I am now in my third week of my University course, Business IT and Networking Foundation Degree which I am studying at Bedford College. For the unit PPAD, I will be producing 5 blog entries, this being the first. Within these blog entries I am going to contain my own opinions and accounts of things that have gone well and things that haven’t gone well on the course so far. I will also describe things I have learnt in between blogs. I will also state how I think I have performed as a learner and how I could improve my performance if needed.
As I have done a level 2 and 3 course in computing I have a very good understanding of the units which are contained on this course. As most of the units are introductions to the subject, they have mainly been a refresher for stuff I have learnt in the past.
In the unit Introduction to Programming we are using the programming language C#, which I studied last year. Many of the people in the class have either not used this programming language before or never used any programming language before. Because of this the teacher is starting right from the beginning for these people, whilst letting me and a few other students work on exercises to refresh our understanding of the unit. I feel this is working very well .I am really enjoying creating programs again.
In Computer Maintenance and Administration I feel that I have not learnt anything new yet as everything that has been covered so far I have learnt before in the past. It has been a good refresher though for me going over all the different types of cables and computer components used when building computers. I am looking forward to physically working inside the computers which we should be doing in the not so distant future.
I feel that Introduction to Networking is helping me because over the last 3 years I have been studying at college, networking has always been more of a challenge to me than other subjects. It is defiantly helping me starting from the beginning of the subject as it is not only refreshing me with what I already know, but it is helping me with things I didn’t fully understand or grasp in the past. I think this will help me greatly for when we advance in this subject.
In Data Modelling we have been starting with the basics of databases. We have been introduced to the way that databases are designed and put together, covering entities, attributes and instances. We have also been going over the different ways that the tables can relate to each other. I feel this unit isn’t going as well for me as the others, as it can be a bit confusing at times, which causes me to lose concentration.
Personal, Professional and Academic Development to be honest has been my least favourite unit so far. We have had to write a personal statement about ourselves and create an account on a blog website. In the past I have never liked writing about myself, but I have been trying my best for this unit as I want to achieve a good grade. The blog website we created an account for will be used to upload the 5 blogs we write, including this one. I think I am working a bit slow in this unit as I don’t like writing about myself as I can never think what to write down.
So far I feel that the course is going well. As most of the units have been refreshers for information I already have learnt in the past, I feel that they have gotten me into a position where I am happy to push forward with the course to try and achieve as good a grade as I can achieve. As long as I keep focused and concentrate as much as I can, i think this will not only help me as a learner, but will also help me achieve my goal on this course.
