Thoughts, Week 2

This week, web site modification was easy for me. I had to add a paragraph describing my Capstone idea, which was easy once I'd selected an idea and written the 200 more words describing it. I was basically summarizing from a larger document. I also changed the formatting of the assignments a little bit. I'm using my website template from my Web Design class, which has cool stuff like CSS dropdown menus. In that class, I had to talk a bit about each assignment, so each one needed its own page. In this class, the files are self-descriptive, so without a page describing each assignment, I needed to revise the structure of my links.

That's just esoteric stuff though, not what this class is about. Our main goal this week was to select one of our two ideas from last week. I had to think about it a lot. I've had some good times with Tarsier, and I can tell that they're a good group of people, and a good project to be involved with. Still, they're more science-oriented than I am, and the iLearn portfolio system is closer to what I see myself doing once I finish college. I ended up going with that (the iLearn portfolio system, that is).

The other thing we had to do this week was find and talk to a Capstone adviser. My concentration is programming, both of my potential Capstones are mainly about programming, there's only one pure programming teacher at CSUMB, I've taken many classes from him and know him well, and we've been working together this semester for a different class (independent study). Suffice to say, this part wasn't a problem. I didn't even look at this part of the assignment until today, which turned out to be my downfall - we have to get our potential adviser to sign a piece of paper saying we really did talk to them. Oh well, we meet Mondays for the independent study, so I'll do it then.

Class Summary, Sept 6

This assignment is about what I learned in class on September 6, 2007 (last Thursday).

We had three speakers today: Rosalie Strong, Kevin Cahill, and Young JoonByun. Rosalie's specialty is Instructional Design, which means designing the training modules that are used to teach people things. She has designed training modules for all kinds of things, from school topics to working with nuclear reactors. She's the person we should go to if our Capstone is about solving educational/training problems, developing new skills, or changing behaviors.

Kevin Cahill is a website designer and a nature lover. I think his hobby works well with his profession; both involve art. He's the guy to go to for anything about websites. I personally might visit him if I have website-design-related questions outside of class, since it looks like he knows how websites work from the inside as well as the outside. He talked about making websites look the same across different browsers, and I know that's a huge problem in the world of web design. I know the field well enough to know that he really knows his stuff.


The third presenter was Young JoonByun, and I think it odd that his last name is two names concatenated. He talked about programming. His presentation was definitely the least flashy, but I don't think that made it boring. I want to work in the field of programming, so his experience is probably most relevant to me.

Both Kevin and Young talked about something besides their work here, which I thought was interesting. Kevin said we should all take a nutrition class. That's weird, but it makes sense in a way. I took a health class in my previous college, and it had some very good info. Young talked about the new Computer Science major opening up, and I'm quite happy he did. For one thing, I'd heard about it before, but Young clarified its purpose. For another, this tells me that Young is a great guy to talk to if you're interested in programming - he'll tell you useful things that you probably didn't know.

Lastly, I learned how to start a blog on Blogger. That was a small part of the class, but I think it was important. I knew I didn't know how to do it before I went up there, and I knew I'd fumble with it and probably be pointed in the right direction by my classmates. Eric told us that anybody could start a blog with 5-15 minutes trial and error. I was trying to be the example of that.

ILP Review

For this assignment, we are to go to portfolio.csumb.edu and choose two portfolios to read carefully. By random selection I chose the year 2006, and I looked at all the profiles there. Of those, I think Jennifer and Imelda have the best looking profiles. I choose them.

I like both of these. I think they both work well to deliver their content, and they are both fine products. That said, I like Jennifer's more than Imelda's. Imelda concentrated more on having a nice, neat, compact portfolio, whereas Jennifer used as much room as necessary to describe the courses, its requirements, and her results. Jennifer's is very spread out, and a somewhat more compact design might have been better, but I think Imelda went too far with compacting it.

Still, both are fine portfolios, and any information that you need is easy to find. I specifically chose these two because they initially looked good. I'd rather not look through bad work, and I bet teachers don't like to either. Some of the other portfolios looked too flashy, too disorganized, or too plain. There's nothing wrong with a plain portfolio, but people like me are more likely to choose the ones that look good without being garish.

Employers are going to look for that kind of thing too. I think either of these people would be proud to show employers their portfolios; they are both fine works.

Learning Pathways

For those not in CST 300, this is an assignment where we look at the pathways to graduation and choose which one we feel best fits our career goals.

I think the 2.5-year one is best for me. I'm taking my last few General Ed classes this semester, so if I focus on my major for the next 2 years I should get it done.

In terms of focuses, I still plan to do the programming focus, or "Software Design" as it's called.

I'm not certain I'll do the Tmac degree at all though. I'm hoping to go into the new CSIT degree YoungJoon talked about.