Plan a Pilgrimage Assessment

My Plan a Pilgrimage Assessment can be found here. 

Rosetta Stone Continuation 2019

For the next year, I will not be continuing with my Rosetta Stone course. The reason for my resignation of this program is because of multiple factors.

The main factor is that I find the Rosetta Stone program incompetent and not tailored to my learning needs. In particular, the program lacks in-depth assistance on how to learn; there are many features that could have been added with ease to the program that could have only benefitted them. My major concerns are how they do not teach you the grammar of sentences, when to use punctuation properly and what the definitions of words mean. This predicament manifests particularly when you are asked to name the names of certain objects/locations. I find myself having to Google the definition of words because many Mandarin words have more than 10 definitions.

The secondary factor is that the Rosetta Stone microphone does not work with anything other than a USB headset, which is uncomfortable and not of high quality. I would be more motivated to complete work if I didn't have to dodge every single microphone task due to this problem. My laptop and standalone microphone don't work on Rosetta Stone but work on every other software.

I have learnt quite a lot from this Rosetta Stone course but unfortunately, its time will end next year.

My Digital Footprint

Rosetta Stone Learning 18/10/18

I like learning Mandarin because it is important to my culture and I haven't dedicated much time to learning it in the past years.

I wish I could be using a better and more specialised platform to learn my language on, instead of just using Rosetta Stone.

If I could change one thing it would be how Rosetta Stone explains Mandarin grammar and definitions for words.

I am able to speak basic sentences and hold a conversation in Mandarin. I can also pronounce the words with a good success rate.

I find it really hard when there is a word I don't know, as Rosetta Stone fails to teach you what they mean.

I don't like when I am forced to use an online dictionary to find the definitions of words in the Rosetta Stone program that I don't know, just to progress through the tasks.

Here are some basic essential words and phrases in Mandarin.

28/9 - ImProjB - Presentation Day

Today was presentation day and it lasted from the start of the day until lunch. I arrived to school at 10:40 so I missed some of it, but not anything important. At 11:45 we set up our project once again in the library. We introduced a feedback form for people to fill out, and we had four different people give us feedback. Yesterday, on Thursday, our project was featured on exhibition day and it lasted from 5:30 to 7:00. I think this semester of impact projects was pretty good and I learnt a lot from it. I did a lot of work on our project at home to make up for some lack of productivity at school. I am hopeful we can get Gold, if we can't then Silver is fine for how rushed our product was.

21/9 - ImProjB - Website Presentation

Planning:

• Make a website, make a directory and put presentation info on multiple pages.
• Prepare for exhibition and presentation day

21/9/18:

I have switched our presentation method to a website, which will act as the website we made for our impact project. I think this is a good idea because it shows that we know how to make a website and also it serves as an interesting presentation idea. I will finish it off before Thursday, which is the exhibition day. Next Friday will be presentation day as well.

14/9 - ImProjB - Making the Presentation

Planning:

• Make the presentation

14/9/19:
Today we made a very big effort on our presentation which is in two weeks. We have completely finished it and made sure we had all the criteria of the four principles covered. I think we will have a good presentation day.

7/9 ImProjB - WordPress

Planning:

• Work on the WordPress supplied by Ed
• Read through WordPress book
• Create multiple pages on the website.

7/9/18:

Today we made a start on our WordPress website. We didn't do much but we did experiment with how it worked, and it's feature to transition from visual to HTML. We also learnt more about animations and I began to work on our presentation in three weeks.

31/8 ImProjB - Animations and Scripts

Planning:

• Try to make a website with multiple pages, navigated by multiple links on the main page.

• Use YouTube for my learning.

31/8/18:

We did some more work on Ed's book, today was a chapter and a half of animations and how they work. We downloaded some scripts from buenacreek.com to see how these worked. We weren't very motivated to read these chapters but we got the idea of what they meant.

24/8 ImProjB - BuenaCreek

Planning:

• Ed’s books

• CSS

24/8/18:

Today we learnt about transitions from Ed's books, as well as reaching chapter 13/20 of the book. I learnt quite a lot from the code provided on the website buenacreek.com. I experimented with the transitions and figured out how make images perform diagonal and horizontal movements.

17/8 ImProjB - Website Basics

Planning:

• Find ways to make a free website online
• Use free educational resources (e.g YouTube) to learn more coding

• Download JavaScript scripts, look inside the code with Notepad++ and see what makes it work

17/8/18:

Today Ed and Spike weren't here so on top of having no friends during this lesson I also did the learning myself. I started off by turning to online resources such as YouTube and searching how to make a simple website in JavaScript. One channel named blondiebytes had a very informative yet simple to understand video on how to make a basic website. I used most of the code from that video on my little project (pictures below).

10/8 ImProjB - DOMs

Planning:

• Ed’s books

10/8/18: This day was uneventful and I hope to get more work done next week. We finished chapter 10 about
DOMs, and also found the place to download all the resources from the book.

3/8 ImProjB - Looking at code

Planning:

• Ed’s books

• Expand on JavaScript

• Chess

3/8/18: Today Ed emailed us a pack of Javascript to experiment with. When I first tried out the code, most of it seemed to not work. I looked through the code and assessed what all the Javascript was supposed to do, and found that what was missing was an ‘assets’ folder. I made one titled exactly that within the folder containing all the things Ed mailed and placed all the images in there. When I ran all the code it was all fixed and worked as it was supposed to. I also changed some parameters of the CSS of some codes, such as changing the ‘left’ and ‘top’ of some pictures, as well as the width and height.

27/7 ImProjB - Learning

Planning:

• Ed’s books

27/7/18: Today was the first day back from the holidays and Spike wasn’t here. Although, during the holidays, Spike read up to chapter 6 of the “Gamer’s Guide to Coding” and I caught up to chapter 9. I found it challenging to find a goal for today, but today was more of a learning day as I have learnt quite a lot more about Javascript. I hope to do some practical work next week.

6/7 ImProjB - WordPress

Planning:

• Use Wordpress to host/develop a website

• Find alternatives for hosting that also incorporate Javascript.

6/7/18: We have made a start on web design by use of Ed’s old Wordpress for robotics. It doesn’t use Javascript but it has easy to make websites and you can use html to write on it. We also have read chapter 3 of the ‘Gamer’s Guide to Coding’. We plan to learn to use Javascript in web design, so we may look towards other hosting services. We also learnt more about CSS and how it makes things look better.

29/6 ImProjB - Chapter 2

Planning:

• Learn about CSS

• Continue work on JavaScript

• Learn from Ed’s books

29/6/18: Today we read chapter 2 of the book that Ed provided us to learn more about JavaScript coding and HTML. We were also introduced to a program called Dreamweaver, which lets you code JavaScript for websites and see how it turns out. It also taught us a lot about CSS and how it can make graphics for a website. Tags were among the things that we have learnt today, as well as how the coding of a website is separated into the <head> and <body>. We attempted to make a website, but were unable to find free alternatives for hosting so we will attempt this next week.

22/6 ImProjB - Books

22/6/18: We have learnt a lot more about javascript and HTML coding today. Ed helped us by showing us a book about coding which was very informative. I managed to follow the instructions to make a website with a title, header and a paragraph of text, using HTML and JavaScript. Due to this activity, I was able to understand the very primitive basics of web development. Next week I hope to learn more about CSS.

15/6 Impact Project - Making a start

15/6/18: Today Spike and I have made a start on our new project, App Review. We plan to learn about JavaScript, HTML and CSS to design a website that we could format reviews of applications on. We have made a good start on our proposal but obviously we do not have a website up at the moment. Next week we hope to get some learning of HTML done, and possibly take a look into CSS.

Rosetta Stone Update 13/9/18

2/7/18

This is the evidence for why I believe I am at level 5 relational on the rubric for digital technologies, as I can fulfill all the criteria: I believe I am at level 5 relational for digital technologies as I am very skillful already with block coding, and am currently learning JavaScript for my impact project. My evidence for why I believe this stage of the rubric is accurate is the numerous amount of coding projects I've worked and collaborated on, both at Mind Lab and in various classes at school. 

I have dissected the code of the combination lock MicroBit project we recently completed,  and tweaked some of it so it made more sense (such as changing the numerous LEDs in JavaScript to make more relevant images that are easier to decipher (pun intended))

27/6/18

For the majority of today's ITHE class we were completing an e-asttle test for algebra. I managed to get the exact same score as the last time I did this test at the end of April (8 questions wrong, but different questions), which was a bit surprising and sad as I had not improved. I realized that I managed to get more of the easier questions done this time and less of the harder ones but I still achieved 6A again anyway.

  Our microbit contraption had flat batteries and a strip of the foil was broken so we fixed those issues but other than that it still worked.

25/6/18

Today Spike and I have finally finished our Microbit project; a combination lock for a cardboard box. It is a bit scrappy and the ease of access is not too good for a user, but when set up properly it does exactly as programmed. The problem with it the past week and a half was the lack of a working buzzer; one of the buzzers from the new shipment fixed these ailments.

I found it challenging to get the foil on the inside of the front side and the outside of the lip of the lid, but using a technique I managed to secure an unbreaking connection by making the both of the lines of foil jagged so it had more chance to touch the other. An unintended effect of this solution is that whenever the environment around the box is manipulated, it has a high chance of triggering the breaking of the connection, so it will go off if someone is trying to tamper with the table that it's on.

I have learnt a lot from the code, particularly how ciphers worked and the formula to make a number combination equal to the key to open a lock, as shown below. I understand all of this code and it makes sense to me. 

18/6/18 Log

Today we have learnt about the usage of misleading or poorly made graphs. We completed a class activity, which was critiquing a slideshow of incompetent graphs. The second activity was more challenging, as it was to 'write down what the following graphs are telling you'. I managed to complete it as well as find a few misleading points of the graph. Next week I hope to finish our micro-bit project by getting our buzzer to sound as the circuit breaks on our combination lock box.

13/6/18 Log

Today Spike and I continued progress on making our Micro-bit contraption; a combination lock for a box. We had made some progress on Monday already, but we have made much more progress today. We managed to finish almost all of our project, but still have yet to make the buzzer sound when the circuit on our lock is broken. Next week, we plan to fully complete this project. What we found hard today was how to check if the code worked, as we had to read through the code thoroughly to find out how it exactly worked.

Answers to queries about learning

This post is about my answers to a series of questions given to us in the Campion College class, IT Heroes. The topic is about my overall learning experience at Campion.

One specific thing about my learning at Campion College that engages me is the liberty that

comes with using digital technology to learn. The learning feels less forced than just learning from

a textbook.

The method I prefer to use to learn new concepts is to use online resources, such as Khan
Academy.

I do not have any opinion on how the organisation of the school could change to support my learning further.

Knowing why I am learning something isn’t important for me, as I already know some of these
skills may not be relevant for my life, but it is always good to learn more just in case. In the case of
if I would rather know how I would be assessed or not, I would like to know so I can capitalise on
any weaknesses, improve upon them and achieve a higher grade.

A quiet environment where I am allowed to have music on with a closed listening device is optimal
for my learning. I tend to focus more on work with a low-moderate level of volume of music in the
background.

As evidenced by the above text, I have completed all 5 questions given to me that inquired about my learning experience at Campion College.

Nau mai, haere mai

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