First half-semester

The first half semester seems to have flown by. The first two assignments back have been a Team project (A11) which will last up until Christmas and a CSS assignment (A9) which we have just completed. We also have a year long assignment which is a Personal Development Profile (PDP) which you are reading now.

My feelings on the first semester are that it has been a big step up from last year especially with the team project and the Personal Development Profile. Our A9 assignment was in the same mould as the majority of assignments last year, essay writing and learn a new technique. This doesn’t stop me being nervous about this assignment however because I didn’t have the internet at home for the last task which was writing about CSS3. All the information about CSS3 is on the internet with little information in books, this made the task quite stressful and I found it hard to complete.

The reason the team assignment is a step up from last year is that we are a team completely responsible for our assignment with no lectures or prompts from Steve saying “you should be doing this at this stage” or “this should be completed by such and such a time”. I have been given the responsibility of Project manager so this is my role. I do feel this gets on top of me at times because I know if the team doesn’t pass the assignment it will all come down to me because I should have planned for every possibility. I do think the assignment is going well at this stage however and we have one website nearly completed and another in the design process.

The PDP assignment has been one of the most controversial assignments of the first half semester. Last year we were able to write about what we liked, this year we have to be given themes for our blog posts. I found myself struggling with this because I didn’t get chance to complete any of the blogs in college time. This is something that will change once back at college and something I feel can only help my posts. I also have struggled to comment on other people’s blogs but with the first years to comment on and all the creative work we will be doing for our next assignment I don’t see this being a problem anymore.

Looking back I enjoyed the designing of a CSS Shuffle webpage for our A9 assignment. I will admit that I didn’t enjoy it much when testing it in different browsers. Elements on the page started to jump for no apparent reason, they looked fine when the page opened but when you rolled the mouse over the text would jump down. I think with more experience with CSS I will learn a lot and feel much more comfortable, it is defiantly a tool to learn once you know the basics, by playing around and fiddling with rather than reading about it.

It was good meeting a client that had nothing to do with college. This is a client in the real world and all she is asking from you is to design and build her a professional website. The number of client meetings we have had have been worthwhile to see just how little the client knows about what they want, yes they want a website but they have little knowledge of what can be achieved. Although the website is only small we want to do a job the client will be proud of and one she can use for a number of years.

If I could have done anything else I would have commented on peoples blogs a lot more and given them feedback. I know this is something that I have let slide over the past month and something I will improve on in the future. I also should have written in my time plans an hour or two to complete the blogs.

Next half semester I will be adding time for my blog posts into my weekly time plans and making sure I get them uploaded on time. I will be posting at least 4 comments on other peoples blogs and I will try and be more professional in my approach to blogs.

I think for the team project I will create much more strict deadlines to make sure the tasks are completed on time and to a high standard.