14. Final Review

In this final post for my blog I will be writing about how I think I have improved as a student since joining college and how my soft skills have improved since the start of the year.

One way that I have improved as a student since starting college is my tardiness. At the start of the year I was late to my first morning lesson as I did not get an early enough bus and this made me late to my first lesson of the day. Since then I have started to get up earlier and then got an earlier bus to college. Since the start of the year I have improved my tardiness where I am no longer late when coming to college in the morning and am on time to all of my lessons.

Another way that I have improved as a student since starting college is that my time management skills have increased. Before starting college I was not very good at doing different tasks at once and prioritising. However since then I have started to prioritise the work that I do, I would do the more important work first and as soon as possible so that means I wouldn’t leave it to the last minute and rush the work and not complete it to my highest standard. Also I have managed to work on numerous assignments at once and manage to hand in these assignments in on time. This is shown where I have not missed any of my deadlines since starting college and will continue to do this throughout the year.

Another way that I have improved as a student is that I have improved my self-confidence. At the start of the year I only knew one person and would only talk to them and I would not talk much in class or participate in discussions. Since then I have improved my self-confidence greatly where I know can easily talk to other members of the class and have made friends with them. Also now I am fully confident to talk during class or during a discussion.

Similar to what I have wrote previous paragraph since starting college I have managed to improve my team working skills. At the start of the year I would not really talk to other people in the class as I was not confident enough and would only say a sentence or two. Since then I have greatly improved my team working skills as I am now confident when working in a group in class, I feel like I can be an active member of our group when working and can easily participate in group discussions without any hesitation.

A final way that I have improved as a student since enrolling at college with my written skills. Since starting college I have significantly improved my written skills. Since starting college I have started reading more books on a regular basis, this has improved my vocabulary and I am now able to use a wider variety of words in a piece of written work. Also since starting college I have improved my writing skills where I have worked my grammar skills where I would put apostrophes regularly in words that they were not needed in. I was informed by one of teachers that I did this on a regular basis and focused more on when I should be using them and if I am using them appropriately.

In conclusion I feel that I have greatly improved as a student since coming to college as I have improved myself on various soft skills and will continue to improve them and maintain these skills that I have learned. 

13. Final Target Review

In my first post I set up targets for myself to help improve my college work and also from then I have set myself other targets to improve my work. One target I set myself since my first post was to improve my time management skills. To be able to do this I worked on my management skills, I worked on trying to improve my ability to do manage my time better and work on multiple tasks at once. I have improved significantly as I have managed to complete multiple assignments to given to me by teachers at one time, I have improved by being able to do a task when I first get it and set aside specific time for certain work so I don’t fall behind and can work on the more important work.

Another target I set myself from my first post was to improve my ability to meet deadlines. Since the time at which I set the target for myself I have managed to successfully meet all of my assignment deadlines given by my teachers. When completing my work I worked in a way that I tried to finish all of my work as soon as possible, this means that I wouldn’t have rushed the work when trying to complete it the day it is due in. Also When meeting my deadlines I have managed not to get overwhelmed with the amount of work I receive as I finish it as soon as possible and leave it to the last minute.

A third target I set myself on my first post was to widen my vocabulary. Since I set myself this target I have managed to widen my vocabulary by reading books more often and on a regular basis. I have since then managed to improve my writing skills as now I have widened my vocabulary and this has helped in my assignments where they are now of a better writing standard and the words used in are more varied and used correctly in a sentence.

A fourth target I set myself was to gain more experience when working with Photoshop. Prior to coming to college I had used Photoshop before but the work I produced was not of a very good standard, when starting the college I wished to gain more experience with Photoshop and improve the quality of work I create. Since setting myself the target I have greatly improved my familiarity with Photoshop as I am now very confident when using the program and can effectively use the program without any help from the teacher and have faith in myself when using it.

The image on the left is an image of rabbit I edited with help of the teacher when we first started using the software at the start of the year. The second image is an image I recently created by myself on Photoshop with some help from the teacher. These two images help show that I have improved my ability to use Photoshop and can now use it to create more intricate images.

A fifth target I set myself at the start of the year was to develop my familiarity with the program Microsoft Visual Basic 2010. When I first started the course I only had a rough idea of what visual basic was and was not very confident in being able to use it and needed the teacher’s help as I was very unfamiliar with the program. Since setting myself the target I feel as if I have become much more confident in myself when being able to use Visual basic. I now feel like I can use the program by myself with only minimum help from the teacher with what we are meant to be doing. Downloading the free version of visual basic onto my laptop helped improve my skills as I could use it in my own time and try to attempt work done in class at home by myself to improve my familiarity. 

12. Improving My Punctuality

On my second major review I set myself a target which was to improve my punctuality to class in the morning. Since then I have managed to come to my classes on time as I have caught an earlier bus in the morning and have managed to get to college in the morning at an earlier time and this enabled me to make it to all of my classes on time. I will continue to do this to try and come to college on time.

11. Paired Task

In assignment two for this unit we were assigned partners and we asked to work as a pair to different ways to communicate with people and how to overcome any barriers that you may come across when trying to communicate. Separately we both did our own PowerPoint that included three effective techniques that help improve communication and also three barriers that you may come across when trying to communicate and how to overcome them. We sent our PowerPoint to our partner and they gave us feedback on what we needed to change. Finally we made the changes and combined the two PowerPoints to make a paired presentation about effective communication skills. The quality of the wok we produced at the end of the task was of a good standard. We had both put 3 techniques, barriers and how to overcome barriers each. We had both written in good detail and described 6 different techniques to good communication skills on our slideshow and then we had wrote 6 barriers in good detail with a sufficient explanation on how to overcome these barriers.

When working with my partner I had found this a new experience as I was able to work on something that I hadn't done before with someone who works differently from myself. When working with my partner it was effective as I was an activist learner and also so was my partner. This was good because we both were open minded about the work we were doing together and could easily talk to the other about something if we were having trouble. We were both able to change our slides without any hesitation as the feedback we gave each other was sufficient and we were able to work with each other to sort out the changes.

When working with my partner I found that it was easy to talk with him about what techniques and barriers we both were going to do as we could email each other about it easily. Also we easily managed to successfully give each other our PowerPoints and then the PowerPoints with feedback using our email without any hassle. As we were both activist learners we could easily confront our partner about a change the needed to be made and we then made the changes easily without any hassle as we knew it was the right thing to do.

One thing that could have been improved about our presentation is about the insufficient resources needed to make hasty changes. As we both could easily tell one another about the changes that needed to make we faced the problem of not knowing how to make the changes and we did not have enough information. Another thing that could be improved could be that some of the changes that we made were not necessary and we could improve next time by not making too many changes to our presentation.