Monday 19th May

To start the day off John had asked what the numbers meant on the board, as many people guessed it was to do with the remaining course days. In total we have about 38 days (five weeks) remaining or 19 course days remaining. This was a bit worrying for a lot of people and I have been worried about this approaching finish date for a while now but I tend not to think about it otherwise the quality of my work goes down as I’m rushing. So I just don't think about it and get on with the work I have remaining at my own pace, so I know what I am writing is correct. I am confident I will finish on the day as long as I really crack on.
After that John introduced the new unit, which is the final unit for the extended 3's. This new unit is called Mobile Communications. This unit is a L2 unit which means it should be easier than previous units we have done and after looking at the scheme of learning I completely agree. As I have a fair amount of knowledge on mobile communication I am confident I will finish this unit by next Monday or Tuesday. So overall found today to be a bit more rushed than usual as John really wants everyone to get a move on a complete everything.

Thursday 1st May

Today we were back with john, he first greeted us with a few links he wanted to show us on of the coolest things was that someone turned their raspberry pi into a mini phone by attaching a touch screen to it.
after that I cracked on with work that needs doing. I have almost finished assignment 1 task 2 of installing and upgrading software. I have started this task but them forgot about it, after a couple of hours of doing this piece of work I got a tad bored with it so i decided to start on assignment 1 task 3. I managed to get half way through that so hopefully I can send these two pieces of work to john later on tonight when I go to do them. I asked George how far he has got with his game because a few weeks ago I knew he was having trouble creating it in unity so he decided to go to game maker instead. He has almost finished it and only needs to add a couple of power ups, despite this I played his game and it is an enjoyable game but quite hard. It took me a lot of attempt on level one but the second level it only took me three tries.
overall I enjoyed today because I was able to have free reign and get on with work that really needs to be completed.

Wednesday 30th April

Today I began on completing my website design. I managed to get a nice clean design that isn’t too complicated but may take time to code, this only due to my inability to code that well. I moved the designs from Photoshop to Illustrator because of image quality issues, once that was complete I moved on to the creation of the Phoenix website.

When we were discussing this part of the Unit, Dan stated that it should be rather easy as it isn’t very complicated coding. Well today that statement was retracted by him as he had a lot of trouble with the placement of boxes, this was when I realised that it would be very difficult and time consuming unit. I started on creating my website but didn't get that far like Dan because I too was having trouble and got confused with the coding at certain points.

I was then able to move each button individually which allowed me to move on. I am relatively happy with the progress made on the website even though I haven’t got all that far.

Tuesday 29th April

Today I finished off another unit with only twos tasks I had to complete I handed the second drafts in last night which meant I could now hand in the whole unit. I hope to complete Installing and upgrading software by Sunday or Monday, I have quite a few tasks to do but if I put the time in I will be able to complete it. To begin the day off I was finishing the logo design for the website Phoenix, this took me longer than expected because I kept having many new designs pop into my head. I chose two of the best and created them using Adobe Illustrator.

Once that was complete I moved onto the design of the website, this was something that I wasn't looking forward to because I thought it would take forever and guess what it did, I will finish that off tomorrow and hopefully start on my website creation.

Today for the extended level threes was mostly an independent working environment as Zoe was focusing on the level 3's because they need to complete three units in just over six weeks. So overall I really enjoyed today due to the graphics work I was doing because I am able to get my creative skills out.

Monday 28th April

Today is the first day back at Develop after the Easter holidays (a week off) and everyone still seemed a bit hyper from their week off. At the beginning of the day Zoe asked if we (the extended 3's) had completed the home work which had been set before the Easter holidays. Of course no one had completed it, which wasn't a big surprise, so Zoe told everyone who didn't complete it to do it now. I went through the tasks which Zoe had set and once I had completed that I went onto some tasks that would help me for when we start making the website. Once I had finished them I moved onto the first task of the third assignment, which were the initial steps to creating the website.

After a while myself and Dan got a little bit bored so we moved onto creating the logo and background for the pages of our upcoming website. Overall I enjoyed today as it was a relaxed environment, more so than before the holidays, which allowed me to slowly work my way back into work mode. I also learned more about html code and how long it takes to create one page. The example page tasks that Zoe set us this morning will come in handy when I actually start my website. My goals for this week is to complete the majority of this unit and try to get up to date with previous units, that should allow me to start the final unit in mid-May to en-may and finish in time.

Wednesday 12th March

Before I came in this morning I had an informal interview with a lady called Jo from John Lewis. I received a called last night asking me when I would like to go for an interview; this interview would be for the work experience with the computer systems support team there. I had already been offered it before I had actually done the interview. In this interview she went through everything like what I would be doing and what I need to wear whilst I am there. I start next Friday the 21^st of March 2014. Hopefully this will lead to good thing and I’m hoping I will either be offer an apprenticeship or a job later one. I am hoping either of the two will happen because John Lewis seems to pay well and seem like they look after their employees.

When I came in around lunch time I was told that I missed a task that the extended level 3’s had to do. This task involved splitting into two groups and writing down all possible problems that could occur with a system from hardware to software related issues.

After lunch I was with Lewis, Dan and Matt and watching what they were doing in the new unit, to be honest neither of them seemed too confident when installing or diagnosing what the problem was with their systems as I had to help them.  Whilst I was over there John was going through the slots in the motherboard and where the LED lights, USB, Power button etc. goes. He also went through the health and safety issues as Matt was irritating him a lot and told us that we would know about an electric shock as our ‘area’ would be tingling.

Tuesday 11th March

Once again it was time for one lucky person to obtain the two screens package and this week it was Dan’s turn to present us with a TED Test. His video was about project Christine which is a new concept design created by Razor for the future of gaming PC's. This is something I am very excited about and I hope to hear more about the development of project Christine as it comes out of concept and become a reality. Today wasn't my day but I wasn't too bothered as I don’t really want dual monitors, anyway Mitchel who turned down the opportunity to have dual screens last week, won this week instead with Aaron and Lewis coming in as runner ups. So next week its Martins turn once again to do a test. I expect his test to be absolutely ridiculous just like other times.

Before I began working today John went through what the unit would involve. I thought the first task was very lengthy but not as bad as Matthew had previously stated; the part which I thought would be challenging but not too difficult was the second assignment. In this assignment we must locate errors in a computer system and then talk John through how to fix it. We were also informed today that the vending machine will be arriving in the next month or so which is great for most people as they won’t have to walk to Morrison’s just to get things like chocolate, crisps etc. I was working on outstanding working so I was going back and forth. I also did a little bit of the last task of web animation that needs completing.

Monday 10th March

Today we went straight into work which is surprising as we usually have some sort of introduction with a video or mini task that will relate to our current work but this time it was just going into work.

Today I updated a couple of pieces and sent a new piece to John, which was controlling system assignment 4 task 1 and task 2. In this task I had to write about my robot. I had to include what went well and not so well. I also included improvements and what could do differently next time. Tomorrow I will update any work that needs updating, I will try and complete either this unit (controlling systems) or the web animation unit. As the web animation unit needs to be completed I shall make sure I do that first.

Thursday 6th March 2014

This was a similar day to yesterday as I was mainly improving work and continuing with task that I had outstanding in control systems. I managed to get a couple of pieces done and was half through the other task I started. John had sent me back the work I had completed yesterday. The majority of the first drafts were fine and there were a few with some small mistake that I need to update. I updated those pieces of work and sent them back to john which he responded with ‘Good’, which mean I don’t need to do any more of those tasks and was able to concentrate on other pieces.

I enjoyed today because I carried on from where I left off yesterday and got a lot done and hope to continue this throughout the rest of the year. This isn't a very long blog as It is only a half day but I also decided to stay and hour and half longer to get more work completed and so I can writes these blogs.

Wednesday 5th March 2014

To start the day off John introduced a section of the new unit (trouble shooting type unit). The introduction was more of a task because John wanted to make sure that we all knew in advance what the next unit was and how to deal with it and what was involved in this unit. He introduced this because most of us extended 3's are somewhat "afraid" if you will to take a system apart and fix it, this was not the case for as I like to get stuck in and find the problem out. Last year Myself and Jack took a computer completely apart and put it back together again and the end result was it worked perfectly fine.  For the majority of the day I worked on improving work and doing a lot of the controlling systems unit in total I sent 7 new pieces of work to john which I hope to get back shortly and update 1 piece of work.

I think I should send work to be proof read more often as it does help identify mistakes (whether they be grammatical or spelling related) which I probably wouldn't have noticed myself. Overall I found today rather good as I was able to get one with work and listen to music, I managed to get more work done than I usual do as I blocked out the environment around me and cracked on with my work.

Tuesday 4th March 2014

Today was the day when one lucky student will win the second monitor to make his PC setup better than everyone else’s….I Think. The quiz was created by Harry (the original owner of the dual monitors) who’s quiz was about gaming. As the quiz was about gaming I thought I was going to do pretty good, I managed to get 8 and half all together which meant I was in 4th place. Today’s looser was Dan, which means he will have to find a video for next and won’t be able to win the monitor as it is his own quiz.

After this I was working on a lot of controlling systems all day and would be able to hand a few pieces of that in tomorrow. I also updated installing systems A2 T2 which john sent back and thought I should update it straight away so it is over and done with.

Overall today was quite slow in comparison to yesterday but I think that I got more work done as I have nearly completed a long piece of work and updated a few pieces as well.

Monday 3rd March 2014

Today it was the first day back from our study week. Just before we got into work, John announced to everyone that there would be new prizes for the winners of the tech Tuesday quizzes; the prizes included:

• First place: dual monitors
• Second place: a mouse mat & choice of chocolate bar
• Third place: a chocolate bar

So the prize that everyone was most interested in was obviously the dual monitors, as we all only had one, to be quite honest with you I’m not bothered whether I get a the dual monitor or not, simply because I am fine working with one monitor. Today I was working on the current unit which was installing and upgrading software. Myself and Shane had to install new software on to ‘Jeffery’s’ computer and upgrade some current software. This was very easy as we are always doing this ourselves at home. We each had our own computer, ones I had everything booted up I installed Google chrome and installed Avast internet security as well as updating the software and virus definitions. Once I had done this I installed Google Earth which was up until loading the program as DirectX wasn't supported, so I tried it in OpenGL mode and got it to work but the graphics were appalling. Whilst I was doing all of that, I was taking pictures at each important stage. Once everything was done I put the images into a document and annotated them. When I finished that piece of work I sent it off to john to be marked

So overall I had a good day; I managed to complete that whole task in a quick amount of time whilst Shane hadn’t even started it. Now that I have done that, I can move onto the next task and hopefully I should be able to complete this unit by Monday at the latest.

Tuesday 18th February

Tuesday is here which meant once again it was time for the Tech Tuesday quiz. This week was Darren's choice for a video and to create some questions; just before the video began Darren stated that it was quite boring to watch, which we all expected to be honest. Darren defiantly wasn't wrong about the video being boring as the presenter just had the most depressing voice and that had an big effect on my listening skills but I managed to get some notes. Luckily for me those notes were the answers for most of the questions, which in the end got me a score of 7/10/

After this I continued with work which involved getting the images from yesterday which I took of me assembling the robot and sent them to John. I also uploaded my video to YouTube and then sent the link to John.

After I had done that, I cracked on with assignment 1 task 3 of controlling systems unit. I am almost finished and if I get time tomorrow I will finish it off if tomorrow I will do it Thursday.

Monday 17 February

After nearly a straight two week absent I have returned. As I have been away for a while it meant I hadn't been able to finish completely programming my robot, but luckily for me I was almost finished and all I needed to do was get one other sensor to work which was the Ultrasonic sensor. I hadn't any experience with this sensor so I asked Shane for a bit of help. He manage to help me but the only problem was that the robot didn't function too well even though I didn't have any errors so I asked for Johns help about five minutes before lunch. By the time lunch came we hadn't managed to figure it out so John Told me to go to lunch and when I got back from lunch John had got it working for me, I hadn't a clue how long it took him but looking at it he changed the while loops to if loops and changed a couple of other things, this meant it was working perfectly now.
In between getting the robot coded properly I updated some work that John had sent back and luckily there weren't many changes so I implemented them and sent it back to him. Once everything was done I done the whole task of sending my robot around a track in which it has to track a black line. It also had to stop when I waved my hand in front of it, it had to stop and reverse when it collided with an object and it finally had to spin 540 degrees when I clapped my hands. It was a good day as I got a lot accomplished. Tomorrow I will carry on with the rest of the unit.

Tuesday 28th January

Today is of course Tuesday which means it was time for another TED test, this time it was Aaron turn to do a TED quiz for us and as expected, the questions were just annoying. So John said that for the next quiz the questions must be relevant to technology and not to annoy people. After this I got on with coding and I can say I enjoy it but also don’t enjoy it at the same time. I couldn’t get the code from last week to work but after a while and starting from scratch I managed to get the code to word and it finally followed the line. I can now read and understand the code, I can safely say I am getting better at writing the code considering it isn’t my strongest point. The only thing I hate is that the program doesn’t tell you where exactly the errors are, it just says there are errors but then that would take out most of the work involved in coding. Still I managed to get it to work and I am happy with my progress.  Overall today was a hard day and required a lot of brain power but it all ended up well.

Monday 27th January

When we came in today, we were told that John was absent due to an injury he had sustained over the weekend, I believe it was a football related injury, which I have had many in the past. So everyone took advantage of this and worked slower than usual but Catherine made sure to keep everyone on task. Shortly after we began, Catherine introduced enterprise. This is a company that helps with people who are starting their own business and for me, this could be an option because I would one day like to own or set up my own business. Then we got on with work and I spent the majority of the day working on task 2 as it had to be handed in today I also went back to coding the robot and managed to get the sound sensor working and the collision sensor. I was still unable to get robot to follow the line. Tomorrow shall be the day I succeed in doing that!!! Overall today was a little disorganised but despite the distractions from other people being off task, I still managed to get the right amount of work in.

Thursday 23rd January

There isn’t much to say in this blog as not much happened today except that we continued with the programming and finalising the build of the robots. It was going rather well most of the day, the only problem I had was getting the robot to follow the line, and I only ended up with one error in the whole code but I just could not figure out how to fix it. I shall comeback to it on Monday and see what progress I make. Hopefully I will get it to follow a line.

Wednesday 22nd January

Today was the morning of judgement day for Develop (as one would say) as Develop had an Ofsted inspector come in to assess the quality of teaching. Shortly after John had thought us for near an hour, the woman assessor asked John and Catherine to leave the room in order to speak to the whole of the level threes and extended level threes, she asked us about our thoughts and what our experience is like at Develop. It was all positive answers like supportive staff or a good variety of different units but then she asked what Develop could improve on, if I remember correctly people want the hours to change a 10 o’clock start and a 3 o’clock finish, personally I think the hours are fine but if we were to change them then we should start at the same time but finish at half three. After lunch John asked that we begin coding or testing the lego robots so we are used to the software and the programming language but Dan raised a good point that we should all have a robot each that we build so it will save other people waiting for on robot to be free. The problem was it took a lot longer to design and create the robots than initially thought, so in the end it took the whole day just to make them. I was paired with Shane to build a robot as there was enough for one each. I was happy with this as we both had similar ideas and were willing to try out all of the different ideas we have. So overall today was fun and very productive and on another note it seems that neither John nor Catherine got fired and Develop didn't get shut down…. which is always a bonus.

Tuesday 21st January

Today is Tuesday which of course means it is TED Tuesday!!! Today was Matt's turn to give the group some impossible questions and knowing Matt it was absolutely certain he would. The video was about deception and magic from our well know friend, Marco Tempest which we have seen many videos from. I always enjoy watching his videos as he doesn't just talk you through something, he does something practical which of course is magic and talks to you while he is doing something practical. I always enjoy seeing magic as you can see the impossible made possible right in front of yours eyes. We managed to get through Matt's questions without too much pain, in the end Lewis won gain with 10 out of 13 and I managed to get 9 out 13 which I was pleased about.

After all that we moved onto work and I have to say I wasn't looking forward to it at all. The task the extended Level 3’s are currently on just requires so much focus and it can be difficult to get your head around pretty much everything. However I did have a breakthrough when we got to logic as I completely understood what John was talking about until it came to remembering which gate does what (that's when I started to slip up). To help us with the next task, John gave us all something to research and create a short presentation about it. I was given Logic and as I was reading and researching what it was, it was evident that there was a wide variety of different Logic s, I then asked John what I had to research in the specific area of logic and he said to do Logic Gates. At first I wasn’t sure I understood it but as I was reading more and staring to get something down, I was able to get a hold of things and I’m pretty sure I understand it.

Monday 20th January

We began the day with John giving us a task concerning data types and variables. The task or activity was set because both groups are currently doing a programming unit so it will be beneficial for the level 3's to have variables/data types stuck in their minds and also good for us extended 3's as we haven't done programming for about six months so this will refresh our minds. So the activity involved creating a feedback form (or something similar) for a company and listing the required fields, adding the suitable variable names/data types. I was surprised at how much I remembered from programming last year considering it was my weak point but at first we had done it in too much detail and hadn’t decided what we wanted the form to be for. Once we decided we started again and only got a couple of things down by the time John collected the sheets in but we knew what we wanted to have on the form.

Before lunch, John introduced the next parts to the control systems unit (which we are currently working on). This was the part where we have to program Lego NXT Robots to follow a distinct black line, this is the part I wasn’t going to be too confident on because it involved programming but from what john said it won’t be too hard as there is a lot of info online. From last year’s attempt (which I ended up doing ok) I'm not very good at programming as I don't fluently understand how to write code like English for example, I would really like to be able to but it just one of those things that I probably won’t get until I do it for months on end. It was a very hard day and brain consuming and by the end I had a splitting headache, I am hoping that I can complete the programming section of this unit but if I get stuck I can always ask John or go to google for some help.

Thursday 16th January

Today, the class had a short exercise which involved us each writing pseudo code for how we got into the centre this morning. I was confused at first because I'm not really into programming, much rather like Dan but I gave it a go and eventually I figured it out and was going to be the best pseudo code but not the worst in my opinion. This was an interesting start to the day but soon after that I went straight into work as I didn't have much else to do. So I am well into the second task of control systems and started updating some work which needs to be in.

Wednesday 15th January 2014

Today we began with an explanation of the next task in the controlling systems unit. I understood it to a point which enabled me to write definitions about the first couple of words but I did have to ask Dan as he had asked John about some of the task and Shane because he seemed to get it. I don’t half of the words and then moved on to some updating my work john had sent back.  But before we started the second task in the new unit, me and the other extended level 3s went back to proof read each other’s task one. I was glad when I received my work back as it didn't have many changes, only a couple which had been pointed out by three of the extended level threes, so I was pleased with that, so I sent it to John after updating it. After I had marked Dan’s it seemed that he had quite a few changed but his work was good,  it was just little mistakes and adding a few things in, including a picture. Once I had finished proof reading everyone's work, I moved onto the next task that John was talking about this morning. I was fine with the first couple of definitions (as I said previously) but then I reached the more difficult words and I got a little stuck but after a bit of research and ask the other two I seemed to be alright.

Overall I found today to be challenging with a lot of hard work put in but I was happy with the progress I made today and will hopefully continue it tomorrow. 

Tuesday 14th January 2014

Today when everyone sits and watches a video selected by a Martin (who’s last video was just awful). Although his previous video was just a flop I still remained optimistic. That optimism was soon destroyed as I began to watch the video I was like urrhhh. Anyway the questions he had written were absolutely ridiculous, no one in their right mind would be able to answer such questions but I was wrong as Lewis was crowned victorious with 14 out of 33. I only managed to get 9 out of 33 but it was far from the lowest score with Dan and Matt scoring 2, I think I was in the high average.  The winnings for this week’s test was a mouse mat but not just a mouse mat a mouse mat with their own name on it and of course you can’t forget the bar of chocolate.

Once we had completed that we were put into groups of two or three, I was in a group with Matt and Lewis. In this group we had to do three flow diagrams for a control system for a greenhouse we also had to do pseudo code for each flow diagram. I think I managed to do rather well at this especially as it is my weakest point. During lunch the next batch of FIFA matches were ready to be played and this time it was Dan’s turn to sit in the seat of gaming. He was playing against Charlie and I have to be honest he was too great at it, say that I haven’t played for a few years so I will probably just as bad.  

We also began the first task in the new unit and I was the first one to finish it so I sent it to fellow class mates before I sent it to john, from the looks of it I have written a little bit more than the others but I wanted to make sure I covered everything. Tomorrow, when everyone sends their feedback about my work I shall update it and send it off to john

Overall today was good, a lot of variety and I was glad I managed to finish the first task of the new unit along with the other extended 3s. I also sent a few pieces from the previous unit to john to mark.

Monday 13th January 2014

I have returned to develop after a three week xmas holiday!

We began the day with work which involved creating flow diagrams for an information systems task. This was easier than I thought because originally I didn't fully understand what the flow diagrams had to be about, even though we had done some last year, I didn’t fully grasp the whole flow diagram and pseudo code. After all of that John started introducing the next unit (controlling systems). First impressions of this unit is it’s going to be more difficult than it seems because of how I understood it as John was explaining it but John also said that some of this unit only needs to be short, about a page including images, so hopefully that won’t be so difficult to do. The Lego robot tasks seem really fun and I am looking forward to that past the most and then I can expand my programming skills.

Just after lunch John had asked to see all the extended 3s upstairs for a chat about the work quality and quantity. I know I need to the work done but with some distraction I try my best not to get distracted and get it done  but people sometimes brings me into their convocation. During lunch, the FIFA tournament was underway with George winning the first game. Today was also Shumi's last day Develop  which seems weird because when you think about it we have already been here for four months and Christmas has come and gone, anyway I shall miss Shumi as she is easy to on well with, like everyone else thinks and I hope she does well at her new college somewhere in London.