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Into the last year now. Here are the courses I've taken so far:
B200 - Understanding Business Behaviour
was my first course with the OU, and I only chose it because it
was so different from anything I'd studied before. It was surprisingly
interesting, although not what I'd expected. A few people have contacted
me since then and asked whether I thought it would be a good course
to learn essential business skills, by which I suppose they mean
things like marketing and book-keeping. Well, the answer is definitely
'No!' It's very much just an introduction to the sort of factors
that influence a business. That means the environment (Law, politics,
technology), the economy, the company's organisational structure
and the processes that take place inside it.
T171 - You, Your Computer and the Internet
is a kick-ass course! Everyone should do it, no matter how expert
they may be already. It covers the history of the computing industry,
the development of the internet and gives a quick summary of e-commerce
issues. All through the course principles such as netiquette, good
web design and teamwork are cultivated through a series of online
activities. The books are pretty interesting although a lot of people
find the third one ('Blown to Bits' by Evans and Wurster) a bit
of a mind-blower.
T209 - Information and Communication Technology
is a slightly unfocused course, covering a wide range of topics
in not-quite-enough detail. Networking is covered and I was quite
excited because I'm very interested in all aspects of networking
but I was frustrated by the lack of detail. Security was another
major draw but all we got was a long detailed description of how
public key encryption works. This was all very interesting in its
way but there's more to security than how to use PGP! Other topics
included voice recognition (yawn), mobile phones (I don't like them
much but I found this a bit of an eye-opener!) and a bizarre section
called 'Cyborg' which was a group project exploring the whole area
of artificial intelligence and people's interaction with machines.
Mainly it was just an excuse to watch 'Ghost
in the Shell', 'Terminator',
and 'Robocop',
read a lot of Asimov, play
Deus Ex, etc., and tell
yourself you're working hard! To cap it all off, a lot of the software
we were sent was dud and didn't work. The course-books, too, were
far from perfect and we all spent ages correcting them in biro.
Over all, the course certainly has potential and it had much to
recommend it but ours was the first year of presentation and that's
never a good thing! I am sure the next year's students will benefit
from the feedback we gave and (I hope) the software bugs will have
been ironed out and the textbooks reprinted!
T223 - Microprocessor-Based Computers is
one of the courses I'm taking this year. It covers low-level stuff
such as assembly language and C, as well as the very basic, nuts-and-bolts
operation of the CPU itself. It is a very intense course. the fact
that it merits only 30 points whereas a relatively cushy one such
as T209 gets 60 is laughable! I really enjoyed the course, I must
say, but taking it the same year as M358 was no picnic, especially
as I was busy at work.
M358 - Relational Databases is another very
intense course with lots of meticulous detail. To be honest, it's
also a bit boring because this sort of work involves a certain amount
of pedantic attention to the minutiae of the subject matter. It's
a very useful skill, though, and I enjoyed the work in spite of
the difficulty!
TT28x - Web Development Certificate: The
first one, "TT280: Web Basics - Design, Development and Management"
is a nibbly little ten-pointer. It was easy enough except that my
motherboard went up in smoke just before the deadline for the ECA
and I had to ask for my first ever extension. That was just a preview
of all the fun I was to have with the same computer the following
year leading to my eventual decision to rebuild
the machine from scratch. I'm taking TT281 (Client Side) and TT282
(Server Side) in May. They're ten points each too. I'm looking forward
to them, although it's going to be a busy time. I'll have to get
to grips with the basics before they start to take the pressure
off a bit.
M360 (Developing Internet Applications)
and TM427 are now sharing a page because it's basically the same material anyway. This is quite a good subject to study. It's very challenging though and the exam is a bastid. Almost everyone on the course scored well below their TMA average on M360.
M206 (Computing - An Object-Oriented
Approach) is quite a nice, fun intro to the world of Object-Oriented programming. If you like frogs, you'll like M206.
T396 is my last "proper" course of my degree. Looks challenging! I'm quite excited about it, although I'm starting to wish I'd taken other hard-core programming courses now because I'd like a firmer grounding in all that stuff really. Anyway, not t'worry. Hm... I suppose I'd better get stuck into the coursework, really. It always pays to get a head start!
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