CD ILP, Capstone planning and our college experience

This post is actually originally written on September 30th, but is for last Thursday, September 23rd. I'm a little behind, but since I take notes every class I'm always able to catch up on my blog posts. And for the sake of keeping this blog organized, I changed the post date.

Kevin Cahill came into our class to discuss the CD ILP. He stated that next fall the CD ILP is going to change dramatically, and that they'll be adding multiple 2 unit courses, some of which would be intro courses that teach skills students should have when taking courses that are currently offered. I considered minoring in CD, but decided that it might set me back a semester in finishing my degree. So I decided to think about taking just a few courses to broaden my knowledge. He also advised us to not take our upper division service learning and the ethics class in the same semester, so I plan to take my upper division service learning next semester.

Dr. Tao then talked a little bit about capstone again. He said it should be somewhat of a stretch from our usual course work, and it should be challenging. He also said the best capstone ideas are the ones the students come up with themselves. I'm still unsure of what I should do for my capstone. He then talked about his college experience, and what we should learn from our college experience. The one thing that stood out to me was when he was talking about building communication skills. When I hear communication skills, I think of public speaking, and speaking infront of a class. The kind of communication skills he was talking about was more of understanding people, where they come from and their point of view. This kind of skill would come in handy working with people who are different than you. Sometimes different personalities clash, but if you always try to understand their point of view, personality clashing will become rare.

Instructor Presentations and Advisors

Last Thursday, September 16th, we had multiple instructors come and talk to us about their research and programs they teach. The first presenter was Ben Erlandson. He showed us different projects he worked on at Arizona State University. Most of them were virtual worlds that would teach us more about the environment and how we effect it. In the "Cloverdale" project, students were "hired" to help the community become more environmentally friendly. The "Postropolis" project was designed to teach users how large or small their carbon footprint was based on which mode of transportation they took. Ben is also working on re-doing "Cloverdale" in a program I forgot the name of, but it looks much better than the first version.

Then Dr. Tao explained to us that we would need to select an academic advisor to look over our ILPs. He showed us an excel sheet we could use to determine who would be our advisor. For my first choice of an advisor, I would choose Professor Young-jun Byun because I want to enter the software development field and he's the primary advisor for that program. I've also been in a few of his classes and he seems very knowledgeable. My second choice would be Kate Lockwood. I've never been in any of her classes before, but I met her last semester because she was the computer science club advisor. I've never been in her class before, but if I was, I'm sure this choice would have been very hard. I would actually be happy with either of those advisors.
Dr. Tao also mentioned we would have to have to choose a capstone advisor. For my capstone, I wanted to do something to help me get a job programming video games, so probably programming a game. But I also want the game to display my skills in software engineering, so I have something to show if I don't get a job programming games. I'm not sure which advisor I want for my capstone yet, but when I have a better idea of what my capstone is I'm sure the decision will be easier.

Dr. Tao then talked about his experiences in the real world. I was impressed by the fact that he started his own company with one of his colleagues. Then he shared his story of when he had to choose between working with machines that detected cancer and becoming a teacher with lower pay. At first, I was shocked that he chose becoming a teacher with lower pay. But then he explained that those machines were kept in the basement, and seeing the doctors smoke for their breaks, and then I understood why he chose becoming a teacher. Then I started to think about what I would have chose if I was in his shoes, or if I had the choice between a career that pays more but isn't interesting to me and a career that I loved but less pay, which one would I choose? At this point, I honestly don't know.

Then Kate Lockwood came in to talk about her research and the Information Systems program for CSIT. Like many I'm sure, I didn't know what information systems were. Kate explained it through a three circle venn diagram The three circles were labeled business, people and technology. The middle piece where they all met was information systems. The program seemed interesting, just not for me. She also mentioned that her research was in artificial intelligence. I kinda wanted to hear more about her research because I'm doing a paper on artificial intelligence in video games (which is a little different than artificial intelligence) for the writing component of CST 300.

CSIT ILP, Web Design and Capstone

Last Thursday's class started out with a presentation on CSIT's ILP. An ILP is an individual learning plan, kind of like a 2 year plan where you plan out which classes you take. We have to fill it out and meet with Tammy and a staff advisor to get it checked out in the next couple of weeks. I started filling it out, and I hope I'm still able to graduate in Spring 2012. I'm planning on taking a lot of software design classes, and internet programming and intro to computer networks. I'm taking those two classes because I feel like it will give me a wider variety of skills. Sathya also mentioned graduate school, and I'm glad I took calculus 1 and calculus 2 so I have the option of getting my masters. It's definitely something I want to pursue, but I'm not sure if I can do it right out of college.

Kevin Cahill also came to talk to our class. He's in charge of the web design classes in the school of ITCD and also teaches the ethics course, CST 373. He showed us pictures of chairs and houses. The single foot chair that was invented in the 50s was crazy! I didn't realize what timeless design was until seeing that picture. He talked a little bit about thewildernessdowntown.com , the new site that uses HTML5. My sister showed it to me the other day and it's awesome! It really gets you pumped for the future and HTML 5.

Then professor Bude Su came to talk to us about the Human Interface class and the capstone class. She started out with a competition to guessing what her first language was. I had a few guesses but would have never guessed Mongolian! Then she started talking about our capstone projects. Just the word capstone makes me scared! It seems like such a huge project. She said a few problems people run into is procrastination and taking on a project they aren't capable of. The second problem scares me because I want to make a video game for my capstone. I've never programmed a video game before, but I'm going to try my best and get enough knowledge to make one. I want to start my capstone next fall so I can graduate the spring after that, but who knows what'll happen between then and now.

For this week, we also had to look at study habits and time management websites. The study habits had useful tips on reading, or maybe I just found it useful because I'm not a very good textbook reader. It said to ask questions and try to get the main idea. When I read, I just try to get to the end of the reading assignment as soon as possible, just looking at my book gives me a headache. I'm going to try to follow the reading tips now. And for the time management tips... I'm not sure they came in handy for me. I don't have a lot of free time to manage, I either work have school or study during the week. On the weekends I do some homework on friday, no homework on saturday, and a lot of homework on sunday.

http://home.csumb.edu/t/tordacatrina/world/ActivityLog.pdf

Instructor Presentations and Student Profiles

Today in class we had three instructor presenters. I realized that I don't know much about the other emphasis's in the CSIT major, so I decided I should listen and learn about the other programs to make sure I made the right decision. The first professor, Sathya Narayanan, specializes in the Networking and Security emphasis. He started out with a discussion about computer science and it's definition. It doesn't really have a specific definition, but he used an interesting example of what the definition isn't. He said the study of astronomy is not the study of telescopes, so computer science is more than just the study of computers. After he explained the networking and security emphasis, it seemed interesting but just not for me. Then Professor Byun presented the software engineering emphasis. This is the emphasis I was interested in when I decided to change majors to CSIT. Professor Byun also mentioned something about being able to do a game for a capstone. Game development is my ultimate career goal, but since jobs are pretty hard to come by I feel like emphasizing in software engineering would be better for me. If they do start offering game development classes I would definitely take them. But if I could do a game for my capstone that would be awesome! And even if I don't end up in game development as my career, I would still do it on the side as a hobby. Then Professor Bobbi Long presented the visual design emphasis in the CD major. Programs like Photoshop and Illustrator always seemed so complicated to me, so I hadn't taken my Media Tools class requirement until this semester. We've only just started Illustrator, but I find it really fun. Not something I would go further in though. I was really impressed by the number of logos and other things Bobbi Long created. Overall I thought all the presentations were good.

We were also assigned to look at student portfolios this week. I looked at two, Jeremy Laskar's and Alfredo Martinez. The portfolios were websites that listed the courses they took or were going to take, and also described any major projects they did in them. I was impressed by Jeremy's, the layout reminded me of a Mario game or an old arcade game. He also took a mix of design and technical courses. Alfredo's was very nice too, it was easy to navigate around and find the classes he took. I like how both portfolios listed the major projects they worked on in that course.