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.