Reflective Writing – Post 12

I would like to dedicate my last reflective blog post on how far I have come in those last two years and reflect back on the good things and the bad things I done, mainly with regards to my time management.

It is safe to say that I have always managed to finish my work and assignments on time up to this point which is a good thing in itself, however I still feel that for the most part, I could have done more and eventually would have gotten a better grade in most of the assignments.

The reason why I think so is because I manage to finish my assignments always one or two days before, sometimes even on the same date as the submission, and this gives me little to no time to double check my work and make necessary arrangements or improvements.

This reminds me of the importance that MCAST can’t seem to stop stressing us about, with regards to managing our time. I tried making use of gantt charts, but I always end up ignoring those eventually. I do not take them seriously enough to be committed to them. There is however an alternative which I have not yet tried.

This year, one of our lecturers introduced us to an application called “Habitica” which is basically an application used to build habits and achieve one’s goals and motivate an individual to pursue them. It is a way of gamifying one’s life.

Screenshot taken from Habitica 

I could use this app to set daily goals such as:

• Finish one blog of Psychology of Play every week
• Finish one blog of Critical Thinking every week
• Write 200 words each day for the report of Task 2

For my next assignment/project I could make use of this application which might make my life easier knowing that I have a goal to reach, so that I could get experience points and this would in turn keep me from procrastination and have enough time to double check and improve my work.

Reflective Writing – Post 11

In today’s post, I would like to reflect upon the research question I came up with for my thesis proposal.

The first and most important thing I learned during my course at MCAST was that any work I did, whether it be a project or a one thousand word write-up, the subject that I choose should always be one that I like and am passionate about. If the subject that I choose to work on is one that I dislike or feel as if I am not good enough in it, it is probably going to be a recipe for disaster.

This was a very valuable lesson and one which I believe everyone should learn from. I decided to use this idea for my thesis statement as well, and the first thing I did before coming up with my research question was to list down my favourite school subjects. This helped me create a mind map of different areas I could explore and research.

Knowing that this was going to be a one year long project, I had to carefully evaluate my options. One of my favourite subjects that I listed down was 3D modelling, however I did not feel as if I was ready and skilled enough to base my dissertation on this subject, so I opted for my other subject, which was psychology of play. I started looking for variables that I could associate psychology with and finally decided to also include other digital technologies, focusing mostly on AI. Giving focus to these three keywords; psychology, AI and digital games, I found a topic on EBSCOhost which was related to smart homes which helped me bring out my final thesis statement:

“Enhancing the well-being of the elderly with the use of digital technologies through smart homes and digital games.”

Throughout my years at MCAST, I have also learned about the importance of research and getting to know the subject as much as possible by using reliable sources to find articles. This has helped me significantly in conducting my literature review.

Having applied what I have learned in my proposal from previous units, I feel good and ready for my thesis. I am also aware that my statement may have some changes as the year progresses, so I must learn to be flexible with this. The thing I fear the most is that the subject may become complicated and difficult to understand at times, especially where complex science may come in, in which case I would have to simplify things and not deviate from the subject.

Reflective Writing – Post 10

This week, I would like to reflect back on the debate that we had to do for our Critical Thinking subject and mainly point out what I could have done better.

Our debate that we chose was titled “Hacking is a good thing”. Me and Carlston both liked the title name and both of us find hacking an interesting topic, however the problem we had with this topic was that we both were mostly in favour of hacking, but one of us had to debate against it.

Finally we decided that I would go against hacking and point out the reasons for why hacking was bad, while Carlston argues against this. I felt as if I was cheating myself, however I decided to take this as a challenge.

I went in great detail and found some very good research from reliable sources. During the debate I also felt that I came up with some very good arguments, however at one point, during my rebuttal, I could not think of a way to argue against one of the questions that Carlston asked me and so I did not even answer it but rather came up with more questions, arguments and case scenarios to counter this question. I felt lucky at the time that Carlston did not pressure me into answering that particular question, because I would have probably froze.

I actually enjoyed myself during the debate and overall it went pretty smooth, however I still felt a bit uneasy about myself after the debate ended, because I knew that it could’ve gone south really fast had Carlston been more assertive during the debate and this could have easily been avoided had I given as much time doing research for my rebuttal and what questions might be asked by Carlston as much as I did research on my arguments.

One other thing that I felt was missing in my debate were the lack of visuals and/or interactivity to engage with the audience. Without these I felt as if I was losing touch with the audience and that they were getting bored. I also believe that visuals make more impact and also helps solidify an argument. Steven Pinker sums this up perfectly:

Having experienced my first debate, I now know that I need to be better prepared and think ahead for what questions might arise during a debate which may weaken my arguments. I also need to engage more with the audience and in my opinion I think that this would be best achieved through visuals (images, statistics, videos) using of course reliable sources.

Reflective Writing – Post 9

Update: After six weeks, MCAST finally got us a lecturer to teach us AI. Our new lecturer is much better than the previous one, but sometimes I feel that during explanations we would not understand each other fully.

When our teacher is explaining herself and the subject, it’s as if she starts to jump from one topic to the other without ever concluding one and most of the time I end up not understanding what the teacher expects from me for the class exercises because I lose interest.

I would then have to proceed and ask my other classmates on what it is that we should be doing. This is the only lecture where I find myself doing this and what makes it even worse is that I feel shy or embarrassed to ask the lecturer to re-explain the task. This is very unlike me because usually I tend to ask questions when I do not understand something. It could be that for some reason I feel intimidated by the lecturer.

Having experienced this in the past three lessons that we had, I now feel as if it is rather foolish to ask for an explanation from my friends. Perhaps the reason why I feel shy is because I feel as if I am wasting the time of my friends.

For next time, the best thing I should do, if I do not understand something the teacher said, is wait until she finishes speaking and then go and ask her in private. That way I would not feel as if I am wasting my friends’ time and would probably understand the subject better.

 

Reflective Writing – Post 8

Every week, since starting second semester in our new unit ‘Psychology of Play’, we are required to write a 250-word blog post for one of our tasks.

I actually find them quite easy, because for the most part, all we have to do is write about what we covered in class and sometimes carry out our own research, which quite frankly I actually like doing. Since the subject is related to gaming, sometimes we have to play games before writing our blog posts which I also find enjoyable.

The problem  with this however is that although I find them quite easy, they take so much of my time. Two weeks ago I had this blog where it actually took me three hours to complete and I also ended up writing over 500 words instead of just 250. There was a lot of content to cover and I felt that most of what I was writing was important. Another reason why it takes me so long to complete is because I conduct a lot of research beforehand and search for information from a lot of different sources.

Carrying out the task this way is not actually bad in itself, however I still feel like three hours is too much for a simple 250-word blog post and I have other work of other assignments to finish and the deadlines are all close. Even when I talk with some of my classmates, they all say they finish them in half an hour or less most of the time, which makes me feel like I am doing something wrong.

I am still not quite sure if I should continue doing my blog posts this way, despite my feelings, or if I should perhaps learn to find just a few good and trusted sources and take my information from those. I am also not a very fast reader, and I find skimming through text quite difficult. I could perhaps make a habit of this, so that in the future I would be able to analyze long pieces of text quicker and more efficiently.

For next week’s blog I am going to try and stick to the word count, while also reducing the number of hours spent for each blog. I am also going to try and include more visuals and perhaps videos as well to support my write-up. This would hopefully reduce my word count as well.

Reflective Writing – Post 7

When semester one ended, we received our timetable for the second semester and then a few days later, me and my classmates received an email from the director notifying us that the unit ‘Introduction to AI’ was to start at a later stage.

Our original timetable

The email from our director we received on 8th February

About four weeks have passed and only just yesterday have we heard back from the director regarding our unit where he sent our class the email as shown below and attached to it was the updated timetable.

The email from our director we received on 13th March

Our updated timetable

During those four weeks with no lecturer, most of us had made other plans according to the first timetable that we were given and those of us that work, including myself, gave our timetables to our employers so that we could work extra hours after school.

I feel really annoyed with the way the MCAST system is working. First they gave us a timetable in one way and without a lecturer for four weeks and now four weeks later they change our timetable and give us a lecturer who has just graduated from school, instead of someone who is slightly more experienced in the subject, and on top of that, they expect us to finish our assignment on time and get good grades. This is also a subject that we have no experience on which makes it even worse.

While reflecting on this experience and actually writing down my feelings and thoughts about it, I realize that perhaps my emotions are getting the best of me. Even though I strongly feel that I have been ‘cheated’ on, I’m not really sure how my feelings can help me finish my course successfully.

Thinking about it, maybe MCAST does not have any choice and maybe they have done all they can to find us a lecturer and also judging the teacher which hasn’t taught us one lesson yet is not the right way to evaluate things. Emotions can sometimes really cloud my judgement, which is a bad form.

This does not however remove the fact that I still feel frustrated, and having to finish school two times a week at 19:30 does not help the case. What I realize I have to do now is to re-schedule my personal timetable accordingly and also prioritize what’s most important to me right now, whether if it’s staying late and for long hours at school or give importance to other stuff such as my hobbies and my part-time work.

For this I am going to try my best to balance my workload and manage my time better. I should build enough courage to overcome this obstacle which is to prioritize school above all else, however difficult it may seem, because right now getting a degree and passing all units is my main and most important goal.

 

 

 

Reflective Writing – Post 6

There is so much information and a great deal of school content to remember and stay updated with nowadays, that it is with great ease to forget school material and fall behind in subjects if one does not revise and apart from school there are other things we have to deal with at home such as family and hobbies.

The worst part though is that at first, during the first few weeks of MCAST, we do not get a lot of work or have a lot of assignments, but then at the end of the semester, we are bombarded with assignments and school work from all units, which makes it hard keeping up and this happened last semester to me and my classmates.

I have no control over this or the deadlines of my assignments which is somewhat frustrating, however sometimes, when I compare myself to other students, most of the time I find that I still end up finishing last. Then I realize that this is also partly my fault, mainly because I leave the subjects that I am bad at for last. Another factor is that when I am at home on my computer, I tend to have a lot of distractions around. Whether it be a Facebook tab open or an online game or even a simple book that I read for pleasure, it redirects my focus from what I should be doing.

I should make it a habit that when I am about to do school related work, I close out and remove everything which is not related to school. Building up this habit can be somewhat challenging, since knowing me, I tend to get distracted easily, but there are a few things I could try to help me out. I could create a better study place; a place where distractions are minimum. Instead of doing my school work in the kitchen where a lot of noise happens, I could stay in my room upstairs and remove from my desk anything which is not related. Noise is a huge distraction to me, so music, TV and radio would not be allowed. Furthermore I should politely ask family members to not distract me during those hours.

In my future assignments I should also start by doing the hardest assignments and give  more attention to harder units, so that I will have enough energy to carry them out. I should also take regular breaks and get enough sleep every night. This would probably give me enough time to finish my assignments beforehand and not panic as much to try and reach all the deadlines at once like last semester.

References

wikiHow. (2018). How to Improve Your Study Skills. [online] Available at: https://www.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Study-Skills [Accessed 12 Mar. 2018].

Reflective Writing – Post 5

Semester one has passed and with the end of the first semester, new units are introduced in our course. Particularly I would like to address a new subject which was introduced to us this semester and give my thoughts about it.

The name of the subject is Critical Studies and Research Methods. Firstly, I would like to point out that I do get the reason for why this subject was introduced to us this semester which is to prepare us for our dissertation next year and I feel that certain tasks are important and points us in the right direction, however there are other tasks which I consider as insignificant and does little to no cause into improving our learning. One of these tasks is the one below:

I felt as if doing this task did not in any way give me any learning experience whatsoever and that I was not making use of any of my skills and I kept asking myself – What am I really achieving by gathering information about a peer’s persona?

By thinking about this task in this way, I did not put my full effort in it and I felt angry at myself with the end result for I knew I could have done better in the end. I was also frustrated with the assignment and the lecturer himself for giving us this task, but in the end, no good came out of these emotions. On the contrary I was quite sulky for the whole day and felt as if I was no good at the subject.

I am sure that if I made more effort and took the task more seriously, I would have done better research and came with a better end product and that in turn would have made me feel good about myself, even though my thoughts about the task are that the task itself is insignificant to the course I am in.

‘Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. Just do your best – in any circumstance in your life. It doesn’t matter if you are sick or tired, if you always do your best there is no way you can judge yourself. And if you don’t judge yourself there is no way you are going to suffer from guilt, blame and self-punishment.’ (Ruiz, 1997)

For my future tasks, in any subject, I will always give my best. That way I would not have any guilt and blame myself or others, which would in turn, hopefully make me feel better and believe more in myself.

References

Ruiz, D.M. (1997). The Four Agreements. California: Amber-Allen Publishing, pp. 75, 77.

Reflective Writing – Post 4

For this post, I would like to write about the two subjects in my course that I find the most challenging which are PHP and Databases and App development and present ideas as to why I find these subjects more difficult than others and perhaps what actions I should take to understand these subjects better.

Every time we have a lecture on said subjects, I feel like I am learning a lot by following and writing exactly step-by-step what the lecturer is typing, however when I try and do what the lecturer did in the lesson on my own, I do not manage to meet my expectations and have to rely on the lecturer for an answer which makes it frustrating for me.

This has been happening to me for quite a while now, occurring mostly when it comes to coding. I keep fooling myself over and over again that just by listening to what the lecturer is saying in class and by taking the notes down myself, I am learning a lot and it is enough, but I should know better.

A new subject we had for example was 3D modelling. I immediately found that I had a passion for it. In class I followed what the lecturer told us to do and I did find it difficult at first to learn the basics and follow along. When I went home, I practised and created models of my own and as time went by, I got pretty confident in the subject. This was not the case with coding. Once I went home I did not revise the subjects or practised them and now time has passed and the subjects got more complex and I am finding it more difficult to understand the lectures.

I believe that everyone has different learning techniques and my best method of learning a subject is to practise what I learned on my own so that I can encounter mistakes and figure out how to solve them.

As a next step, if I want to get better at coding I must practise it at home and not just during lectures because this way I get to learn and become more confident in the subjects, just like I did in 3D modelling.

 

Reflective Writing – Post 3

For an upcoming assignment, our lecturer split us into groups of 2 and we have to work together until the assignment is finished which is due in January. Everyone found a partner eventually and I was the only one who didn’t and was left for last. This resulted in me ending up with the other last person who didn’t have a partner.

I got to admit that I didn’t really feel good about this, because truth of the matter is I would have much preferred to partner up with students whom I know I get along better with and students which I spend more time with and work well together.

The bad thing about this partnership was that I was partnered up with someone that when it comes to school, he doesn’t really give his best and leaves everything for the last minute when it comes to assignments.

Two weeks ago we had our first part of the assignment where we had to do our pitch presentation about what mobile application we were going to design, and I told him how we should split the work. I worked on my mobile app design while he worked on the web-server side. I informed him on what we should do and what was to be included in the web-server side and I assumed that he got the idea, but at the end we found out we had some discrepancies. What I should have done in this situation was not to assume anything and check the work he had done.

From day one, when we were given the assignment brief, I should have started looking for a partner which I know I would have worked better with.

If I get any more group projects in the future, I will take action on day one and will also never make any assumptions that what the other person did was good and up to standard, but rather check out for myself.

Don Miguel Ruiz (1997, p. 65) in his book The Four Agreements states ‘It is always better to ask questions than to make an assumption, because assumptions set us up for suffering’.

References

Ruiz, D.M. (1997). The Four Agreements. California: Amber-Allen Publishing, p. 65.