CS Learning Journal

 Final Video Projects  Otterbots - Drone Delivery Systems:  Here is a link to their video geared towards a professional audience:     This team decided to discuss drone deliveries, and how it may affect logistics while utilizing artificial intelligence and algorithms.  This specific topic is well-discussed throughout the video. They go over all the systems that are in place to optimize flight paths and regulations. They also go over a history of drone deliveries and how the technology has overall advanced.  The presentation is very clear. The speakers are understandable, and provide B-Roll footage to help people apply a visual to the topics that are being discussed.  They prove that they have strong knowledge in the topic, and they cover a lot of topics quite clearly. Personally, I think they could have provided data or research to show how the industry is reacting to drone delivery and backing it up with evidence.  The video is produced qui...

 Video Project Planning      So far, my team have been using a few different websites and methods for project planning, communication, and project tracking. For project management, we've been using Trello.com which is a website that lets us communicate with each other what specific task we're working on and when they'll be finished by. It's a very easy-to-use tool but it has been working great for tracking our progress and reminding us when we should be done with certain tasks, like script-writing and editing. We've also been utilizing Google Drive for file management and collaborative script-writing, as well as Canva for designing presentation slides for our video.       Our strategies have been working well for us so far, and during our meetings we make sure everyone fully understands our do-by times and tasks. So far, everything has been working perfectly for myself so I can't say for certain if there's anything else I would do differently for ...

 Capstone Discussion      This past week I got to spend some time with my team members and begin to think about some ideas for our capstone projects. All of our team members have vastly different concepts for a Capstone project, but they are all so fascinating and cover bases in varying different ways. One wants to make an organization Ed-Tech tool, one wants to make a social media platform, and another wants to make data analysis programs! We pitched our own ideas to each other and got some constructive criticism, and I realized that my idea of a fully functional AI-based translator app may be a bit of work; however, I am very interested in its concept and I look forward to seeing how I can execute it.   Learning Overview      I had the opportunity to learn a lot of new, applicable concepts this past week. To start, I spent some more time with AI Prompt Engineering and I was able to get a pretty favorable output from ChatGPT by using very careful...

 Teammates' Goals One of the best ways to get a perspective of my own goals is to get ideas from my peers and see what they plan on accomplishing, and looking at it from an analytical sense can be a great way to learn how to critique my own. I picked out two students from my team to review their educational and career goals from last week.  Teammate 1   Jason Week 4 "I think your educational goals, while broad, are really solid goals to follow. The program offers various information and can cover a lot of topics, and being able to retain all the information itself sounds like a really solid goal. Could also be helpful to plan how specifically you intend on retaining the information over time, like maybe specific projects or portfolio items that reflect on each subject! Learning specific languages is also a very useful skill to have while you're taking the program, like Python and SQL like you said. I reflect over something very similar. It's important to have career go...

   === Industry Expert Interview === Introduction      For my interview, I decided to talk to someone who I work closely with. His name is Manny Valladares, and he is a successful web development contractor for various businesses. We've met from a non-related industry before, but I've been in contact with him ever since and I've never gotten the chance to sit down with him and understand what he does as his professional job, and the more I listened to what it is he does for work the more I realized he was able to adapt to a changing industry. As someone who is not entirely sure what specific industry I want to work in, I am interested in his story on how he built his personal networks, and adapted to a constantly-changing field and how he was able to remain competitive, especially maintaining his own private business. I also know he has a background in video game development and has close connections at Meta developing AR technology. One of the thin...

 Educational Goals        After the reading from this week's lecture material, I want to take a moment to step back and set some educational goals for myself. I want something that is easy to remember, as well as "SMART". That is: S pecific M easurable A ttainable R elevant T ime-bound        The first goal I want to achieve during my time here is:  build my career portfolio . During my learning at CSUMB, I want to be able to learn from all of the projects and group work, and find time to focus on personal projects and kickstart a portfolio I feel confident sharing. At the very least, I want to achieve: - A working website I designed and built by myself. - A working showcase of at least  3  working applications - A blog on the website that walks through how I got each one working      The second educational goal I want is to learn Graphics Programming . While I may not be 100% certain on my industry goal, at the ...

 Reflecting on Study Weaknesses Last week as a part of my learning journal I took a moment to reflect on some positive study habits I felt I was strong in, and some I felt I was weak in. This week, I have been given the opportunity to take one of those habits I felt week in previously and reflect on it. I utilized this resource, from AcademicTips.org  and one of the things it went over was when to study. It gave a few good pieces of advice, and here are some tactics I will try to implement moving foward: Study within 24 hours of learning a new topic. Research shows that up to 80% of new learned material can be forgotten within the first 24 hours, so by reviewing a topic less than a day after learning it you are more likely to retain the information, and it will be easier to keep that in long-term memory leading up to taking an exam. Avoid marathon study sessions and back-to-back studies. It's much easier to get overwhelmed by academics when everything is pushed so close toget...