New weebly.com Web Page

For my CST300 Lab I have uploaded the final stages of my weebly.com web page. It will currently have all the updated information including an up to date ILP, a couple of my research papers I completed during that course and a sample capstone project proposal. Here is the link. Also there is a link at the top of that web page to bring you back to this blog.

SMART Degree Goal

My goal while attending CSUMB is attain a BS in Computer Science and Information Technology with a concentration in software engineering. Currently my expected graduation period is set for the spring of 2015, with everything including working full, is very much possible. Along with getting an education about the different programming languages, I hope to create better time management for myself and learn how to be a better problem solver.

10/25/2012

Today we talked about how make an effective presentations through the use of different methods. The first method of having a good presentation is being able to convey a message that relates to the audience. This way the audience will be paying more attention to the words that you are saying and feel like they can understand the the topic being presented. Also, get the audience involved through asking questions or creating some sort of dialog in order to make the audience feel as though they are not being lectured about the topic. Another point that was brought up was to give acknowledgment to the people that helped during the creation of the presentation. After talking about ways to make a presentation more engaging, we learned how to develop skill to avoid being nervous while presenting. The ones that stuck out to me were to believe in the message that you are trying to convey because I think that if a person is to give a presentation about a topic it has to have meaning to them. Another way to make it so that a person is not nervous during a presentation is to practice the material before hand. The reason behind this is to avoid over thinking the the presentation and forgetting the material while in the middle of describing vital points.

10/18/2012

Leslie Kern was our quest speaker and she talked about how internships can build up our resumes and how the we can gain experience in the field that we are studying for in the hopes of started a potential career. Also, she mentioned that sometimes students who have interned at a certain business they are more likely to be hired by them once they have finished their education. Another aspect that she mentioned was how we can use the experience we gain through the internship to decide if that is the field that we want to enter after graduation. Leslie Kern went on to say that even though this is a small sacrifice interns of time in the long term it will pay off.

Project Management

The most important aspects of project management include being on time and meeting deadlines, meeting the requirements that are setup, and not allowing for the project to be over budget.

Project management is crucial because it allows everyone in the group to have a clear idea about what is expected from them as they participate in the discussions. This also is a way to prioritize which aspects of the project are more important and should be more focuses on, such as topics that have more detail than others. Another part about project management is being in a team that is likely to work well with each other and are going to work together to get the project done in a timely fashion.

Lecture 09/27/2012

For the first activity I did not score well because I lack the ability to set goals and being able to prioritize activities for myself to accomplish a certain task. A possible way to correct this inability is to first set smaller goals that are designed to help me accomplish my larger goals. Such as creating a to-do list that contains an activity like reading a book, or obtain some information, that relates to the my career goals. This may include asking the faculty at CSUMB or reading various books.

Here is my new to-do list that I am going to attempt at following for the rest of the semester and hopefully stay on this schedule for the rest of my time at CSUMB

Today in class Kevin Cahill came in to introduce himself and talked brielfy about his accomplishments. He also gave information about the types of classes he teaches. Followed by how this will be his last year as a capstone advisor.

The next person to present today was Dr. YoungJoon Byun. He is the current ILP advisor for Software engineering. He talked about the projects he has worked on in the past, which include:

• P2P communication over Ad-Hoc Networks
• California Wireless Coverage and Bandwidth

Online Study Assignment

These are my studying skills and score interpretation from the mindtools.com website. Although it says that I am managing my time effectively, I realize that I will have to manage my time better in order to have a successful college experience while attending CSUMB.

Lecture Date 09/13/2012

For this class period we had the opportunity to hear from two of the CSUMB’s faculty members about the classes they teach. He introduced himself to us and gave his presentation about the different projects that he has been involved, which is very informative about how muw knowledgeable he is on network and security. Also,Dr. Sathya Narayanan continued his presentation about what we can expect as students to do for our Individual Learning Plans. Then the next to give a presentation was Pat watson that gave a presentation for students that are majoring in Communication Design and showcased a few works that previous students and himself have worked in the past.

I found the Dr. Tao gave the some of the best information about how to raise your current GPA from a 2.0 to a 4.0. Which gives me hope as I want to raise my own GPA to give myself a better presence when I plan to look for a career in the technology industry.



Study Skills that I excel at:

• I do not read out loud to myself
• silently reading allows you to retain more information
• as well as allowing you to read at a faster pace than you normally would if you were to read out loud
• Outlining text books:
• allows for the main points in the text to be more easliy remembered than if they were to be underlined or highlighted in a textbook
• Study places:
• by choosing an appropriate place to study one is more likely to remove themselves from a majority of distractions through their daily routines.

Study Skills I lack at:

• Scheduling:
• Being able to schedule your routine throughout the day is an important asset to have in both your educational and professional careers.
• Getting the main idea:
• understanding the main idea of any given text is essential to effective study strategies
• Reviewing and revising notes
• through the ability to review and revise lecture notes immediately after the lecture ends to better suit your needs while studying, any student is more likely to retainteh information better and be able to able the lessons later.

Lecture Date 09/06/2012

In today's lecture we were to look through the different Individual Learning Plans (ILP) briefly to get an idea as to where they are located on the website. After spending some time getting to know where the ILP's were located, we began discussing about why it is important to have vision and to know why it is important to know the faculty. I listened to what was being said about vision from the other student and our professor. I started think about vision as being able to look at what you want in life and how that vision can have an impact on your life because it guides you to where you want to be.

Though only having a vision may not be enough for anyone to accomplish much in life if you are not using all the available resources around you. Knowing the faculty is a great resource to have, especially when they are very well informed in their respective fields. The faculty provides information when you may have questions or get stuck by a certain problem. Also, by knowing who they are you can have access to their experience and the knowledge that they are willing to share with you. In the hopes that you can take the lessons taught by the faculty and implement them in your professional careers.

Knowing people in the faculty such as Professor Bobbi Long, Visual Design professor, is a very good asset to have. She has a lot of experience in her field and is willing to teach us about the lessons she has learned through working at various places. In her presentation, I learned two very important lessons that day. the first and most blatantly obvious is to always have a back up no matter what because even though you may be certain that the file(s) are where they should be, there is a chance the data could be missing or corrupt. Thus, hampering your ability to accomplish your goals that you set for the day, such as not being able to have a presentation ready for a lecture.

After hearing someone other than myself changing their original educational goals to something else, I learned that you can change the direction you are going and be better for it sometimes. Professor Bobbi Long talked about how taking her previous experiences and using them to advance herself in the jobs that she went to. When Bobbi talked about how she went to study abroad and began to enjoy sketching various buildings in Europe. This enjoyment would later allow her to realize that she wanted to change her path from linguist to visual design. Even though her career goals changed she admits that her passion still resides in linguistics.

After spending some time looking through the different path ways that are available, I realized that not only was I about to start not knowing what I was doing. I also had no idea of which path to choose from. I had originally meant on finishing with a degree in Communication Design without really knowing what it was. Now that I am reading and taking the time to research it better, I am willing to change my major from CD o the CSIT program with a concentration in Software Engineering.

The portfolios that previous students were vast in numbers and equally vast in content. I enjoyed looking through both Ahmadullah Bassal and Amelia Weigant. Their portfolios were both informative and straight to the point. I also looked at a few of their projects such as Amelia Weigant's final project for her CST 363 course. The project is based around a scaled down version of database management system used in large theme parks. The contents of the project include reasons as to why it is important and gives a description of how the system can be implemented by theme park managers, staff, vendors and visitors. 

Ahmadullah Bassal's portfolio caught my attention with his power point presentation based on WiMax OPNET. The first half of the presentation describes what WiMax is and what features that are available with the technology. In other half of the power point, Ahmadullah Bassal gives details of how WiMax can be implemented.

Their portfolios provided information on both the course that can be expected to be taken by a student who is enrolled in an ITCD degree program and the knowledge that can be acquired from the courses.