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.