Thoughts, Week 8

We've had the past two weeks to do two assignments: update our proposal (as usual), and actually start our ILP Portfolio. We were supposed to start it earlier this semester, but now it's actually due. Well, the first part of it anyway. That's a good thing because it means I took some time to flesh it out and make sure all the required content is there. And this way, I've got a head start on the rest of it, since I've got the design and format already done.

The ILP site updating was mostly uneventful. The core MLOs are listed on the ITCD site, and I still had evidence for just about everything. I didn't have as much for my math class (Math 170: Discrete Mathematics), and I showed evidence for Advanced C++ rather than regular C++. (I essentially assessed out of regular C++. I took a similar course at my old college and I convinced the professor that I shouldn't have to repeat the material.) It all works out though.

The two sections we added this time were the Milestones and Timeline. Creating Milestones was good because it forced me to break my tasks down into very small parts. Creating the Timeline after that was easy, it just involved figuring out how to tell Excel to do what I wanted it to do. Putting the Timeline into MS Word was the hardest part, actually. It's hard to make that much information fit on a single page in a visual format. I got it done though, and it still looks okay in my opinion.

Thoughts, Week 6

This week we added the Budget section and the Testing and Evaluation section to our proposals. I liked creating the budget. It wasn't too hard, since we had previous examples to use, and it was fun to see how much a project like this would really cost. It makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something, or at least that I'm going to be.

The budget section still feels a bit short, even though I added in more resources as our instructor suggested. I hadn't thought of things like a computer to use Adobe Dreamweaver, or a testing server. As I found out when I presented, we will have testing servers available to us. It's amazing how many resources students have access to. We can use all the Adobe software for free in the labs, and some labs even have top-end programs like Maya. That costs thousands of dollars usually, but it's all provided by the school. I think CSUMB gets some good deals on it too, but still.

I took some time to add section headers to the early sections of my proposal, and it looks a bit better now, I think. I still haven't done the research I need to about other projects. I should've found time by now, but between work for my other classes and time at my Service Learning site, I haven't.

Thoughts, Week 5

This week was easier than past weeks in some ways, and harder in others. This week I will be presenting my proposed Capstone to the programming teachers. There was no work to do on our Capstone Proposal paper, but I used the time to prepare for the presentation.

It seems a bit unbalanced for the people that presented last week - they had last week's work to do on top of preparing to present.

I think my presentation is strong. I've got all the parts I should have, and a few others just in case. I've got a slide I plan to skip over unless it's asked about. It never hurts to be prepared, right? I've gone through the presentation a few times. I always don't do well when rehearsing, but when I'm presenting I pull it off decently well, I think.

I don't have many pictures in my presentation. I guess I should add a few, but I'm not sure what would be good. A picture of iLearn? Everybody that's going to be there knows what iLearn looks like. Ah well. I've got the information, and that should be good enough.