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Unit Zero Reflection Diary

Introduction

Hello all! I am Jesse McCarthy, currently living in Edmonton Alberta. I love the idea of a study group proposed by Heather T, so if there any classmates from the area I would appreciate the opportunity to physically meet and collaborate on the course.


I started programming at a fairly young age and have been doing it off and on ever since. I have extensive experience with GameMaker Studio, a remarkably effective tool for independent game developers of any skill level. I also have a bit of experience with HTML, JavaScript(although I haven't used them in a while and am probably fairly rusty), as well as Java having just completed COMP 268. I am quite interested in video game development and encourage anyone with a similar interest to contact me at anytime.

Reflection

Throughout my time spent on COMP 266, the four main ideas that struck me have been, the use of Moodle, The Landing, SCIS web space, and finally the all powerful Portfolio, each of which I will discuss individually.

Moodle

Seems fairly intuitive in the time I've spent on it. I read through the Orientation package, as well as completed the self-assessment with 100% (after two attempts). Other links that I found through the Moodle webpage include the DreamSparks application. After holding back excitement for three and some gigabytes of downloading, I was abruptly informed by my windows that the disk has been corrupted. So I decided to give up on it and just use netbeans and notepad++ instead.

The Landing

So far so good. I'm really enjoying the social aspect of this course with the use of The Landing. It seems like an excellent tool for distance learning. After following a few tutorials, Your first visit to the Landing, and Getting to know the Landing, I was able to update my avatar and fill in some information on my profile.


I also expended time reading other students reflections of unit 0. I found that the more I read, the more familiar I became with the reflection diary, classmates, and teachers. Not only did it gain some comfort, but there was also a TON of quality information. Before reading Richard Sookraj's reflection diary, I had never even heard of the AUSU. As a result, I was able to get a licenced copy of SmartDraw for free! With SmartDraw I am now able to create flow charts to represent logic streams of an application.


I think that the Landing will be a great tool for sharing ideas, showcasing work, collaboration, and developing relationships, providing a rich and meaningful learning experience. I am still quite new to the website and believe that the Landing's usefulness will only increase over time.

SCIS

Shortly after requesting access to the SCIS server, I was granted access. After messing around with PuTTY for a bit, I decided that I much prefer WinSCP because of it's intuitive GUI.

Portfolio

Love the idea of evaluating the course based on a portfolio of work demonstrating the concepts of the course. I'm excited to have the freedom to create a website with content that I am personally interested in. I can hardly wait to begin planning this website in Unit One.

Copy of this blog on The Landing