Thursday 20 June

We started off the day with a research task that would help us with the next task in the computer games platforms & technologies unit. John gave each of us a specific component to research and place on a mind map, mine was HCI. I didn't find this task difficult but it wasn't easy either as I had to research not only, but everything associated with it. After we had done this, we had a look at another students version of the task we were about to do and I have to say it was very good. However, I was very surprised to hear that this was only graded as merit. I thought it was going to be distinction for sure but John said without referring to images, it can only get a merit.

I then got straight on with my work as I had a lot to re-do. So I did a mixture of all my outstanding units and managed to get some finished. The only thing I really want to get done is assignment three for 2D animation because it has been put off about two or three weeks now. 

Wednesday 19 June

You know the usual morning had begun when John showed you a video involving technology. The video explained Google's new idea to get internet to anyone via balloons. This was a very interesting concept, considering Google is just an internet browser and not an ISP. But none the less it’s still an amazing idea that I think Google is known for (bringing out the next answer to something). Today we had a TED video, this one was picked by Emanuel. The video was fairly interesting as the person on stage talked about robots (more specifically drones) that have the ability to make dangerous decisions without the need of humans controlling it. I think this is a scary thought as robots can be hacked, tampered with and most important malfunction. If any of those were to happen while the drone was flying over a city or other highly populated area with friendlies, It won’t be a very pleasant outcome.

The questions for the video were quite difficult and some weren't even remotely relevant to what he was talking about in the video, like "What was the colour of the guys eyes?” However, despite the difficult questions I still managed to get 7 out of 11.

Moving onto the work for the day, I continued creating graphics for my game. Deciding that my characters movement was going to be the most challenging. In the end I managed to find a video on how to make a character look like it is running. I very closely followed the video and the outcome of my running character was rather pleasing. 

Monday 17 June

Before the day began, a video was shown this morning talking about the new leap technology that will allow people to use touch screen without actually touching the screen. I thought this was interesting technology but I didn't really understand the purpose, still I thought there was a place for it in the technology world. Then John gave a talk to both levels about what we were doing today; the level 3's got a chance to explore a new piece of software called Game Maker Studio. This was the thing I had been waiting for as I really wanted to get stuck into creating my own game. Previously John had asked us to think about what type of game we would make by considering characters, level design, the menu and the power ups we would have in our game. I thought of a single platform game where the character would have to jump and duck to get around different obstacles in the game. As the levels progress the game get harder by the character coming up against different enemies and try to reach the end without getting killed. On the last level the character would have to parachute down to get to the finish line and complete the game.

We didn't actually begin the creation until later in the day as John wanted us to familiarise ourselves with the program and maybe pick up some tips and ideas that would help during the creation of our own game. I'm glad we were given time to look at the program and go through multiple tutorials as I can have some problems when it comes to programming. Once we were all somewhat confident with Game Maker, we told John our ideas (this is to make sure thy meet the criteria) and then got started on designing our assets (characters, levels etc). Not much was really accomplished today except learning a new program but I still enjoyed the experience and I hope my game turns out how I want it.

Thursday 13 June

Before we began today, John asked us what we thought was the most interesting technology in gaming industry at the moment. I said PS4, this was because it is the big talk at the moment and that it will be one of the best gaming consoles of all time alongside Xbox One. Although, the PS4 does have a slight advantage on the new Xbox. Dan had a good one which was virtual reality. He said this one because he felt nothing has really become successful through virtual reality technology and he would like to see something that really takes off using that type of method of gaming. Once everyone had voiced their opinion, we moved straight onto our work. Throughout the day, I was working with Dan on our animation as we needed to add suitable music to it and I had to finish the next task in the computer games unit.

As for the animation, I was handling it throughout most of the day as we both looked at music and agreed on what we wanted to add. I didn't learn anything new today as we just continued with our usual work, so today's blog post will be very short in comparison to other posts.

Wednesday 12 June

John started the day off by telling the class that he had the points back from one of the moderators. It said that the main issues with our work are the spelling mistakes and grammar. Which we had been told about in the past due to increasingly annoying repeats of work being handed in that wasn't spell checked, proof read or read out loud to check for grammar issues. I find with my work that I spell check it but don't really look out for grammar errors.

Today I was trying to catch up on work I had missed due to being absent for a few days. The work I was working on was the first two tasks of developing computer games. I managed to get the majority of task one done but will need to do some more tomorrow. The first task involved the impact of gaming on society in the form of a Power Point or report.

Wednesday 5 June

Today was another day where we could finish any of our outstanding work. I was trying to complete assignment 2 in software design unit and perhaps assignment 1 as well. I managed to finish off assignment 2 and will send that off to John so he can either mark it or send it to Catherine to so she can read through it. I have almost finished assignment on I just need to refine it a bit more and add some detail to it. Overall today I am happy with the work I got done as I am only here for half the day. Tomorrow I will move on to refining mine and Dan’s animation by adding some music to it.

Tuesday 4 June

We started off with our usual tech Tuesday video. This was about making everything a potential circuit and changing how things operate. This was an interesting video but the guy presenting it was quite strange. I've seen something like this before but not as inventive (the one I saw was drawing circuits). As usual, I got an 8/10 (which is good considering the questions given were quite difficult). I really enjoy these questionnaires that we do every Tuesday because it wakes me up in the morning and the video can be funny and very interesting. After this John introduced the unit to the class which involved games. I was excited for this unit as I enjoy gaming, so I should be confident with this unit. Once John had gone through the tasks and he gave us some sheets to do in groups of two(me and Ben were in the same group). By completing these sheets, we will have already done most of assignment one. This was how easy the unit seemed.

When we all came back from lunch, John said we could work on outstanding units, this was good news as I still have a few units left to complete. For the majority of the day I was working on the code for assignment 1 and assignment 2 of software design. Today was also the level 3 extended working time, where level 3s had to stay till 4.30. I don't mind as the time seems to fly by when you’re doing the work anyway. During this time, John introduced the final unit for the level 3s, this was very similar to the unit that was introduced earlier.

These are the sorts of units I prefer as they seem to overlap a lot, which makes it easier for me. Overall I found today enjoyable.

Monday 3 June

We started with a short reminder task that asked "What John expects when we hand in units of work?". We had to write this down solo on paper in a list. This was to get a point across that we aren't doing what John has asked when handing in units. However I feel that I always do what John had written on the board as his own list of what he requires when handing in units. John then shortly talked to us about priorities and that work should be the number one priority because we are in danger of not completing work in time to finish the course (we only have eight weeks left). We then got straight into the directed study day where we could do any work we had left outstanding. I was doing a mixture of work today and preparing a couple of units to be placed onto the hard drive for marking.

In the end I managed to get most of Software design assignment one and two done but will focus more on assignment 2 tomorrow and I was also tiding up all my outstanding units. Overall I found today quite relaxed with the work load we had and I am excited to begin the new unit tomorrow. The way John described it, sounded quite easy and straight forward but you never know. I also learned a bit more about coding and how to lay it out correctly, which is important in an efficient program.

Thursday 23 May

This morning we had begun with watching a video. This was explaining the failure that some people had performed when doing building work. I think John played this video to show us that the planning we had done during this animation unit wasn't up to par or the normal structure of doing things. I thought the planning we had done during this wasn't exactly at the level I would've done it but that's because I was in a group and I think we wanted to get straight into the making process. I wanted to make sure my groups animation was completed by the end of the day so I could focus on other work that needs to be done. Luckily we managed to get the basis of it completed and now we are just refining it. I am really happy with the animations completion and I hope the adjustments we make in the future will improve the overall project dramatically. Some of the problems with the animation include:

• Some frames too long/too short
• Masking
• Frame rate lag

Finishing the animation was a very long task as I had to do a lot of the effects in Photoshop and rub out a lot of mistakes that were in our animation. Overall I enjoyed today because we were able to work in a group and its good to see that our animation has finished.

Wednesday 22 May

The day started out as any normal morning at Develop, with a quiz. This quiz involved ten questions about programming. This quiz was to check that the class was listening when John was talking to us about the different areas of programming from the past couple of weeks. Once the quiz was over, I thought that I did well to remember the majority of the answers (that's because I was actually listening to John, unlike a lot of people in the class). None the less I got just over half the questions correct.

I then moved on to the work. I was still working on software design unit. I was working on assignment three today as that needs some attention and need to start on that. 

Tuesday 21 May

Instead of Ted Tuesday, it was Tech Tuesday. This week’s video was about the house of the future, which was made by Microsoft. This was quite an interesting video and made me think about the possibilities of what might be possible in as little as two years. My score for this week was 7/10. We then moved straight back onto our work in the software design unit. This for me was going back to assignment two and assignment one to finish them off. I got started on it and overall it took me the majority of the day to write because I had to write down some notes beforehand and then read through it in my head till the wording was correct, I got all the necessary information to fully complete the work.

I still need to work on these pieces of work as I think I need to add a lot more to meet the criteria. Finally today, John talked to the level 3s about what is happening next year and a short talk about the final task in assignment five for website production. 

Monday 20 May

We started off the day with a quiz on the BBC news website. The questions within the quiz were related to programming (as expected). I achieved a score of 5/7, which wasn't bad considering I am not the best in this particular area. I then moved straight onto software design work, which was assignment two and three. This is where I became incredible puzzled with this work as I wasn't sure where to begin. After a couple of hours of trying to get my head around this work, I managed to get a fair bit of work completed in the end. I realise now what I should of done is that I should have broken the tasks down and went through them one at a time. This would've been easier to concentrate on and I probably would've got more work done.

I managed to understand the work I had trouble with (for the majority of today) and I should be completing it easily by the end of the week. Overall I found today a little frustrating because of the work.

Thursday 16 May

We started the day off by watching an A-level produced animation that involved a girl working through a paper forest. At first I didn't really get the animations message but by the end I think I understood it. The reason John showed us this was to make us think about how long it takes to create a good animation. After this was made clear, we got straight on with our animation work. This was something that needed to be finished but it just took too long to figure things out and actually physically do them. Working on my animation really made the day slow and I think that I would've got more work done if I did other work that needs finishing. I originally thought the editing for the animation was going to be interesting but it’s actually quite dull.

Throughout the day, I was working with Dan on the video editing part. It was also because I wanted to switch jobs with him every so often. This was to make the editing process less dull. The funniest part to the day was the "demo" just before we finished. Where Catherine had to make sure we knew how to put a condom on a purple penis. This was very important and I found it difficult to take it seriously when everyone else was making jokes and laughing about it (including myself). But none the less I thank Catherine for taking the time to make sure we were all educated on the condom process. So overall I found the animation editing quite slow but the talk was the funniest end to a day (that wasn't really meant to be funny but turned out to be hilarious) so far.

Wednesday 15 May

Today I was working on assignment three which everyone had started yesterday but I was not here to start the work as I was ill. Assignment three involved creating a program for a painting company named Painted. This program is being made to estimate the cost of painting a single room. Furthermore, this program must take into consideration the size of all the walls and windows in the room, how many walls and windows there are in the room, what quality of paint is being used, whether undercoat is required and many other factors. To start off with I wrote a functional specification that would explain what the program must do. I then moved straight onto the design phase, which required me to make flow diagrams of each phase the program must calculate (area of all the walls, what type of paint and customer ID etc). Creating the diagrams was easier than I originally thought.

Today I learned how to effectively write a detailed functional specification and how easy it is to create flow diagrams for a specific piece of information. Overall I found that today went rather quick, that’s probably because it is only a half day.

Monday 13 May

We started the day with two unusual tasks this morning, proof reading work and writing 5000 lines. The 5000 lines task was a trick question that had a lot of us fooled, but I thought as soon as I saw that, that I could write this in small basic where I could write a couple of line of code and then it would write 5000 lines. This was a clever way to teach us about coding a large amount of lines. This was to further imprint in our brains the importance of proof reading. So for nearly three hours (in groups of two), we all proof read six pieces of work and then compared the work in our groups (I worked with Ben). This really made me appreciate the amount of time John spends marking our work.

In future, I will proof read my work by: spell checking it, reading it out loud (in a quiet environment) and asking other people to read through it too as I think other people may pick up on mistakes that, I may have missed. This task helped me understand even further, what steps I need to take when proof reading my own work. After lunch, John wanted us to work on programming assignment one or assignment two. I decided to work on assignment one because there was a small amount left to finish and the first draft has to be handed in soon.  Even though there wasn't much left to do on this assignment, it still took more longer than I expected.

Overall I found today one big learning experience with the proof reading and coding tasks this morning. I also found working with Ben to be rather fun, because we have always been able to work together and get things done with any hassle.

Thursday 9 May

Today when I came in me and Dan decided to work on our editing of our animation. Dan soon realised that he wanted to get on with other work so he could and his final piece in tomorrow.
I cracked on with the editing of our animation, when I imported the animation into Sony Vegas i had a problem on my hands where all the images had to be resized to shorten the video. It took me all day to individually go through each and every one of those images (over 2000 altogether) and resize them. when i got half way through i thought should i leave this for another day and get on with some other work but then i thought nope i have started this so i am going to finish it, which i eventually did.
Then i started on editing the images to take out things we didnt want in, i didnt get very far on the as the day had flown by and it was home time.

Wednesday 8 May

Today was Wednesday which meant Chris from Netmatters paid us a visit to our centre to talk about website production. This was the first thing that happened in the morning so we had to open up our finished or not finished websites  for Chris to look at, we had to get our questions ready and familiarise ourselves with SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle). This was in case Chris talked about SDLC and if we had forgotten, then we wouldn't know what he was talking about. So when Chris came into the room, he opened up his presentation and began to talk us through the development process of creating a website and showing us some of the websites his company has created. I found looking at some of the great work Netmatters has done very interesting and I thought the artwork for the sites were very appealing.

After the presentation was finished he took some questions and came round to look at the websites we had created during the website production unit. When Chris looked through my website, he said it was good but very blue, which it is as that was what I was going for. I think it was a great idea for Chris to look at everyone’s websites because someone who does it professionally for career knows what’s good and what’s bad. Overall I enjoyed the presentation he gave us.

Before most of us went home Catherine gave a short presentation on how to proof read effectively. This was because John found that the majority of the classes work had poor grammar and some spelling mistakes. 

Tuesday 7 May

Today, the day begun as normal after a four day weekend due to the bank holiday. John threw another coding exercise upon us. This exercise was to create a program, which would convert Celsius to Fahrenheit when a temperature is entered. A few people found this task easy and unfortunately I wasn't one of them this time, this time when the task was explained by John and jack, the answer became clear after I was told how to do it. I then wrote down the formula and the layout of which the program would work and I was then confident I would be able to write the program in small basic but I did not have time to do this as John wanted to move on and talk about the next assignment. We then moved onto start assignment 2 of programming which seems fairly straight forward. And shouldn't take too long to complete

Questions for tomorrow

What is your favourite program to create a website in?
How many different programs have you used to create a website?
What are the main qualifications you need to get this kind of job?
What requirement make an ideal website?

*The rest of the blog will be completed later*

Thursday 2nd May

Before we got cracking on any work, John wanted emails from us all stating what work we had outstanding and in prioritised order. This is so he had an idea of what work we had left to finish off. When I finished writing the list of tasks I had left to complete, I thought it was a lot of work. But when I started moving down the list, I realised that it actually wasn't that much as the title suggests, the tasks for the day included a variety of units. I started out with finishing my animation with Dan as we knew that it would only take us half an hour to an hour tops to complete the whole animation. As we were filming the animation, Zu3D became incredibly laggy and very slow at responding, which made taking frames more frustrating because when you would press the button, it looked like nothing had happened. So if you clicked it again, more frames would be taken, which was not the idea we wanted.

Despite that we still managed to finish the animation, now comes the editing process. Dan wanted to get on with other work so I let him do that. I started on the editing and taking some images out to make it a lot smoother. After 10-15 minutes of doing that I realised I needed to recover my website that I had lost when my pen drive killed itself. After somehow recovering it (had no idea how I did it as recovering programs wouldn't recover the file format) I started editing my website again and asked John to help me out as I wanted to change the colour of the buttons, we managed to figure it out and I achieved what I wanted to achieve.

Overall I enjoyed today because it was more relaxed and we were able to do a variety of work and get one with them. It was also enjoyable as John seemed very relaxed and let us listen to some music throughout the day. I also learned more about teamwork and how to create a successful 3D animation. 

Wednesday 1st May

Today was another day at the centre but the only difference is that we are into a new month.

Today we started off with another activity to do with programming. This one encouraged us to think for ourselves about how to make a program for the system picking a random number between one and one-hundred. The user would then have to guess that number. I cracked on with this task and completed it fairly quick, I programmed the whole thing in small basic without any help from anyone else, I got a great sense of achievement. After a while, I noticed Dan was struggling, he had only written a couple of line so I shew him mine and explained what I did, I then let him copy my coding and he could stare at it for a while to understand it. I think in the end he realised what he had to do.

Today was a half day for me so I left the centre at 12 o’clock which was lunch time.

Today, overall I enjoyed the day as the tasks John gave us were very enjoyable and tested my knowledge and skills.

Tuesday 30th April

Today we started out with another programming starter today but this was more focused on data types and variables. Data types I wasn't so bad with because I spent quite a bit of time learning about the different data types last week. I managed to complete the task that john had given us with ease but Dan seemed to struggle a little so I helped him. This starting exercise helped me understand more about data types and what ones are for specific things. We then moved straight onto this weeks TED video; the video featured Marco the magician showing us the amazing combination of magic and technology. The TED questions were created by Phoebe but the video we all had already seen when John did a TED Tuesday A few months ago. I didn't mind seeing it again because it was one of my favourite TED videos as if amazed me what you can do when you combine technology and magic together.

Once TED was complete, we continued with assignment 1 of programming. This is the assignment that has to be completed by Friday and because I am trying to completely understand it whilst I write It down on paper, doing so  is causing me to working slower than others but I think Dan is doing the same so at least I’m not the only one. I think to give us all a bit of a rest from programming, John allowed us to work on other units because a lot of work needs to be handed in on Monday. Me and Dan decided it would be a good idea to work on our animation as it is very close to being finished and we were both confident we could finish it today.

After today, we have nearly a minute's worth of animation. I think we should be able to get the animation finished by Thursday. Today I learnt about CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) tools, IDE's, data types and variables. I enjoyed the starter task because I think it’s a great way for all of us to get used to programming and things associated with programming.

Monday 29th April

Today we begun the day by doing a coding starter, what we had to do was to try and fix a program to make it work. The program purpose was finding the perimeter and area of a rectangle, which didn't work correctly. I found this a good task and managed to complete it in quick succession and got it to work okay. After a while I noticed Dan looked stuck so I asked him if he needed any help at all so me and Shane resolved the issue he had and got his to work.

After this John gave a short talk about what help is available with this unit because a lot of us still seem to be confused and I think this gave some closure to some people in the class.

Then we got straight on with assignment 1 of the programming unit. I was still researching about the different types of programming, which are Procedural, object oriented and event driven. These started out as being quite confusing but as I researched and asked Dan a few question, the more I understood. By the end of the day, I completely understood what procedural and object oriented programming were and some of their advantages/disadvantages. I am glad I took the time to write down and learn these so I fully understood. I am quite confident when it comes to the coding but will still need some help in the future maybe, like most people in the class.

Overall I found today a bit more of a wakeup call than usual for the whole class, especially my level because the level threes group are falling behind and by John saying that we were behind and that deadlines should be stricter, I wanted to try and work harder and faster if it was possible for me to do so. This was a great boost of motivation and after starting the programming unit.

Thursday 25th April

Today we were carrying on with our animation from Tuesday  The start of the groups animation creation was under way today as me and Dan had finished creating our story board and we were ready to start making our assets. However, before we could do that we had to set up the stage area and zu3D on a laptop to begin creating the animation. After setting our stage up we started making assets out of plasticine and testing out some techniques, but just five minutes into testing and we had already changed a couple of aspects of the animation. The camera angle was changed to more of a slanted view to make it less complicated for us, how the morphing happens from one object to another and lighting has also been changed.

By lunch we had about four to five seconds of testing footage. We played the footage back and the technique worked perfectly, the motion was great and the lighting made the picture crystal clear. I am glad John gave us more time to alter our treatment or storyboard if needed because we actually changed it physically and how some of the animation works. The time today proved well worthy as we were able to test out techniques and see if what we wrote down on paper would actually be doable not only by us but by other people as well.

After a lunch me and Dan decided to leave the creation and got on with the written side of the unit, we did this because we said we would come in tomorrow and carry on with creating our animation.

I think I and Dan worked well in a team by listening to each other’s ideas and doing different parts of a scene. I learned today that detail in planning is very important to an animation project to succeed in being fully complete and doing a test session before the real creation can really benefit the project too. I can't wait to see the animation come together and play the finished and final version of our animation

Wednesday 24th April

Today was once again Programming but instead of the usual this time John was focused on teaching us about the program life cycle and a simpler approach to programming code. To start off with we loaded up a program called scratch, this was a simple introduction to creating a game. John gave us a task to create a PAC man game using the instructions in the word document he provided. I had seen a bit of this before during an open day that I stayed and helped with when I was doing the Hardware with Jack, so I had an idea of what to expect. However before the task begun, John mentioned that this had been given to year 6s and they managed to finish it in an hour so he gave us about 30 minutes to complete the task. I found it rather easy and quite enjoyable at certain parts, I did not need any help from anyone but I had to help Dan when he got a little stuck. I understand why John gave us this task; to ease some of us into programming who don't fully understand how programming works.

After break John gave us another task to do as we had all completed the first task. this task was to research about and into the program life cycle. we collect some information and a diagram and shared what we knew about it from what we had collected.

Today was a good day and enjoyed what we did. I learnt about programs life cycle and how a program starts off and how it ends up.

Tuesday 23rd April

Today we had abit of an easy going day as today we had to work in groups of four to create our own control system for a green house using program related feature such as coding. This task is linked in with the unit we have currently just started. Like many other in the class and in my group, i found it a tough challenge at first but got through it in the end.
Before our group could really get into thing on this task we all had to go for our one of two speaking and listening exam. That went very well and we all contributed well to the discussion and made some very good points. once everyone in the class had done it we were called into Catherines office and she told us that we had passed. I was very relieved as i knew all i had to do is pass the second speaking and listening by doing a presentation on what ever i want.

when we came back we had forgotten where we were in the task so we read over everything and got on with it after a while we were stumped. we had managed to get everything else except the water gauge part. so in the end we tried our hardest but it didn't come off so we watched how john did it and sort of understood it so we had another go at it. by lunch time most people was rather confused so John decided to move on to the task that we had started yesterday. i started my presentation and got about five or six slides done by the time it came to finish the day on that unit.
Today was also the day that the level threes stayed behind longer to go onto another unit. this unit was the 2D animation. what me and Dan had to do was to present and pitch our idea to John, both of us knew that we didnt have enough information but we both knew what was going on and what the animation was going to be like.

Overall today was a challenging day but i managed to get through it. I am glad John gave us the task to do as we were then able to understand what we would have to do in the programming unit.

Monday 22nd April

Today we were all introduced to a new Unit, I think everyone was a bit relieved that we were moving on from the last unit which was animation as it became a bit tedious.
The new unit John introduced to us was Programming it seemed okay at first but then it got more technical and by lunch maybe even break everyone was very confused and not to sure of what to think of it as it is a very hard unit.

I was rather confused but as the day progressed i got the hang of it a little bit but not much much like others in the class. Most of the day I was trying to get grips of Data types and collecting info as John said that one is a tough one.
I still need to do extensive research into this unit to understand it, but by the end of it i'm sure I will be able to understand almost everything.

By the end of the day i was rather knackered trying to understand all what we have been taught today but I have learnt things about programming that I didn't know before. These things are the different types of programming, that's what I mostly learnt today.

Today was a bit of a panicy day to try and understand everything we were being taught. I did and didn't like it; I liked the day because we moved on to a new unit and i am looking forward to programming. I didn't like the day as there is too much that we need to understand but in the end it will be all worth it.

Thursday 18th April

Today was the level threes day. Today we were cracking on with our second animation unit where we had the choice to work in groups. We were all thinking of what we could do but most most of us had already came up with the ideas and vaguely planned out what was going to happen much like me and Dan have already done.
Our Animation is about the life of a computer from being born going all the way to the end and passing away. It is basically the reflection of the human life but put into a computer form.
I am really looking forward to actually getting down to business and making the whole animation as it is a fun unit to do and you get to bond with fellow class mates.

As Dan was off doing other things that he was asked to do, I was getting on with some other work until he came back. When Dan did come back we cracked on with the story board of the animation. We had to do a story board so we knew what will happen in each scene. Also if we were to give someone our animation and they had to make it from scratch they would have the story board to guide them on how to make our animation.
Today I also jotted down everything we would need for our animation and expanded on them, to say why we needed these things.

Overall today was an enjoyable day as i was able to relax and get work done. It was also good planning out the animation with Dan as we could really come together and put our idea down on paper so we can put it into action next Thursday.

Wednesday 17 April

Today is a half day for me so this blog wont be that long as I wouldn't have done much.
Today we had a starter that involved a game that tested out IT knowledge by giving us a variety of questions. The game was very much like deal or no deal where you would pick your starting box and then answer questions, if you were able to get the question right then you could pick a box. once you pick the box it would open and show you a letter (a grade) and then move on to the next question. after I had finished the game and played it a couple of time the best grade I could achieve was an A.

once that was all over with, I got on with some work which is to carry on with the animation I have been doing over the past couple of days. I managed to complete two more scenes for the day, managed to make the characters arms and most of the body move, which is what my aim was. I was happy with my progress and hope to finish it very soon.

Today was a good day, relaxing like usual and I am now off to have a good game of golf on the course with my grandad, in the strong wind.

Tuesday 16th April

Today was TED Tuesday and the first one since we had our three week Easter holiday.
Today's TED was different from other tuesdays as this TED test was not getting a multiple choice questionnaire pop up on our computer screen, instead John gave us all a piece of paper to write the answers down on. after we had all finished we had to swap our paper with someone near by and let them mark our answers. we had 9 questions all together and when I received my paper back I got 8 out of 9 which was joint top of the class with Jake. I was rather please with myself for getting that score. I definitely preferred doing it this way as it gets you thinking more when there isn't multiple choices to pick from.

After that was all done with I continued with my animation. I managed to complete two more scenes today as I needed to create some other stuff i need to put in my animation which took a fair amount of time but I am happy with what I have got so far. its nothing professional obviously but its the I can do that matters at the end if the day.

After lunch, John told everyone that we will be having a discussion to prepare us a bit for our speaking and listening exam.
He gave us a site to look at and the class in half so there were one that would argue for and another that would ague against. he gave us 10 minutes to research and look at the website he had given us, this was about a memory stick where overwrite all your very important data on your old computer with educational programs and then you are able to donate the computer to give it to the less fortunate children I other countries.

Today was a pretty good day as I got completed what I wanted to and hope to keep on doing that.

Monday 15th April

Today we returned to the course, we have now been off three very relaxing weeks and enjoyable too.
Today we were welcomed back by John, he had a video that he wanted everyone to watch as he discovered it a couple of days ago. The video included Japanese or Chinese dances (cant remember which ones it was), they were in suits that has multi coloured light on. The dance was very extravagant and as the video went on the dance became more complicated. At first I don't think anyone saw the point of the video but John then explained it was related with a certain type of  animation, which we had to try and figure what it was related to. I think he also wanted to see if anyone was on the ball this morning after three weeks off.

Last week I went in for a couple of hours on a Wednesday as I had to do my English exams. Today I got back both the reading and writing exam results and I got a pass on both of them. all I need to do now is the speaking and listening exam in front of a few people and hope that I pass that.
I was very happy that I passed because when it comes to exams I have no faith in my self of me passing the exams.

Before we all got on with work (Animation), John asked us all to through the mark grid and have a look what we need to complete. Once we identified what needs doing we were asked to write it down on paper.

When I went back to my animation I had forgot how to use flash, I hadn't fully forgot but just the main features which would help me do my animation. I too a few minutes to familiarise myself with the program again and the cracked on with some work. I managed to create three or four more scenes today and quite happy with the out comes of it all, I still have a long way to go but i will try my best to finish it.

overall today was a nice day back full of work doing animation but a relaxed atmosphere which is always good when doing your work.

Thursday 21st March

Today is our last day before the Easter holidays. It is yet another Thursday which means we will be continuing wit our animation and of course the day for only level threes. I finished refining all of my characters  and created two scenes yesterday, so I will proceed on knuckling down and creating more. 

today I created three scenes, I though I had everything I needed but it turns out I need a lot more than I thought. As I was going along creating the scenes I would go back and create the backgrounds for my animation, this took longer than I expected but at least I managed to do what I wanted in the end.

I am getting used to the motion tween now and lets hope i can still remember how to do it after the holidays.

Overall today was an enjoyable day as it was laid back and we were able to crack on with our work.

Wednesday 20th March

Today we had Ted Tuesday, on a Wednesday again, this is becoming a regular occurrence. The Ted video was chosen by Rob as he got the lowest scores in the test last week. Although Ted test is a give away you would have though he would have got it from the Ted website like John usually does but no he went and got it from the BBC website, so in actual fact it was BBC Wednesday, didn't like this at all!
Considering I didn't watch the video, I done well to come Joint second with 80%

For the half day I had (It was a half day for me, like every Wednesday),  I was refining all my characters of which I created yesterday. They are now fully complete and I have added the ship as well. Today I managed to do two main parts of the story at the beginning of the animation. Although John shew me how to do motion tween yesterday, I had forgotten the majority of what he had said (that's what tiredness does to you) but somehow I managed to use it and create two scenes where the main character is in the sea sailing along in search of the lost island and encounters a big storm. The force of the storm take one of is masts down. This took me a fair while to do because when I was trying to do something in flash it would do something totally opposite to what I wanted it to do. In the end I managed to get it to do what I wanted it to do, with some help from Dan, which mean I am well on my way now.

Despite not fully knowing what I was doing in flash I enjoyed the half day and I have partly learnt how to use Adobe Flash but I wouldn't hold my breath on creating something amazing... its never going to happen but I will try my best.

Tuesday 19th March

Today we did not have a Ted test nor did we do a small basic challenge but instead John put us into pairs (I was with Jake) to make a mini about 20 second or so long in 15 minutes. Do our advert John let us all use our choice of chocolate from his shopping bag. To create the advert we had to use Zu3D to create a stop motion animation using a webcam. the idea me and Jake came up with without any planning what so ever was... Jake would rip open the Milky Way and shove it all in his mouth and chew it for a while then lean toward the webcam, take his glasses off and wink at the webcam. Not to forget the amazing palm tree in the background, all thanks to Catherine! The music we decided on was some slow music from Barry white (Cant get enough of your love, babe) which fitted into our mini advert very, very well and went down a treat when showing everyone in the class.
I think by far ours was the best and no one could deny that! the animation was judge by everyone in the class and they would rate it out of ten. There was some very funny adverts from the rest of the class but I think in the end Scott and Rob won the mini advert challenge.

Once all that was over I started on creating all my characters for my animation. bearing in mind I have never used flash before and I have never created and animation either, my characters turned out better than I thought they would, which is very good but now I have the trouble of changing the body positions but I will try and get over that hurdle when I come to it. this was a long ole process as I had to figure out how to use flash but I think I got there in the end, still not 100% confident with flash but as time goes on, i will get used to it and know my way around the programme.

Overall I found today enjoyable as I got to use a new programme and got to create my characters so all I need to do now is create my animation

The Last Week...Before Easter Holidays and Bday!

Today we had a small basic challenge first thing. Instead of the usual small basic learning from a Powerpoint, John wanted us to try and create a text file with the word 'Elephant' in it. I managed to do that and small basic found the text file. I was able to do this in a couple of lines but Lewis managed to this with only one. I looked at how he did his and it was easy to do it in one line.
John then said this task was easy compared to others and i think he was more or less spot on.

For the rest of the day i was going through my plan of my animation and what i want to happen i then cracked on with drawing the story board out. I did not do it frame by frame but did the mains parts in 16-18 boxes so tomorrow I can crack on with maybe starting my animations abut first of all will start the designing of all the characters and other assets i may need to draw out in flash.
I am hoping and praying that when it come to creating the animation that it will all go to plan. If it doesn't then I'm screwed but I will try my best to get it to go how I would like it to go.

Considering I only got about two hours sleep last night, today didn't go to bad but I was just very tired. I Enjoyed planning out my story board for what is going to happen in my animation.

Thursday 14th March

Today was the day we started the nee animation unit which only the level threes will be doing.
this unit is a 2D unit and inst all that different from the 3D unit we do the rest of the week, except, obviously that it is 2D.
For this unit I will be working with Dan on a Claymation which is a type of animation, about a life of a computer. we will take the life cycle of a human life and project it on to a computer such as the animation will start off as a phone which will be the baby and then gradually grows and transforms in to many different devices  until it gets all the way to a computer which will be an adult. as soon as me and Dan combined our ideas, I could see this going somewhere, which it certainly did as we got to the idea that we have now. I instantly knew this was a good idea of ours as it wasn't anything anyone else had thought of so it was unique in a way.

For the whole day we were coming up with all different ideas that were decent but the main one idea stood out the most so we went with that and we kept on adding ideas and writing about what was going to happen and planing it all out so it makes it a lot easier when it comes to creating the animation.
This will be hard to do as it is a new experience for me but not to sure about Dan but all in all I am confident that we can produce a very good piece of work overall.

I found today very enjoyable as we were able to come up with spontaneous ideas and have some fun with the whole idea of our animation. it was also good hear about what other peoples ideas where as some people had some good ideas too.

Wednesday 13th March

Today was the day we had a multiple challenge morning as TED Tuesday was moved to become TED Wednesday and also we had a small basic challenge. So watching  the Ted video on Monday did pay off in the end for me as I came second overall, which isn't to shabby at all.
The small basic challenge today was to with input and output files. I followed the instructions but at first I was slightly confused but then it became clear what I had to do after John pointed out to everyone that we had to create some folders and a my.txt document and then the small basic challenge would work correctly. I then fully understood what was going on. once everyone tried doing that challenge we all carried on with animation.

Today in animation all of the level threes moved on to assignment 3. Assignment three is where it all gets down to business. First of all we had to come up with a story that would be suitable to a young audience. this too me a while as I was stuck between taking an old childhood story and putting a bit of a modern twist to it or completely making up a new story. I finally decided I would make up a new story and put a bit of "The Moral of to the story" in it. my moral of the story is to make sure you don't get involved with the wrong people.
I had to do some written tasks before I could go into flash and start creating all the characters and the scene. the tasks were basically for writing the plot, target audience, who are the characters and the purpose of the animation.

Today was a good day as I was able to let my imagination wonder and then stop wondering and then wonder again. It was filled with many tasks in such as short period as it was only a half day for me but overall a pleasing day.

Tuesday 12th March

Today there was still no return of TED Tuesday, very disappointed!! I had watched the video the day before and I was raring to go and ready for the test. The Ted video was about the discovery of the Giant of the what once thought to be made but in actual fact it is real THE GIANT SQUID. The people who have found the giant squid were very lucky to actually get it on film as it seemed to be a very mysterious creature that had never been caught on camera. here is the TED video for anyone who want to see the mysterious giant LINK

Instead of the Ted test this  morning we watched a very interesting but sad animation short film called Invention of Love. This video has over 4 million views. When watching the video it makes you feel sad inside because of the story line and the music. The whole video was about a guy who invented things for a living, he then met this women and fell in love with her. The guy and the women who he fell in love with moved to this city were everything was mechanical and completely man made. it was a place that no one has every seen before.
The women who he fell in love with was absolutely sick of the city and wanted to change it by restoring some of its natural beauty and nature but unfortunately she died trying due to all the pollution that came off a flower when she blew on it. They was incredibly depressed and very disheartened about the whole situation. He then came up with the idea to reincarnate her by build an exact replicate of her from gears and bolts and made a heart that would stand out.

Once the video was over even though it is very sad it is an excellent animation. This is very professionally done and must of taken them a very long time to create it all. The music fits very well into the short film and adds that extra thing to make it perfect as you can really feel the sadness of the man from the music.

After we had all watched the video I cracked on with some work. I continued with Animation Assignment 2. I believe I have finished the task but I want to read through the whole thing before I send it in because I want to check I have the right amount and relevant information.

Overall today was yet one of those nice and relaxed full of work days, which I enjoy as I am able to get lots more work done without rushing things to quickly.

Monday 11th March

Today when I got in I was relatively happy and calm until disaster struck, I loaded up my computer put my pen drive in and it wouldn't load anything, so I tried for an hour to get it to work and to try and recover everything because I stupidly didn't back it up which I planned to do in the holidays as I would have more time to do it. never got the damn thing to work so I was rather annoyed all day as I have lost all of my work.

Today in the morning we quickly looked at different types of animation techniques which were on YouTube. the video we watched were all different to each other because each one was a different animation. these included Cel animation, digital and stop motion animation. I think John shew us these to see if we have been taking in what types of animation there is and to see if we have been listening. As we did this we did not have time for a small basic challenge, I was slightly disappointed but it didn't bother me to much as I wanted to try and fix my pen drive as it killed itself.

After that and trying to fix the pen drive I cracked on with some work. I started Animation assignment 2 task 1. I got most of the task complete by doing half of the task. Tomorrow I will aim to get that task all completed and send it off to John. tomorrow I also want to complete Animation Assignment 1 task 2 as I lost that on my pen drive so I need to redo it.

Overall Today was a relaxing day for the rest of the class but I was on a bit of a rage because of my pen drive but what can I do not these things happen in life so I have to move on a redo the work that need to be done. but I was glad with my progress on assignment 2 task one and hope to finish it off tomorrow.
I enjoyed the starter as I was able to see some good animation people had created and watching them gives me a few ideas for my later task when we have to create some animation.

Thursday 7th March

Today we did not have a small basic challenge as it was the level 3's day and to do the small basic test the level two's need to be here so they don't miss anything. Instead John gave us a challenge to do with four Lego blocks. what we had to do was get into groups of two and three. Then one person from that group had the bricks, they then had to mix the brick up in a random colour combination. once the first person thought of a combination, they had to pass it on two the other person/people in the group, they then had to try and figure out what the combination is in the shortest changing of blocks as possible. It may sound easy but it wasn't as you were not allowed to communicate with each other, we then all found out that way to do it was to put it in a random colour combination and then write it down on paper and pass it on so you can easily get the combination right. only one group managed to get this write but unfortunately it wasn't my group.

once all that was done, John gave us a talk on a task which will be the hardest for us to do on this course. as John talked about it and talked us through it I took a few notes.
after all of that I cracked on with creating a survey to send out to all the level threes so I could get feedback on my website. once I had come up with all the questions (there were 9 or 10 questions altogether) and created my survey I sent it off to everyone who needed a copy of it.

I received most of my surveys back from the people who I sent it to. I was then able to start making all the changes to my website so it was up to scratch and made everyone happy by correcting all of the mistakes that was present on my website. this was a long process as I had to go through all the replies I got back.
I received some really good feedback from fellow class mates and staff so I was able to update my website rather well and I knew what I had to change.

Today I enjoyed the whole day as I was able to get on with my work because I knew what I wanted to do. I also strangely enjoyed the first exercises that John gave us all to do as I learnt about different protocols.
John also allowed us to finish early so we were able to got down to the jobs fair at Carrow Road. When we all got down there it turned out to be something totally different to what we all thought it was going to be including John and Catherine. but it was nice to see what was on offer in case any of us take a change in career such as if someone wanted to go in the RAF or TA.

Wednesday 6th March

Today we had a small basic challenge which was good as it always seems to wake me up a lot more than not doing one. Today John made sure everyone was comfortable with all of the tasks we had done as he said that we need to know 1-10 as they are the most important ones to know when programming. luckily for me I did so I moved on to a different task which was to make a clock on small basic. I successfully did this so I moved on to another one. The other task I did was to program small basic to ask for your year of birth and then once someone typed in there year of birth it would calculate how old they would be to this exact year, this was a success to.

Today I continued with my work on the Animation unit on assignment one, task one, report one and two.

I yesterday I had completed report one but I went back over the whole thing to make sure I had enough, I added a bit more information into my work and felt that I had completed report one. I had done some of report two yesterday but not completed it, however today I did complete it just in time before lunch or in my case home time as it was a half day for me as I do not to Maths or English. I did not send it into John as I wanted to check at home that I had what I wanted and then I was going to send it into him later on in the day. unfortunately that did not go to plan as I lost connection to my broadband and was not able to send it in. This is why I am only now writing my blog as the internet is up and running and seems to be working but i have to pretend I am writing it from Wednesday.

Today I learnt about the Lumier brother and what they contributed to Animation, I also learnt about persistence of vision.

I enjoyed today as I learnt a lot of information that I didn't know until now and it was once again another relaxing day.

Tuesday 5th March

Today we did not have TED Tuesday or a small basic test, I was very disappointing as there was nothing to completely wake me up.

Today I continued my pursuit into finishing off any outstanding work in the Web production unit. To do so i had to finish off assignment one task four and five. Once I had completed those two pieces of work I sent them into John so he could mark them.

After I completed those tasks a carried on with Animation assignment one task one. Today I got the majority of the task done I just need to do a little bit more on report two. I will continue with my work tomorrow and hope to start on task two.

After lunch John moved us all on to assignment two task one, John assigned each one of us to each section in that task and then we had to research about what we were given, this would then later on help all of us as when we come back to do this task properly as we will have more knowledge and be able to refer back to the work that everyone done as we had to share the information we had got with the rest of the group.

overall today I found that it was a good day as everyone was pretty chilled out and got on with the work and it was relaxing, which is good because when you aren't relaxed you find that you will make mistake in your own work.

Monday 4th March

This morning we all sat down at our computers and John gave us a very random Small Basic challenge which he wrote on the board. what we had to do was get the turtle to draw a square and within that square the turtle had to draw a circle and then make circle inside that circle and carry that on till we had 10 circles all together. some how I managed to remember how to do a loop but as I remembered I was able to draw a square only using 4 lines altogether and when it came to the circles I was able to use two lines. I found this relatively easy once I calculated where I needed to place the turtle.
I think John is a wise guy for making us do the Small Basic challenges every morning as it seems to wake everyone up and get them thinking before they start work.

Today I carried one with the new unit which is Animation, I continued to on Assignment one task one part one, I have nearly completed this and will only need about an hour more on it then I think I will be done. I will aim to complete this task within the first hour of tomorrow so I can move on to part two in assignment one task one.
I may have done work on Animation now but I feel I will need to research more into the animation techniques to fully understand them all so I can further complete work in this unit.

After I had done work on the Animation unit I moved on to completed COM assignment one task two P8 which I had to update and add some more in to that task. I completed it and sent it back to John so he could mark it.
Tomorrow I will aim to complete any outstanding work or updating I may have so I have the Communication and Employability unit over and done with, which will enable me to concentrate a lot more on the animation unit.

Overall I enjoyed today as I really liked the Small Basic task and I think I am getting used to Programming in that so hopefully by the time the programming unit will come around I will be able to complete work with ease. Today I learnt about different types of animation and what companies are involved in Animation.

Thursday 28th Feb

Today was the day of level 3's only, today we carried on with the web production unit.
I completed my website today but was not able to update it to the server as it was down all day and wouldn't let anyone connect to it. On my website I put all the information of Computer Systems, Graphics and Communication unit, I will later update all of the those units when I complete them.
I put a lot of effort in to get my work completed as I helped Lewis when he got stuck on a few things.

Today was a quiet day as it was only part of the levels threes here as some were ill, today was a good day a I finally completed my website and will now try to complete it on dream weaver instead of Serif web plus.

I will now concentrate on my animation unit and aim to task one complete by next Tuesday and hand it in.

Wednesday 27th Feb

Today is the half day for most people as for some reason we don't have to do it, I have no idea why but i'm not going to complain.
Today I started my first day on Animation I read through the criteria and started on assignment one task, I managed to get half of it done and will need a couple more hours to get it completed.
I talked to Dan about the animation unit and he talked me through it and shew me what he has done so far on his task one. I did not do much else as it was half day for me.

Animation unit looks pretty promising and i'm sure i will enjoy it.

Thursday 21st Feb

Today is the days of just all level threes, this seems to be a more laid back, calm day for John until Matthew says something to annoy John (Which is his purpose in life).
Today I carried on with Serif WebPlus and creating my website, I think I am used to Serif now its not as bad as I first thought but it can aid you in creating a decent website from what I have seen.
With Serif I was able to create my website a lot quicker than on Dreamweaver, I found this out as I'm near to finishing the website just a few more things I need to add in.
Today I have managed to input a contact form in my Website, a lot of other people had trouble with this and theirs didn't work but I somehow managed to get mine to work and with a message at the end saying the message was successfully sent. At first it was rather annoying as it was confusing what we had to do but it worked fine once John created an FTP(File Transfer Protocol) server.

An FTP server allows you to get your website to go live on the internet so it is viewable from other computer and it also test the functionality to make sure it works properly and there is no problems with your website at all.

As creating the contact form took a long time to do for everyone we were not able to get much accomplished but I did add more to my website so I can move further on in this unit to complete task 4 and possibly move on to task 5 to get the whole unit completed.
Today I learned what FTP meant as I wast completely sure what is was and what it did but I know now so it is all good.

Wednesday 20th Feb

Today it seem that Ted Tuesday had moved to Wednesday because someone obviously didn't know what day it was. As I thought that we didn't have to do Ted questionnaire I didn't bother watching it Tuesday morning but I went through the questionnaire like a mad man as I had not a clue what answers to put and I should think I didn't get a very high score.
I carried on with Serif WebPlus and got quit a lot accomplished. The only thing I need to do is the other units we have not started yet so it will be an on going website and fully complete when we have completed all units in the course. I also need to update my gallery work so people can see what we did. I can then move onto the next assignment and hand that in for the date set.

After four hours of ICT and creating my website and after lunch we had Functional Skills English which is an absolute thriller for the whole class!
In Functional skills today we had to watch a short video on how to write a good newspaper article and what we should include in it when writing one. we then had the task of planing and writing our own newspaper article about Develop centre. we did  this so people could be aware of develop is in Norwich and how they could apply for it and what the course involves. most people in the class didn't seem to happy and willing to do this however I got on with the task and started to plan out what I wanted to put and got onto writing a bit of it.

Today in English I have learned what a newspaper article consists of and what should be included in one. I was then able to answer question to a decent standard and with understanding.

Tuesday 19th Feb

Yesterday we were supposed to do TED video but john hadn't done any questions for us from what i heard from a little birdie cough cough DAN. Today I completely redone my Website on serif webplus. It was very basic but over the next few day i will make up to a good standard.
today I completed Graphics assignment 3 task 4 and sent it to john to mark.

My targets i will set my self is to stay in my seat longer instead of helping others way too much but considering i have helped people a lot today i got quit a bit of work achieved.

Monday 18th Feb

Today I was working to get the whole of assignment 2 finished in COM unit, I managed complete that by doing task 3 three which was the last one I had to do. i then sent it off to john so he could mark it. 

I also completed Website production assignment 3 Task 1 which is the updated version as all of that assignment needs to be in. I have started on task two and three and should have them completed very soon.

Today I reviewed Robs second practice run for one of his tasks as he chose me to assess him along side John and Catherine. I gave him some constructive criticism  on how to improve so he can present his presentation very well for the real one that he will get marked on.

I have learnt more on Dreamweaver by inputting a contact form on my website I am creating. 

I will write what I wan to put on each page over the next two days

I enjoyed today as I managed to get quit a lot of work done and was able to have a relaxing day

Website production day!

Today was the day we use Dreamweaver again. I have got quite far considering I have helped a lot of people today. I have managed to create all my pages and links all of them, when i open it in my browser it work completely fine. i think i will be fine as i have created all the structure and now it should be plain sailing from now on.
I have Added a description to my home page and the first fault i noticed was that the drop down menu became transparent to the text so I had to change that on Dreamweaver and now it works very well. it is very easy to navigate through my website and now I am getting used to Dreamweaver I can work fast.

Over the next week I will watch some videos/ tutorials so I can be reassured I know what i'm doing next Thursday.
Tomorrow I will write a document for each page so I know what I want text I want to insert. I will also be a bit further ahead.

Half Day Wednesday

When we came in today John had another activity for us to do on small basic to do some coding.
we had to try and get it to count from 1 to 10 with one click on enter and no more. I had done that with 10 lines but then attempted a loop and it was success I was then able to put as many numbers as I wanted with out writing millions of lines just to get to the number I had inputted. in fact it is still zooming through millions of number to get to the number i had put. in the end there was only three line which was:
For num = 1 To 1000000000
TextWindow.WriteLine(num)
Endfor

Today I have nearly completed assignment two task three COM, I need to write about one more bullet point then I am done. I have also organised all of task two into one file that relates to the videos.

Today I didn't need any help and I am gradually getting better at programming so by the time we start the programming unit I wont have many issues.

"Suit Up!!" Barney Stinson Style Tuesday

Today we all (Me,Lewis,Ben,Jake,Rob and Matt, okay so not all) wore a Suit as we decided last week we were going to have a suit Tuesday, I managed to get mine in time for today as I brought mine yesterday after our course and luckily got the one I wanted to get and fitted nicely. Also John look very smart today in his suit too. WE ALL LOOKED THE DON OR ONE COULD SAY THE MAFIA

Today for the starter John gave us a task on small basic to do, it was the same task as yesterday but we had to fully complete it. we had to input three number and program it to get the correct total and for it to find the average. The last thing we had to do was to validate the whole thing.

As we done our presentation yesterday and it was all recorded and received feedback from the other group (Scott and Jack) assessing us. I was then able to complete task 2 assignment 2 in communication and employability. I did this by writing a review on our own groups and how they did and how they can make their work better by marking their work and putting track changes on, I did this for Dan and Shane who were in my group.
I have managed to complete more than half of Task 3 in assignment 2. I have wrote about the other groups performance and reviewed them and said about how they could improve.

Today I have learnt how to validate and program properly on Small basic, I seem to have the hang of things now and hopefully when it comes to the programming unit I will do alright in it.

I enjoyed reviewing the other group as I can criticise them on their bad points but not to much as they did alright in their presentation.
The only thing I needed help with today was small basic but I didn't get any help from John or Catherine I just used john example on the board to work my way through each step.
I loved SUIT DAY as we all Looked LEGEN.... wait for it.... DARY!!

Presentation Day

Today was the day of all presentations from level three's. In the morning we started off with programming, what we had to do on small basic was to try and input random numbers when it was complete and to make sure it gets the correct answer and then had to program it to find the average after it had the total.
I managed to do that but at first with great difficulty but then I picked up on what I had to do and i was away and it worked great.

After that we had to go over our practice run on our presentation, we did alright on our first run but had to improve a lot and if that was the marking one we would have got a low score.
we took Johns advise on how to improve and me, Dan and Shane talked for a while before we had to present our final product. it went very well and in the end we got a rating of 5 out of 5. Io I am very proud of myself and my colleges who done the presentation with me.
After lunch John sent us a little game to use our brains to see if we can get these three things (wolf, goat and cabbage) across a river in a boat that a cat was controlling.

Today was a very good day, I was nervous at first before i did the presentation but it went very well.

Untouchable-Dreamweaver

Today

It was the day of the level 3's Thursday, we had to start to create our website for our online portfolio using Dreamweaver.
I have come to the conclusion that Dreamweaver inst to be messed with it is extremely hard to get grips with, although I have somehow managed to get the background image, the title and subheadings on there and they are looking pretty good in live view.

Today I was helping Dan try and finish the group work for COM assignment 2 task 2. He managed to finish it and all that needs to be done is for me to record my podcast.

Today was very challenging but wasn't too bad as its only just level 3's.

Wednesday 6 Feb

This morning when we came in John said he wasn't sure what to open with today but he decided to show us how to use Microsoft small basic, when we were using small basic we had to make a turtle build a house by writing/giving it instructions in the small basic software.
When I first made it I had loads of lines and John then shew us how to do a loop at first it didn't work until I copied past it into a new small basic and then it worked. It was relatively easy when you get the hang of it.

the work i did today was COM assignment 2 task 1 and 2. I have almost finished assignment 2 task 1 just need to add a little more then i should be complete hopefully.
Task 2 is my podcast for our group work, i have written about a page and need to do a little more then start recording it either tonight or over the weekend if we are able to do it Monday to give me an little extra time to get it completely right.

Today was pretty easy as I knew what I wanted to do and I liked the started we did.

Monday 4th Feb

Today when we came in we were waiting for a guy called Dermot Cronin (What an AMAZING name), he came in to give us a talk about what is expected from you in job interviews. He talked about his early life for a while and an how he accomplished getting his role that he is in now.
Whilst he was here we were put into groups of 3 or 4 people and we received a piece. on this piece of paper there were four boxes with different titles which were appearance, knowledge, motivation and communication. In these boxes we had to write things down that we shouldn't do in an interview and once that was completed we discussed it as a class.

For the rest of the day we discussed what we were going to do for Assignment 2 task 2 in our groups we are all doing different way of presenting and will then combine it all together as one.
I have been doing a script for my podcast, I have done a page today and need to do a bit more to be completed i will then start recording it at home.

Today was good, I enjoyed the talk and learned a fair amount about what you should and should do at a job interview.

Wednesday 30th Jan

Today John shew us some videos on BBC website, I have no idea what the relevance was but I suppose its to wake us up a bit and have a discussion before we crack on with work.

As today is only a half day there isn't much to talk about or write about. I crack on with assignment 2 task 1, i think i have nearly completed it i just need to spend another half hour on it to make sure everything is done.

I had a discussion with john about my graphics assignment 3 task 3, I now know what to do to get it to a decent standard.
today was a laid back and fairly easy as i knew what i was doing!

Tuesday 29th Jan

Today we looked at some cool videos on YouTube that John shew us. Today was famous TED Tuesday video day, some people did alright an others not so well. I came joint second out of three or four people which inst bad going, I think the percent I got was 70% or high not to sure though.

for the rest of the day I was doing assignment one task 3, I managed to complete the whole task. In the task I talked about VAK learning styles and how people learn best for each one. I also talked about Mumford and Honey learning style. In my introduction I mentioned how it benefits people to know what their learning style is.

I also started on assignment two task one but only got a bout a paragraph done.

Today was good, me and Dan disgusted what we were going to do for assignment 2 task 2 as we are in groups of two.

Monday 28th Jan

Today when we came in John shew us a TED video which was interesting.
The tasks I did today was updating Communication and Employability Skills for IT Assignment 1 task 1, I have completely updated it except the communication part in the task but i have a good example that John likes.
Today I have done task three in the same assignment I just need to create a short questionnaire so people can find out which learning style they lean towards more and see what type of person they are.

After lunch John was not a happy bunny as people where throwing cards around and chicken, but its all good now people went to clear it up.

Today was a good, I have definitely learnt a lot more about learning styles and barriers in good communication.

Tuesday 22nd Jan

Today after our 5 day weekend due to snow, we started our new unit which is Communication and Employability in the IT industry. We were in pairs to do a little task at the beginning, we had to list as many attributes as we can and then discuss them as a class afterwards.
We then got a card each with an attribute on and had to write a short definition in our own words.
After break we started on Assignment 1 task 1, I completed P1 and started to do P2 but don't understand P2 much, a bit like Lewis, Dan and Matt.
In Assignment one task one we had to list the personal Attributes and attitudes that employees look for the list that I can up with is;

·        Works well in a team/good team work skills

·         Problem solving

·         Good communication skills

·         Self-motivated

·         Organisation

·         Uses own initiative

·         Knowledge in this aspect of work

·         Experience and qualifications at College graduate  level

·         Flexible

·         Enthusiastic about their job

·         Wiliness to carry out personal training and development-desire to keep up to date with new technologies

·         Professional 

      once I had completed my list I wrote about them all.

Monday 14th Jan

Today John opened the day with watching the TED video so people wouldn't have an excuse tomorrow to say they didn't watch it. To be honest we didn't watch it properly he just skipped to different parts.

Today I was completing all of hardware assignment I updated three videos which were; Video 1- installing RAM and Video card, Video 2- installing AVG, Windows XP SP3, Chrome and Libre Office, Video 3- Benchmarking the computer. I need to upload one more that I have nearly completed. I completely redone the layout of assignment 2 task 3 and added a lot more in, so there was more detail. I added information about firewall and how it helps improve your systems performance.  I sent that off to John and he said it was good, so I guess that's a good sign.

Last Thursday we all/ most of us went to the open day at NUCA (Norwich University College of Arts) it was a very interesting day the best lecture was the Games design, there is a lot involved in that but looks really good, their success rate for people getting jobs straight away after they leave is 92%. they go to big company's like Sony, EA and Rockstar for example. What they have on offer is a very high standard and good qualifications. People who go there achieve a lot in the couple of years. the whole layout is nice and the teachers really know what they are on about.
It was a good day there and wasn't as boring as going to a two hour lecture
Me, Lewis and Ben T had a lovely meal in the Waffle House!

Today was good and as I liked the hardware unit so it was relatively relaxing but I completed 3 nearly 4 videos and one document.

January 9th Jan

Today this will be a short post as we were only working on one task.
we all (level 3's) cracked on with assignment 3 task 3, I have done three pages today and have compared 10 images all together. I have nearly finished it but just need to add a couple more file formats then I think that'll do for that task.

This morning I got up early as I wanted to finish off some work before I came in. I finished Hardware Assignment 2 task 2 and then email it to john. I finished off the outstanding video I had not uploaded to YouTube for john to analyse but that is all done now and I have email him the link.
All I need to do is wait for his feedback and update those two pieces of work

Tuesday 8th Jan

The first thing we did today was to do the TED test. i have no idea what score I got but I should imagine it was rather low as I did not watch the video because i completely forgot about TED.

After that we had to pick our favorite band image for our album cover and had to put them in as many file formats we could. I put them in every format that was available to save them. once we did that all the level threes walked around to have a look who had the biggest file size.

once we had done that we had to get about 12 formats and the had to compare the quality of image. I had to put them in low quality, high quality, changed the color depth.
I managed to compare 4 images all together today but will do 8 more.

I have been so tired today mainly because I had a terrible night sleep. really need a way to find out how to reset my self clock!
Today was good but very tiring. till tomorrow see y'all later

First Post Of 2013!!

Today was our first lesson of 2013 and when we came in john got us all to search what cool technology we have seen and either got or want and then talked about it. after that john talked about the tasks that have been handed in and that haven't been handed in. he said about what he expects from all of us by the end of the week.

Today I was updating my work I have done three pieces of work, I completed and updated hardware assignment 1 task 1 and sent it back to John. I completed and updated Assignment 2 Task 1 and have sent it to john. I have fully updated Assignment 2 task 2 and will send it to john later. I have fully completed a video that I need to upload to YouTube for john to mark.

Today was a pretty relaxing day with lots of updating.