Week 6

The main focus of this week's lecture of “Personal Development for Computing” was a quite interesting one, it was called “Role Playing and Video Production”, in addition there was an class discussion about the last semester grades and about the incoming presentation team essay.

Role playing as the name implies is all about interacting with other persons while “pretending” to be a different character in order to be more effective than being my normal self. One might say that role playing is a way of acting in a much simpler form that is pretty much usable in our everyday lives. It was also discussed if role playing is actually useful when people are not familiar with it or if they don't feel comfortable with pretending. In my personal opinion I think role playing is an extremely important part of human psyche, since all of us wear “masks” and pretend we are another person sometimes. Some might say that role play and actual deception is one and the same, but I ll disagree. Role playing is just a tool that if used properly allows us to overcome many social obstacles and perhaps even improve on some of our weaknesses. For example, if I got nervous during a job interview that could be the reason I would be declined, however if I adopted a role of a more confident person then I might succeed where my “normal self” would fail. To make a long story short, I firmly believe that role playing is a tool that enables us to overcome any social difficulties we might encounter, if used properly, and if we manage to adopt some assertive parts of the character that we role play (confidence, better use of body language etc) we eventually manage to take one step closer to academic and professional perfection.

I would like to present a personal experience of role playing. As I said in my previous blog listings, once upon a time, I was working in a company that was promoting certain products like insurances etc. When I started working back then it became obvious to me after a while that in order to be able to convince my clients that the company's products were actually the best option for them I had to become another person. I had to be the confident and caring person instead of my usual restrained and a bit quiet self. When I actually managed to walk in the shoes of this imaginary person I became able to achieve a great number of deals and after sometime to become a more talkative and open person in general.

The other part of the lecture, was about rehearsing our presentation in order to make it as good as possible for the actual presentation. Practice makes one perfect, and that was the main focus of this part of the class talk. We discussed that by rehearsing, one can test his body language, their way of talking to the audience and of course being able to stay within the proper time limits. By understanding the above one can easily understand that rehearsal is extremely important if someone wants to make atleast a decent presentation. In conclusion rehearsal's importance is based to the fact that the more someone practices and/or tries to perfect something he will get better results overall.

Lastly, the was some talk in class about the grades of previous semester and some tips and tricks from our professor in order to help us with the upcoming group assignments. That part did not really affect me since I started straight from the 2^nd year so I had no grades from the previous semester and as for the group assignment part I just have to just do my best and practice hard to make an excellent essay, just like a rehearsal for a presentation one might say.

G.

Week 2

The second week's lesson was about understanding the dynamics of a group and and expanding our knowledge a bit more about the PDP. For starters I have to admit that I enjoyed thoroughly learning and thinking about what a group really is and how it works since teamwork is a vital part of our life. I would also like to add once more that unfortunately I will not be able to discuss about the in class lectures since I was absent at that time.

One might say that groups are the main element that composes our society (not only modern society I must add), if we reflect about this statement it becomes obvious that each and every of us is a part of one or more groups in his life no matter how social or antisocial he is. The prime example that proves the above statement is family since it works with almost the same rules as every other group, rules like good relationship with each other and having someone to assume the role of the leader. Also, besides family, one must think about the groups that work together, lets say for instance, in a company and compare them to how a family “group” works, both need strong leadership and good relations with each other in order to work effectively, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Through this lesson, I can say with certainty that I became more familiar with the way groups work and

that I find this kind of knowledge extremely important in the long run. In order for someone to become an accomplished professional and/or to improve his relations with other people, he must learn to use the basics of group dynamics. More specifically, I believe that learning to work effectively in a group will help me be able to adapt way better in any future endeavors I might take and at the same time not only improve myself but improve and help every other member of the groups I belong to. Via this team work one may achieve things that could be impossible to do by his own, since a good group will be able to cover each members weaknesses and promote their strong points.

Personally I have worked in groups many times in the past and I am familiar with their dynamics. I have been for many years part of a basketball team that had many exceptional players but was unable to play to its full potential and for this reason we suffered many defeats. I can say for sure that only when we developed good relationships with each other, we learned about each and every of us strong and weak points and of course when we decided who will lead us, then and only then we were able to be effectively unleash our full potential. Another example I would like to present is when I worked to as a financial consultant in a company. When I worked there it became obvious to me that there could not be proper teamwork because the mentality of almost everyone working there was “every man for himself” and that had in the long run disastrous effects.

The next part of this week's lesson was about the PDP. Unlike the previous week, this week's main focus was about the self reflection one should make in order to understand better what he is looking for in his life (academic, professional and much more). For me the PDP is a knowledge that allows you to know what you really want and by understanding what are your exact needs and by specifying them only then you can start working towards obtaining them. Also this whole drill can make you way more aware about every single part of your life. In general, I think that PDP being part of a module in my studies will help me extremely improve my awareness and that with the self-criticism it promotes it will make me a better person and a better professional in my future endeavors.

Lastly. I would like to comment about an article about people with disabilities. I personally believe that each and every persons opportunities in life should not be affected by any disabilities he might have but only by their professional abilities and knowledge. Also in our time and age with the current technology it is possible to overcome some of the known disabilities and allow to persons who have are in a state like that to be able to work in the same ground with the rest of us. However, what must change, in my own humble opinion, is that most employers should give more thought about the subject and design their workplaces in such a manner that people with disabilities will be able to work properly and be effective. If such a thing is possible then I can say with certainty that people with disabilities will not only be able to work as much effectively as their “normal” counterparts but also to be even more effective sometimes. Lastly, I would like to conclude this blog's post by saying a quote from a friend of mine “There is nothing as unequal as the equal treatment of unequals”

G.

Week 1

This is the start of my blogging experience and some might say the opening “ceremony” of my studies at BCA university. The reason I am writing this blog is that it is one of the main focuses of the module "Personal Development for Computing" that I am taking this semester. More specifically, me and the whole class were assigned to express our thoughts and opinion for each week's lecture. However I should add that due to personal reasons I missed the first four weekly lectures, thus meaning that I will try to complete my task by expressing my thoughts via the information available through the intranet. So I will ask you to bear with me for the first four entries of my blog.

I would like to start by saying that I am quite thrilled about this specific module, mainly because it is about something I have never experienced or studied until now. This module is about achieving personal development, learning how to to plan ahead and act accordingly, and I can say that these things can only count as assets for everyone in his personal and academic course. The first part of the module is about understanding what will exactly happen during this semester with this module. In summary Personal Development for Computing module is about the in class lectures, PDP (Personal Development Planning), 2 main assignments that will be completed in different deadlines, readings of tutorials or articles that will help expanding our academic knowledge and make us more open minded in how to react in business environment (and not only there if I may add) and last but not least in doing our homework, aka the weekly blog assignments.

About the 2 main assignments, the first one is about developing a web site whose main theme will be about the history of Computing and we have to do academic research in order to present the information required and to include original writing. The other task is composed by three parts, the first one is about the weekly blog listings, a personal development plan essay and a personal development statement essay.

The next part of this weeks notes is about the fundamental understanding of what PDP and Computing is, as well as how these two can be combined. Computing is discipline that allows a professional to not only obtain besides hardware and software knowledge but also the ethos of a scholar, deeper understanding of technology, how to be able to support organization goals and to help us improve our everyday lifestyle and mentality.

The following part is about the skills needed by most employees in our day and age. These skills are 1) Body language 2) Confidence 3) Practice – refinement of abilities 4) Skills development via self criticism and 5)experience gained through placement.

This concludes what had occurred during this first lecture in a summary.

In general, I can say definitely that through this lecture I grasped way better what is required to be a successful professional in our time. By analyzing what Computing means now I see that one must think out of the box and try to constantly improve himself in every part of his thinking. For example I would like to use as a reference an experience of my own. I was working in a company some time ago that was promoting insurance packages, and despite my knowledge of the packages that was far ahead of other employees there were some who could still sign more deals than I did. By checking what I learned through this week's lecture I can say with certainty that this occurred because of I lacked body language usage and I was unable to take any self-criticism. Hopefully through the Personal Development and Computing module I will be able to overcome my weaknesses and improve even more my other advantages from my past workplaces.

G.