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.