Roles I play

We have to play different roles in our day to day life. Sometime we have to play the role of son/daughter, sometime students, sometime brother/sister, sometime manager, etc according to our needs. I too play different role in my life. Below are some of my roles which I play in my daily life.

Son:

               As I am a boy, I have to play the role of son in my family at home. This role of mine, I played it with my mother. I woke up early in the morning and washed up my face as well as brushed my teeth. Then, she asked me to bring milk and bread from shop. I went to shop in front of my house and bought milk and bread. She asked me how will I take bread in my breakfast and I answered her with simple answer i.e. ‘your choice’. Although I answered like that I was expecting her to make toast from the bread. Guess what she made? She made toast.

Student:

                I also play the role of student in my college. I play this role with my lecturers and tutors. Today was viva test of one of our module. I went to room in which test was taking place when my turn came up. There he asked me about my coursework. And I explained about my coursework and what tools I had used while doing it. He was a bit disappointed because I hadn't given comments in my webpage codes. I was trying to impress him though there were faults in my coursework but I didn't succeed fully.

Clothes

I think there are two kinds of people in this world if we view from the perspective of clothing style. One of them is those who wear clothes to show their attitude, personality and behaviour through their clothing. While the other one wear clothes just for wearing purpose only or in other way, to fulfil basic need.

Talking about me, I am bit strange as I’m from the both kind. Sometimes I’d like to wear to show off whereas sometimes I wear clothes just for wearing purpose. Honestly I take clothing as basic requirement of us, humans, which should be comfortable. I don’t care much about style rather I care more about the comfort in them. I wear those clothes in which I feel relaxed and free. I prefer loose clothes than the tight ones. Because in tight clothes I feel like I am tied by a rope or feel very uneasy.

Shorts, jeans and T-shirts are the three things that I usually wear. I like shorts while staying at home whereas I like to wear jeans at the time of outing. And with both of them, I prefer T-shirts. Why? Reason is simple, I feel comfortable in them. More about my clothing style, whatever I wear at day doesn’t matter but I must wear short and T-shirt while sleeping. Again why? Because I think sleeping is done to refresh our mind from a hectic day and for that our body should feel comfortable first.

 I would describe my clothing as simple because I don’t wear clothes of different awkward styles, comfortable because I feel comfortable while wearing them, casual because I wear mostly same type of clothes without any extra accessories, classic because my clothing are not totally modern type and trendy because mostly I wear T-shirts & jeans. I don’t have different styles for different occasions.

Fear and Respect

Fear is an emotion experienced by every living being in his/her entire life. People fear of something in some ways, consciously or unconsciously, difference is that some show that emotion while some don’t. Fear is the ability of one to recognize danger resulting to a conclusion either to face it or avoid it. Generally consequences of fear aren’t much serious. However, in extreme condition one can become temporarily paralysed. Such extreme case of fear is called ‘phobia’. Fear can be developed due to continuous conditioning process. Like as a child most get feared of lightening and thundering as one follows another. Some fears are developed because of frightening traumatic accidents.Like if parents of one child died by drowning in a pond and s/he saw that accident, s/he may develop fear of large water resources like ponds, seas, etc.
Respect it is something everyone wants, not many have, and few want to give.Respect is an act of giving particular attention to someone. In our society, respect is a tradition. We are taught to respect elders, respect peers and respect youngers. In most of societies, to bow in front of someone is to respect that very person. To earn respect is hard but to lose, it is easy. Respect differs from person to person. We don’t give same respect to elders and youngers and the same thing applies in case of friends also. Respect is like a tag of honor for a person.
In my case, I have fear of giving speech in front of mass. Every time I go in front to give speech, I feel nervous, my heart beat becomes faster and my voice tends to shake. My mind becomes blank and I can’t say the speech which I prepared. In my view to give respect to elders is to speak politely with them and obey their request obediently.

Green IT

The term ‘Green IT’ refers to a concept which gives idea to use the IT related equipment in an energy conservational and eco-friendly manner. The decreasing amount of resources and increasing cost has resulted in the evolution of this concept of ‘Green IT’ among the big organisation. World without IT can’t be imagined at present but our current practices of using IT equipment has resulted in some serious effects. Unnecessary energy consumption and more carbon production are the two major effects of our unmannered IT practices. According to the article, more energy is consumed when the offices are unoccupied as they are not switched off at the plug generally due to which it continuously draws electricity. This results to high electricity bill as well as decrement of life-span of the equipment. Moreover, when those equipments run they produce greenhouse gases which eventually affect the environment and aid the global warming. So, more the equipment are run more amount of green house gases are produced and the more green house gases are produced, more it’ll increases global warming. To reduce such problems we should implement the concepts of ‘Green IT’. The greatest Challenge of shrinking power consumption and yet still supports business scalability and performance is achieved through ‘Green IT’ concept. We can initiate the Green IT from our home too by switching off the pc at the plug while it is not used. Also we can use the gadgets approved by ‘energy star’.

The energy calculator helps us to calculate the total energy consumed throughout a year by the pc used by us. By knowing those facts, we can find the ways to save the power consumed and help to grow towards Green IT. By using the calculator we can find how much power is consumed by our pc while it is in on-mode, off-mode and sleep-mode.

I would reference the given article in following way:-

Anon, n.d. Green IT: keeping it simple, The Charted Institute for IT, [online]. Available at: http://www.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/22412 [2012/03/05].

First week of second semester

          My first week was normal. In first week, I got to know about the modules which I am going to study during this, second, semester. There are four modules among which Personal Development for Computing is the module to which this blog is related. In first week, I studied about marking scheme for the module and also about the presentation which I will be giving during this semester which was of course a group presentation. I also got to know how to get notes for the module. In the workshop we were asked to give brief introduction about a skill among various skill listed.

         Among those seventeen skills I chose the thirteenth skill which was ‘the ability to deploy information retrieval skills’. In my view, this skill refers to one’s ability to fetch the relevant data and information from different databases, books, journals, surveys, etc for any kind of project using different techniques and tools. It is assumed to be a preliminary skill required for completion and success of any project as well as in all decision making even at home. Projects initiated by the team without this skill will mostly result to complete failure.

           As a computing student, I will be dealing with various projects, presentations, report writing, etc which makes me familiar to this skill. I will have to do research to obtain information and data required for any project from different sources by using different tools like search engines, books, etc, which may or may not be reliable. So while studying computing I will have to deal with such information gathering situation frequently which eventually will help me to develop my information retrieval skill. I also will also have developed the ability to analyze the gathered the information critically which is also the part of the skill ‘information retrieval skill’.

         For example, in an office a project is started by a team and a person without this skill got the task to gather all the information and data required for that project. In that case, the project’s outcome will not be the same as expected by the client and worst case the projects will fail. However, if the person had had the information retrieval skill, the result might have become better.

          In conclusion, this skill is a fundamental requirement for the success of a project, in decision making, in critical analysis of information and in selection of the right tools to fetch the relevant data from various sources.

About course works

We had to do course works to pass our modules except Logic. For logic we attended two different exams in which I did my best. But for other three modules there were a lot of course works as well as group work.

Regarding problem solving for IT, there was exam for the first part of module whereas for second part i.e. MS EXCEL and MS ACCESS, there was a course work. In this coursework, we had to prepare a mark sheet for ten students using spreadsheet and also had to make bar and pie chart using that table. As per second part of this course work, we had to prepare a simple database according to the details given.

In programming course work, we had two parts. In first part we had to prepare a program for a car rental company that kept records about cars, people who rented car, etc using bluej. In second part, we had to write a program for a property renting company. It was similar to the first part of the coursework upto some extent but we had to prepare two different classes and use methods defined in one class from another class. It was quiet tiresome as compared to the first part of the coursework.

For study skills, we were divided into different groups and we had to prepare a ten minute presentation about any topic related to computing, which we chose ‘Java Programming Language’. For that presentation, I played the role for supervising the whole task. Moreover, I also prepared the content of the slides. According to the Teachers our slides were satisfactory but our presenting skills were poor as we all were nervous because we hadn’t given any presentation before. For second part we had to write personal statement and also a Personal Development Portfolio (PDP) which, I think, were good enough.

By providing course works and making us do research is far better than taking exams. It was totally different type of evaluation style from our Nepalese style of evaluation. Because of these course works my knowledge has become sharper and I hope I will get more course works in near future.

Favourite module

          As I have already mentioned in my very first blog post that I have got four Modules or subject to study in this semester. By the time I post this article, our Semester shall have already ended. All the modules were equally tough.

          But if someone asks me about my favourite module throughout whole the Semester, I would refer to logic because it was easy to do the exercises. Moreover, Math was the subject in which I was perfect in school as well as high school level and logic was no different from those mathematics’. I always had had fun while doing logic exercises. It was easy to understand the subject matters except some. I also used to have arguments with lecturer as well as tutor regarding some doubted matters and having such discussion with teachers had increased my knowledge in respective topics. Also it was easy to score ‘A’ in logic that’s why it was my favorite modules.

          I was totally moved by the teaching technique of lecturer. The way she taught us, dealt with problems and solved them inspired me to do best in this module. Tutor was also kind and helpful. He helped me a lot while doing exercises. He made me clear about the issues that were not clear to me during lecture classes and also gave me useful tips which I needed for doing assignments. He also taught us how we could obtain the full mark in questions. In other words, lecturer gave us idea and tutor helped us to implement them.

          As a result of these factors, ‘logic’ became my favourite module in my first semester.

My Academic Development throughout the First semester at Islington

     After high school, I was wondering, which field should I enter so that I won’t regret in near future. I thought and thought and I realized computer related studies might be a great idea. My idea got a complete shape when I got support from my family, who were very glad about me taking such wise decision. I was totally moved by the counselling and decided to join the Bsc. (Hons) in Computing in Islington College.

     It was an amazing experience at Islington during this whole semester. I loved being at Islington. It was like an adventure exploring new things because throughout the whole semester I learned a lot of things of which I had never heard of before. In a simple way, I loved every bit of moments at Islington.

    Now, talking about my academic field I had to study four different modules which were Logic, Introduction to Programming, Problem solving for IT and Study Skills for Computing. The combination and content of the modules were perfect for the beginners like me. I devoted myself totally into the study from the very beginning.

    Logic was my favourite subject during this semester. Favourite in this manner that it was easy to score ‘A’ grade in this module and also it was easy to learn this module. It helped me to develop knowledge about new mathematical concepts though I didn’t have any idea where those concepts are used in the field of computers. In this module, I learned about propositions, operators, logical circuits, sets and relations. Sets and relations were same as the set and relations which I had studied before in school level with some additional topics whereas proposition, operator and logical circuit were new to me. With the help from lecturer and tutor I scored a very good mark in first part of my exam and also I did great in the second part.

   Introduction to Programming, an interesting module, was very new to me. I did a lot of practice for this module. As this was new to me, I had had a lot of questions which I asked to my tutor and he helped me. For passing this module we were provided with two different course works which i did enthusiastically. I think those course works were perfect to evaluate the knowledge we gained during this semester. Aim of this module was to develop basic knowledge about java programming which I think was fulfilled in my case.

      Another interesting module was ‘Problem solving for IT’. The beginning part of this module was hard to understand for me though I had tried but the MS EXCEL and MS ACCESS part were much easier. In the first part of this module we had to learn different problem solving strategies which, in my view, were hard to understand. As a result I failed the first part of this module. But I did great in the second part which comprised of MS EXCEL and MS ACCESS. I have developed a sound knowledge in MS EXCEL and MS ACCESS with which the objective of the module was fulfilled.

    Last but not the least, ‘Study Skills for Computing’ was a bit boring, personally, as we had to give presentations and write different kinds of reports, statements. I was very afraid of this module because I wasn’t much experienced in literature and presentations. The main purpose of keeping this module in course was to develop the writing skills of ours to match with bachelor level. As part of course work, our presentation was bad and also my writing skills weren’t good enough to score a good mark. So as a whole my performance in this module was not good enough.

    Response to my activities was good from tutors except study skills which I tried my best to improve and yes, I  improved to some extent.