of things that can make a project fail: poor communication, disagreements, a chang in the environment or the constraints of the project, people leaving[1], personality conflicts, poor management, poorly defined project goals[2], and a failure to comply with standards and regulations.
[1] In big projects, people always leave. Managers can't stop it, they can only lessen the impact of it happening. Employees should keep good notes, so future employees can read those notes and pick up where the first employee left off. The notes aren't just about what was done, they're also about what was tried that failed. That way those things don't get tried again.
[2] I hate not having poorly defined project goals. I just hate it. I do something, and the person I'm doing it for changes what they want. Now, for every project-like thing I do, I clarify the goals first. That way I can go back and say "no, you said to do it like this".
We were shown several ways to break down our time. I didn't copy them down - stuff like that is intuitive to me. I end up getting it done somehow.
Next we talked a bit about goals. Goals need to be:
- Specific
- Measurable - when are we done?
- Agreed upon
- Realistic - must be based on the available resources, knowledge, and time
- Time-framed - Set a clear deadline and stick to it. Specific days like "October 24" are better than general times like "a month from now," because when people learn that something is due "a month from now" that's what they'll remember. In two weeks, it'll still be due "a month from now," and when the deadline comes they'll be suprised because they thought they had almost a month to do it.
Dr. Bude Su talked to us about capstones. She's got a degree in instructional design, which should really be called instructional technology these days. It involves using different strategies to make education effective. There are jobs all over in this subject; every organization could use effective education. Bobbi teaches CST 400 and 401, which involve designing a capstone and then developing it.
Sathya Narayanan does networking. I first met him in my Math 170 (Discrete Mathematics) class. He gave a presentation to the class about how useful it is for programming. Knowing something about the material, and knowing something about programming, I quite agree. He talked to us today about having a job verses a career (a job is just a source of money, a career is a lifelong place to work and grow), and about how more training means more money in the workplace.
Valerie Landau is a web designer. She used to write the game design documents that graphic artists, programmers, etc use to make games. She's been in the computer industry for quite awhile. She was there for the vaccuum tube -> semiconductor switchover. She's used punch cards. She's working on more modern stuff now though. She's teaching instructional design, and she has a side project developing a keyboard in a glove. It should be ready by January, and she's looking for interns to help with the project. She sounds like a fun person to work with.
The last speaker was Bobbi Long. She does communication design and typography. That stuff is useful for more than just newspaper editors - knowledge of typography inspires good logos and attractive documents. Bobbi knows 5 languages, and she's worked on all kinds of visual things - logos, newspapers, brochures, fliers, etc.
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