Week 2

This week was the second (2nd) lesson that took part of the module Personal Development For Computing due to the strikes that made the previous week's lesson unable to be conducted.

In this second lesson we talked about working in groups, pdp, an article that we had to read and discuss in-class and a personal test that took part in class.

Working in groups is important as in our life we will have to join different groups. Everyone is either in a "non-formal" group or in a more let's say formal one. The non-formal one can be the one of a family or of friends or of something that you find as interesting (for example a group in relation to painting or of music in which you can meet other people and express your inner self or any other thing that you enjoy) and the formal one can be the one of a company or of a university. In a company you need to be able to work with many people, under pressure and in different conditions each time so you need to understand that people are different and that you may have to work sometimes and with those that aren't that close to your own way of thinking.

In my opinion it is important that the university provides courses that help students understand better how it is to work with groups and meet deadlines because tomorrow the student will use what has been acquired from these courses, projects, in his/her future life in a higher or a lower degree. I believe that if you have worked in groups throughout your studies then you will be more familiar in the concept of group working while later on you decide to find a job or expand your horizons and go for a master's degree or who knows a phd maybe! Everyone would feel better if they didn't have someone else to work with and do their workload all alone without feeling anxious of how the other people may react or how long time they may take to do their task, but at the end i believe that you learn and it is good that you meet various people and personalities and see how you respond to each different situation that is on your way.

The good thing while working in a group is that in a possible failure you are all together and experience the same thing and then try to improve it but also and in a good result you are all together. While being in a group it is also good that if what someone has done in relation to that assignment has a weakness that the other members would say to this person about a possible improvement and they can help him/her if there is anything that may seem difficult to be grasped or understood(London Metropolitan University).

Personally, I have experienced group working in the past as i have already acquired a bachelors degree in the area of Communication from another university. In my four years there i had to form with other students groups in order to complete different projects that the instructors announced to us. Sometimes people responded in a good manner meaning that they were interested and they showed it in the whole length of our working together but i came in contact and with other people who were the ones that you have to call everytime and see if they did anything or if there is anything wrong. It was good that i could work with different people during my studies as i had to work later on during my internship with many people from various ages at this time.

This week we also talked about our experience in relation to the previous semester's group work which was in relation to the module "Study skills for Computing." In my opinion the project of this module could have been better if some people arranged their time accordingly.

The second part of the lecture was in relation to PDP. So what does pdp stand for you may be asking? well it stands for personal development planning or personal development portfolio(London Metropolitan University). Personally i see pdp as something that makes you evolve meaning that you start from step 0 and then you need to do something in order to go to step 1 and step 2 etc. The same thing happens and in university courses and also and in the working environment; you learn and then you try to put things in practice. The pdp in my opinion isn't something that you try to learn now and that's it, pdp exists in everything you want to do that requires learning something, gaining experience etc. Before this and the previous module took place i didn't think a lot of the pdp and in some cases i didn't have a plan on what to do next but since the start of the "study skills" module i want to improve myself in some areas, learn more and find my weaknesses and improve them. Something that i must change is the anxiety part which becomes more and more clear but sometimes is upon my powers as it happens unintentionally. Anyway, I am still trying to improve this part.

The third part of this week's lecture was in relation to an article that was about people with disabilities for example someone who can't see or can't walk etc I think that it is good that we had a conversation in relation to this and that there are companies who try to work with people who have disabilities because working with them improves some parts of the company in the fact that you will see what is missing from what has been created so far while if you work with a person with disabilities you will hear more of what they say as they are the main receivers of any particular change. I remember during my internship that there was a lady who had a problem with her foot and she had to use something in order to walk properly. The good thing was that there was an elevator to help her move up and down in different floors but in some places there wasn't an elevator and she couldn't go there without the help of her colleagues; that was bad and i think that someone who has a company needs to understand that there may be people who have any kind of disability.

In the end we did a personality test online in which my result was 50% and this referred to that the pdp will be useful for me and the site that had this test could help me learn more about pdp.

Week 1

This week was the beginning of the Spring Semester's courses. This blog will focus on the module "Personal Development for Computing" and every week thoughts in relation to that module will be written down.

In this week's module we learned about the tasks that we need to perform in order to complete it.There will be a continuation of the PDP which stands for Personal Development Planning and through this we write down what skills we have acquired so far, what are our weakness,strengths and any plans for the near future. Apart from that, a conversation took place in relation to the two Assessment types of this module. The first assignment is a group project that has to do with the creation of a website in relation to a historical aspect of Computing. I personally find this project interesting and I am looking forward to it. I have already a knowledge in relation to html and creation of websites because i have attended seminars and I am also attending a distance learning course in relation to it and i think that if in the end we decide as a group to try the html way, then it will be good for me to put in action what i have learned so far.The second assignment is individual and focuses on blog listings (one of them is taking part now!), on personal development plan and statement.

What was mentioned above was something more general in relation to this module and now i will be more concrete in what this week's topic was about. We talked about Computing and its definition. Computing is field of study that is evolving and is related to many things like of: hardware, software, the design part, computation, multimedia and many other (London Metropolitan University). Generally speaking, this field of study can be found almost everywhere and this is good as it is not a discipline which focuses only on something specific.

Skills that an employer is looking forward to see to its employees could be: a)to be flexible while interviewing someone else or being interviewed or even have meetings in order to talk about something that is in relation to the company, b) to be able to think of alternatives, c) to think of alternatives and even if everything may flow smoothly in the job position that you are and when it comes the time to talk about your alternative solution d) to be able to work in teams (London Metropolitan University). I will now write down my opinion in relation to teamwork as i was a trainee once in a newspaper for a six-month period. I was a trainee while attending modules in relation to my previous bachelors degree and there we've been told throughout most of the assignments to form groups and basically learn from it, learn to be part of a team and try to handle what kind of situations my arise. It was something good as it helped me to join groups of different people and see how they will react and how will be the result of each project. This kind of teamwork then, when it came the time to go to that newspaper, helped me a lot as i had to work with many people from many departments in order to have the desirable result of our work.

We also talked about Body language which can show to other people how someone may feel of something or if s/he is nervous etc. A conversation also took place in relation to confidence and arrogance which can be found a lot in the workplace and not only in it but and in general. . The practice of something is also important as it helps the reader,user, to be able to feel more confident in the use of something or to remember something better(London Metropolitan University).

The last thing that we talked about in this class's lecture was in relation to Placements. Placements can be of any kind, of something that is in relation to his/hers field of study or of something that may be different(London Metropolitan University). It is important to be able to work somewhere and even if it is not your field's related as in the end you will experience better how it is to communicate with others, how to be in teams. Personally speaking, this six month training in that newspaper helped me a lot to see how the workplace is and how to act in some circumstances and what should i expect of the other and also as mentioned above how to work in teams.