CST 499 - Week 6

This week we had our final meeting regarding our capstone project. It went well and we covered the plan regarding our final presentation that we will be working on this next week. We also took the ETS exam this week which was interesting to go over.  I think I may need to study up more on networking and some of the more low-level hardware aspects of computing from some of my experience. I also believe that algorithms and functions seem to be one of my stronger suits from my experience. I had quite a bit of trouble working with the proctors prior to the exam. It took a total of 6 or 7 proctors and an hour and a half before I was able to finally take my exam. I continued working on my application and have a fully functioning version working currently I was able to also start on user tests and got a lot of positive feedback and interest in the project, which was very encouraging.

CST 499 - Week 5

This week was fairly interesting. It is incredible how fast the capstone has been going by. I began working on joining the back end and front end of my project. It is I believe close to being completed with hopefully just a few more days of effort put in. I was able to implement a google sign-in features to address some of the ethical concerns and also to possibly build upon if I so chose later on. We took our ETS practice test and will be scheduling our full test later on this week, which I am looking forward to. Overall it was a pretty good week.

CST 499 - Week 4

This week we completed our Individual Learning Plan Portfolios. It was really rather exciting to look back at all the work that we have completed in such a short time and see how far I personally have progressed in terms of skills and knowledge gained. I have been applying to a few different positions recently and I think that my effort placed in my ILP and resume are definitely helpful in my professional endeavours. My project is coming along well, as I have a working static version of the application currently. Hopefully this next week I can begin to connect it to a live database and start seeing results.

CST 499 - Week 3

This week we spent time on updating our LinkedIn accounts and working on resumes and mock cover letters. It was really interesting to look at how others wrote and organized their history of work, and I gained some inspiration from others. Everyone has some very interesting backgrounds and histories that have been going through the program, and often already have fairly impressive experience behind them. I enjoyed the work on my own resume and LinkedIn account and learned from some of the suggestions from this week's reading. Overall the project is doing well, although I was not able to get as much progress as I had hoped for this week.

CST 499 - Week 2

Last week’s reading was quite useful to me. It solidified a hunch I had about the need for extra effort prior to and after a meeting in order to ensure that the whole meeting was worthwhile and effective. At my own work previously a lot of meetings have often felt underprepared when the person who called the meeting spent most of the time ensuring we were all on the same page on the topic at hand. The advice for continual follow up also seems very important in this fast paced workplace environment and I hope to implement these suggestions into my personal workplace meetings soon. I have already discussed some of these ideas with coworkers, and they all seemed quite excited to take the initiative the next time it is one of our turns to pilot a meeting.

CST 499 - Week 1

This week we read the article on effective meetings. I found the information to be quite interesting, and I believe they will definitely be helpful for teams. I think that having a clear goal for a meeting, and then coming to the meeting prepared with that goal in mind, is probably the one of the most important aspects to grasp for an effective meeting to occur. I know in my workplace that we try to have clear goals and ideas prior to meetings, and will prepare with each other prior to attendance. It is also important to follow up after meetings to see if the decisions reached and objectives set are being achieved. I find it interesting when considering meetings how much hangs upon work prior to and after the meeting itself, even though it is the focal point of that activity.

CST 438 - Week 8

This week concluded our course. We took the final, which was our last assignment in the process. Overall I enjoyed the course, it was quite a learning experience. It feels like it went by really quickly and that we covered a lot of ground, but I enjoyed it. It was truly a great hands-on learning experience, especially getting to work alongside my team and have regular meetings and a chat room where we congregated and discussed pressing matters, the design of the project and what needed attention at the moment. I learned a lot spending time with the team and utilizing github’s branches for the project as well.