Computer Hardware and Administration
The hardware part of this I have already learnt loads, as I did not do anything relating to computers before this course but have experience of them from home and from GCSE ICT. I learnt the names of all the different ports on the computer some of which I knew already, others I did not seeing as I had only experienced some of them. I learnt the difference between serial and parallel communication which I could have guessed from the meaning of the words. One of the major differences between this and my last experience of education is how practical this is, which when it comes to computers at least is a good thing for me. One of the downsides is that we seem to moving very slowly, going over the same thing over and over again, almost like we're back in junior school. Although some of us haven't done this before I have done A Levels and can pick things up pretty quickly, well I am doing a bit of generalisation here, that applies to me and may not apply to the entirety of the class. My first lesson with the correct teacher was a bit of a drag. The teacher also tended to be a bit patronising of the new comers, but that is to be expected as he does not know our capabilities yet. Just because we don't know what you and the rest of the class knows does not mean we're slow or stupid, consider how many years the rest of them have had to pick this up. Now I fun task of proving this teacher wrong by showing him just how wrong he is and maybe make a little too obvious. Other things that I have picked up are understanding of how hardware interacts with every other bit of hardware. The only downside is the lack of organisation on my part resulting in missing the first week, which if I hadn't I could of score 100% (not 94.87%, which equates to one question wrong) on that test we did in the lesson. Although I can partially blame UCAS for stating the course starting date as the 28th, even if I should have read the letter properly which is the thing I will remember to do next time (it would have been easier if they had highlighted important dates in bold and maybe repeated them but then there is no guarantee that I would have noticed even then). Overall I have benefited from the last week learning a lot more about the PC and the components and the design that goes into it and why it is designed that way.
Introduction to Programming
I have only had one lesson of programming so far, I am allowed to move on at my own pace in this lesson which fun, means that I can catch up with work I missed in the first week. I have already learnt the basics of C# and if I had taken more material would have been able to move even faster. Although I need to make sure that I learn everything that can be learnt which is the disadvantage of being allowed to move at ones own pace. It took me a while to figure out variables, they are different in C# than in other programming languages that I have encounter but I got around it in time.The teaching style in this subject is one that I am much more accustomed too. It's not the we're going to ram it down ya throat scenario and drum it in until you have a headache not because of how much I've learnt but due to repetitiveness, It's the I will tell you once and if you have any question ask which allows those of different levels to move at their own speed. I will be the first to admit there are advantages to both methods of teaching, one is through the other is efficient. Both of them take each of these to the extreme. It would be nice to a compromise between the two and maybe exercise a little pragmatism. The best thing I can do is ensure that the work I do here is through but efficient, and hopefully this will improve as the course progresses and not be so tediously slow. Another thing I could do is skip ahead in my own time which will myself an advantage when it actually gets more challenging.
Introduction to Networking
Introduction to Networking is quite the opposite of the other two. We are moving quickly and not hanging around on the easy bits. We're have gone over the basics of the PC hardware and what each bit does ahead of Computer Hardware and Administration, as well as this we have looked at the types of computers, Binary, Hexadecimal, and Decimal Numbering Systems. We have also look at how to install hardware into a computer and the safety surrounding that. The different types of software such as local and network application and the other categories such as General/Home use or Business/Industry software. All of this has filled in the gaps in my knowledge for example I did not know about Hexadecimal, but I did know of it. The next area that we have covered is Operating Systems where I have mostly consolidated my knowledge about them and revised a bit about Windows XP as I have been using Linux for the past three years (at home). Then we moved on to setting up Windows XP for use on a peer to peer network, things like giving it a name and assigning an IP address. Most of which I have done before between Windows XP and Linux, but again there are some practices that I did not know about and I was missing some of the detail. Now we have moved on to the actual network itself, such as identifying network typologies, different types of network (power, telecommunications), the different parts of the network (media, peripherals, hosts and devices). Then we moved to exactly how the network sent the message from one to another which is when we were introduced to the OSI model and all the different layers.
The biggest problem I have with this subject is that it is all reading based at the moment, I have a partially photographic and auditory memory, therefore I like pictures (diagrams) and speech not huge chunks of text that make it impossible for me to memorise. This explain why I am so good at computers I simply take a mental screen-shot of each screen along the route and press each button I find to see what it does (I must have destroyed about 15 XP installations (and at least as many Linux installs) at home by doing this, hence I am used to backups (otherwise I would have lost all my work), partitions, virtualisations and clean installs). This maybe an adaptation that most young people have these days as they spend so much time around the computer. I can try what I did for my last subject (Sociology being very text based) and break out TTS (text to speech) and the use VYM (View Your Mind), a mind mapping program for Linux, which is all computer based of course.
As for how well I have done, I have been playing catchup in this subject since I missed the first week, and also catchup in the fact that the last time I took computers as a subject was ICT GCSE so there is a big jump between the two. But I have done reasonably well considering. I have yet to sort out a work pattern such as when I am going to do work outside of class. This is definitely the most challenging lesson out of all of them, however I have yet to get really stuck in due to organisational problems.
Systems Analysis and Development
This is the in-between subject, I have done most of the stuff before but I have yet to learn the terminology and be able to explain what I have done in their English. Once I have caught the terminology it should be fairly easy, but there are some concepts out their that need work (modelling the data not the reality, in reality you can't a lesson without a teacher but in a database it is a requirement). The biggest problem that I have with this subject is translating what the client (the person who I am modelling the data for) requirements into the ERM (Entity Relationship Diagram). I can built fairly complex models with the correct relationship but only if I understand exactly how they should work, it would be easy if I was designing a model for myself, cause I know exactly how the relationships work. The other hard bit is building it, I am used to implementing it, then discovering that an attribute needs optional otherwise you can't input any data. I cannot really say anything about how well I am doing, although I did turn up for a lesson an hour late thanks to the weird timings that this college operates with, thankfully I did not miss anything that important just going over last lessons work of which I had already done anyway. I have placed a copy of timetable on google calendar which should help me turn up at the right time and using my mobile phone as an alarm.