This week was all about refining our Capstone proposal. It is now structured, and each section has clearly defined requirements. This makes it much easier to write. I'm glad we started out informally, it makes this feel like a big step. I guess it's partly because our proposal now has a title page and a table of contents (even if there are only two things listed so far).
Now that we've got requirements on each section, I know how to separate my ideas, and what to put in each section. Because of this, my proposal feels more like a proposal now. I had some areas I really needed to expand on. I still do, I guess, but I know what kinds of things should go there. Specifically, I feel like my problem statement needs work. I did a fairly good job of not talking about the solution (have you ever tried it? It's hard - I want to dive into the answer and stop talking about the problem), but that part is a bit empty compared to my solution description. Then again, in addition to general requirements, the solution description is the area to talk about how the solution fulfills the 5 required elements of a Capstone. I guess it makes sense that the solution section is bigger than the problem section, but it still makes the problem section feel smaller by comparison.
I also had to get my advisor contact form signed and scanned, but that wasn't a big deal.
Showing posts with label week03. Show all posts
Showing posts with label week03. Show all posts
Friday, September 18, 2009
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Class Summary, Sept 13
This assignment is about what I learned in class on September 13, 2007 (last Thursday).
We had two speakers today: Andrew Coyle and Pat Watson. Andrew's specialty is designing dynamic websites. He says that most websites these days are database-driven, and I think that's true for "big" websites. John Doe's fan page for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie isn't backed by PHP and MySQL, but all of those web 2.0 sites we talked about in the 300L class surely are. Andrew suggested we read magazines, blogs, and newsletters to keep up with what's happening in the tech world. I think that's a great idea; a lot of the conversation starters I know are from Gmail's Web Clips. He specifically recommended the e-newsletter Good Morning, Silicon Valley, and I've added it to my Gmail's Web Clips. It should provide some interesting information.
Pat Watson is on the digital art side of computers. He showed us some examples of digital media from others' classwork. He says forensic visualization is a good field to get into. I've heard that before, and it makes sense. A visualization of a crime scene is a powerful thing, because a lawyer can use it to explain to the jury how a crime happened. It is common knowledge that visual aids help with that kind of thing, but 3d visualizations are much more helpful because they can be manipulated and pictures can be taken from other angles. Justice isn't the only field improved by 3d visualization, there are many others. Medical procedures benefit greatly from 3d models, both for the doctors as they work, and for medical students to better understand the situations they'll be facing.
Pat also told us visualizations are useful for 3d tours. He showed us a 3d tour of the future library, and it looked very impressive. Some realtors put up 3d tours of houses instead of inviting buyers to come see them. I don't think I'd like such a tour, because I'd rather see the house myself and look for problems. Still, a 3d tour would give me a good idea of what a house is like, and it would probably make me more interested than I would be otherwise.
Eric Clinger also spent a few minutes talking about our Individualized Learning Plans. He's going to go over those with us in 1-on-1 meetings. We all signed up for such a meeting. We can also drop in if we have any problems/questions/updates concerning our ILPs, but if we're going to take more than 10 minutes of his time we should schedule a meeting.
Interesting (and unplanned) fact: excluding this sentence, this class summary has the same word count as the last one.
We had two speakers today: Andrew Coyle and Pat Watson. Andrew's specialty is designing dynamic websites. He says that most websites these days are database-driven, and I think that's true for "big" websites. John Doe's fan page for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie isn't backed by PHP and MySQL, but all of those web 2.0 sites we talked about in the 300L class surely are. Andrew suggested we read magazines, blogs, and newsletters to keep up with what's happening in the tech world. I think that's a great idea; a lot of the conversation starters I know are from Gmail's Web Clips. He specifically recommended the e-newsletter Good Morning, Silicon Valley, and I've added it to my Gmail's Web Clips. It should provide some interesting information.
Pat Watson is on the digital art side of computers. He showed us some examples of digital media from others' classwork. He says forensic visualization is a good field to get into. I've heard that before, and it makes sense. A visualization of a crime scene is a powerful thing, because a lawyer can use it to explain to the jury how a crime happened. It is common knowledge that visual aids help with that kind of thing, but 3d visualizations are much more helpful because they can be manipulated and pictures can be taken from other angles. Justice isn't the only field improved by 3d visualization, there are many others. Medical procedures benefit greatly from 3d models, both for the doctors as they work, and for medical students to better understand the situations they'll be facing.
Pat also told us visualizations are useful for 3d tours. He showed us a 3d tour of the future library, and it looked very impressive. Some realtors put up 3d tours of houses instead of inviting buyers to come see them. I don't think I'd like such a tour, because I'd rather see the house myself and look for problems. Still, a 3d tour would give me a good idea of what a house is like, and it would probably make me more interested than I would be otherwise.
Eric Clinger also spent a few minutes talking about our Individualized Learning Plans. He's going to go over those with us in 1-on-1 meetings. We all signed up for such a meeting. We can also drop in if we have any problems/questions/updates concerning our ILPs, but if we're going to take more than 10 minutes of his time we should schedule a meeting.
Interesting (and unplanned) fact: excluding this sentence, this class summary has the same word count as the last one.
My Weekly Schedule
Yep, it's here. I've got lots of free time on Saturdays and Sundays. Unfortunately, I've also usually got homework for Math, Spanish, and CST 300L due Sunday night/Monday morning.
You'll need a Google account to view it, as it's a Google Document. I got the idea to do it like this from Phillip Wessels.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pW4UTAoRL6v_zVK3fHG4dWA
Edit Sept 26: I've updated this to include Anime Club, and tagged it as week4 because it's mentioned as an assignment for that week too.
You'll need a Google account to view it, as it's a Google Document. I got the idea to do it like this from Phillip Wessels.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pW4UTAoRL6v_zVK3fHG4dWA
Edit Sept 26: I've updated this to include Anime Club, and tagged it as week4 because it's mentioned as an assignment for that week too.
Study Strategies and Habits
For this assignment, we are to go to read adprima.com/studyout.htm and reflect on the strategies/tips described.
This site has some good info, and a few tips that I don't think would work so well. Overall through, it's got a lot more good info than bad. Like it says, it's ranked high on Google, and it's used by many schools, so it has proven itself useful to many people already.
One of the things it describes that I am weak with is making every hour count. I'm great at finding a distraction, whether it's Youtube, Facebook, or just an interesting Wikipedia article. So far in my academic career I've managed to get along alright; it's interesting living by the skin of my teeth. I find that I work best under pressure. I hardly ever turn things in late because I'm just slacking off, I know my limits and when the deadline is approaching I get to work. Still, working hard earlier and having fun later would be a safer way to do things.
Another thing I'm weak with is outlining textbooks. I've never depended heavily on books in my academic career, and I don't expect to. If a teacher teaches differently from the book, I don't need to learn from the book because that teacher's assignments and tests are going to be different from the book's instructions. If a teacher teaches straight out of the book, I don't need to learn from the book because the teachers already taught me that material. I'll certainly review it as I complete my assignments, but by that point it's stuff I already know and thus I'm not learning anything completely foreign to me.
My one great weakness is examinations. I just plain suck at them. It's because I work slowly and carefully, which is great for homework, but bad for timed things like tests.
My grammar and punctuation is strong. I guess I got it from my mother. She used to be an English teacher. She reviewed all my papers when I was younger, and now I always try to have perfect grammar. I often play around with sentences and rewrite them until they sound splendid, especially for important papers.
My lecture notes are great too. Well, they're great for me. I'm good at getting the main idea from both books and lessons, and then distilling that onto paper as a few lines of notes, when everybody around me is writing down exactly what the teacher said / wrote on the board. That never helps me! Say it takes a teacher 30 minutes and 3 pages of notes to make the entire class understand an idea. That teacher certainly doesn't need 3 pages of notes to remind himself/herself how it works, and once a student learns the idea the student won't either. I learn during class, and take a few notes to remind myself of the concepts. To somebody else, my notes will mean nothing, but if they ask me I'll be able to explain it in great detail from those notes.
There were also a few weird tips in that list. The first is just a grammar issue, but I thought it was funny enough to mention. "Never study within 30 minutes of going to sleep." Due to the ambiguousness of the word "within," this could mean "Don't study for 30 minutes before going to sleep," or "Don't story for 30 minutes after going to sleep." Personally, I try my best not to have studying dreams.
Another weird tip was, when taking an exam, start by writing all the material you know on the subject. This really wouldn't work for me, because I'm always pressed for time on exams anyway, but it seems like a weird tip in general because usually the only time you forget things is if they're in short-term memory, like when you've been cramming, and this site argues against cramming before tests.
To summarize:
Areas in which I'm strong
Areas in which I'm weak
Ideas that are strange
This site has some good info, and a few tips that I don't think would work so well. Overall through, it's got a lot more good info than bad. Like it says, it's ranked high on Google, and it's used by many schools, so it has proven itself useful to many people already.
One of the things it describes that I am weak with is making every hour count. I'm great at finding a distraction, whether it's Youtube, Facebook, or just an interesting Wikipedia article. So far in my academic career I've managed to get along alright; it's interesting living by the skin of my teeth. I find that I work best under pressure. I hardly ever turn things in late because I'm just slacking off, I know my limits and when the deadline is approaching I get to work. Still, working hard earlier and having fun later would be a safer way to do things.
Another thing I'm weak with is outlining textbooks. I've never depended heavily on books in my academic career, and I don't expect to. If a teacher teaches differently from the book, I don't need to learn from the book because that teacher's assignments and tests are going to be different from the book's instructions. If a teacher teaches straight out of the book, I don't need to learn from the book because the teachers already taught me that material. I'll certainly review it as I complete my assignments, but by that point it's stuff I already know and thus I'm not learning anything completely foreign to me.
My one great weakness is examinations. I just plain suck at them. It's because I work slowly and carefully, which is great for homework, but bad for timed things like tests.
My grammar and punctuation is strong. I guess I got it from my mother. She used to be an English teacher. She reviewed all my papers when I was younger, and now I always try to have perfect grammar. I often play around with sentences and rewrite them until they sound splendid, especially for important papers.
My lecture notes are great too. Well, they're great for me. I'm good at getting the main idea from both books and lessons, and then distilling that onto paper as a few lines of notes, when everybody around me is writing down exactly what the teacher said / wrote on the board. That never helps me! Say it takes a teacher 30 minutes and 3 pages of notes to make the entire class understand an idea. That teacher certainly doesn't need 3 pages of notes to remind himself/herself how it works, and once a student learns the idea the student won't either. I learn during class, and take a few notes to remind myself of the concepts. To somebody else, my notes will mean nothing, but if they ask me I'll be able to explain it in great detail from those notes.
There were also a few weird tips in that list. The first is just a grammar issue, but I thought it was funny enough to mention. "Never study within 30 minutes of going to sleep." Due to the ambiguousness of the word "within," this could mean "Don't study for 30 minutes before going to sleep," or "Don't story for 30 minutes after going to sleep." Personally, I try my best not to have studying dreams.
Another weird tip was, when taking an exam, start by writing all the material you know on the subject. This really wouldn't work for me, because I'm always pressed for time on exams anyway, but it seems like a weird tip in general because usually the only time you forget things is if they're in short-term memory, like when you've been cramming, and this site argues against cramming before tests.
To summarize:
Areas in which I'm strong
- Getting the main idea
- Using correct punctuation and grammar
- Taking lecture notes
Areas in which I'm weak
- Making every hour count
- Outlining textbooks
- Taking examinations
Ideas that are strange
- Never study within 30 minutes of going to sleep
- Test taking - the memory dump
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