assignment 1

So the teacher gave us an assignment; we needed to read this article, 'Weblogs: Learning in Public' by Jill Walker (https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/1956/1841/1/Walker-Weblogs-LearningInPublic.pdf) and then write of what we found interesting and some own thoughts of the subject.

It was interesting that the students started sharing their info on their blogs because I think usually people don't like to do that, maybe they felt like an connection when everyone was doing the blogging by force. And also that the students started thinking more of what they wrote on their blogs, that were available for anyone to read, than when they just wrote to the teacher. I found it also interesting how the interest towards the blogging raised once the students started receiving comments on their posts from random people. And when some bloggers got their feelings hurt when the students started writing reviews on their blogs, they realised that their blogs are really being read by others.     
This blogging/computer course they were having sounded really interesting, the students learnt a lot of important IT-skills, it's a shame our course doesn't contain the same things.

I've noticed during this task period that it's very hard to get a group of people aged 18 to 29 (?) interested in writing a blog. Many started writing it this week, since the dead line is today, and I heard that some decided not to do it at all. For me it was hard to find time to write posts because we've got so many other home assignments too. This week I've had to stay at school for hours after the classes have ended, doing all the homework. But I would had really liked this assignment if I just had more time.

"Rebecca Blood was one of the first and most prolific bloggers. In her oft-cited essay 'Weblogs: a history and perspective, she writes: Shortly after I began producing Rebecca’s Pocket I noticed two side effects I had not expected. First, I discovered my own interests. I thought I knew what I was interested in, but after linking stories for a few months I could see that I was much more interested in science, archaeology, and issues of injustice than I had realized. More importantly, I began to value more highly my own point of view. In composing my link text every day I carefully considered my own opinions and ideas, and I began to feel that my perspective was unique and important."

It's interesting to hear that blogging can have such an effect on people, makes me think that maybe this blogging thing isn't just nonsense.

France 14.-19.10

I visited France in October with two of my childhood friends, we were in Paris for a day and the rest of the trip we stayed in Angers. For some reason I didn't enjoy as much as I thought I would (or at all), something was wrong with the atmosphere.

We all got much more excited when we arrived in Angers, it's a much smaller city with fewer people and tourists so it felt more cozy. We spent our days shopping 'till dropping (which I really regretted after the trip..), laughing at some weird jokes, checking out the cute French guys (:D) and eating chicken kebab. I don't think I've ever laughed so much as I did that week.

Some amateur pictures from the trip (mostly from the first two days, no time for pictures when having fun! and sorry about the food pictures, I know no one cares :P):

Rainy Paris..

The first ever chicken kebab dish! ..looks kinda gross :D (got really sick of that by the end of the week..) I was surprised to find out that they don't sell the "normal" Finnish style kebab in France.

Paris..

A shopping street in Angers

We went to eat in a university in Angers, food there was different (better) than what they serve us here in Finland. This was the dessert.

 Hmm we bought a few sparkling shoes...apparently we couldn't resist the bling

Angers (or Paris?).. 

Menu in a Chinese restaurant 

 A cool piece of art

 McFlurrys weren't flurred when handed to you the "filling(?)" was just poured on top of the ice cream, didn't make any sense to me, I like my Flurrys flurred..

Chilling in our room..

(Wow just realized how bad these pictures really are, amateur indeed..haha)

I really enjoyed my time in Angers and I'd go there again any time! ..Oh it's already 3 am! I think going to sleep is a relevant matter atm.. 

(:

zero credits

Today was the last class of Financial Accounting before the preliminary exam. The teacher said that many fail it! She also said that one of our teachers has each year made a deal with the students that if 75% of the class pass it she will buy them pizza, the first time she had to buy the pizza was last year so I guess the odds aren't that good..

Financial accounting is one of my favorite classes at school but I'm not sure if I'll be able to handle the exam without any materials that has been given in class, I always check them when I do the home exercises. But I really hope I'll pass the exam so I'll have to do a shorter exam next February. I also hope to pass this, because there aren't a lot of exams that I have passed.. Because I was abroad on the exam week I lost one chance in doing the exam so I was left with two.
                  I did the Communication skills exam the day after the Mustache gala, I failed it. Last friday I had the Teamwork & Learning skills exam, I'm still waiting for my grade on that. Today I was supposed to have the Computer skills exam which started at 13.00 but I had classes until 13.45 and they wouldn't let me in anymore, so I'll have to do it next year. I haven't received any credits since starting this school, I hope KELA won't take away my student aid D:

DEAD LINE

Today was the dead line for our project plan for the Project management class. We had to organize a fictive trip from Rauma to Stockholm for 25 students going to visit Apple AB. I found doing the whole thing really frustrating and we spend yesterday the whole evening doing it at school, I got home at 9 o'clock. There were a lot of things that needed to be included in the plan such as the Budget, Schedule, Rules, Stakeholders etc.

Our first plan for "Description of the project" which we, for some reason, decided to abandon:

There were many words used on the base for the structure that we didn't understand, so we had to put doing our project plan on hold for a while. When we went to ask the teacher to explain the things we didn't understand to us, he looked at us like "O.o", because we were in such an early stage on the project, and counted that we have 46 hours left to do the project (this project was given to us a month earlier). The Project plan was supposed to be around 5 pages long. I guess we succeeded in coming up with stories to make the plan meet the demand?

??????

Today we had a lecture about Practical training. We were told when we can start the training periods and how long they will be. We'll get a total of 30 credits (about 6 months) from the training, we can divide the training in two 15 cr periods if we want to. Before the training a plan needs to be made defining your tasks, what do you want to learn etc. After the training we need to write a report explaining everything more specifically. We are able to start training after we have finished our first year studies (next summer) and we can do the training anywhere (Finland, Europe, outside Europe..).
                 I'd like to my training abroad but I don't know where to look for a training place and how easy it is to get a job there. I'm also not sure when I should start doing my training, I don't think I'll be ready for a real life job experience next summer? I've had only one working place in my entire life and that was a summer job last summer that lasted for 3½ months. Ihave no idea what kind of a company should I choose, I feel so lost already.

Brand stimulus

Today was the time for our fifth, and last, stimulus of this period. I am the note taker, hurray, gonna have fun making the memo (..NOT!). Our group presence was 5/7, both of the guys were MIA. The stimulus was a paper where was two pictures of brand rankings in 2011 and 2012. We got through the whole session on a record time of 30 minutes (whaat?)  maybe it was because the guys were missing? We didn't have much conversation, we mostly listened to our tutor's monolog.
                  Oh well, so the stimulus was about Branding which we figured out quite quickly, maybe that also had an impact on why the're was a silence in the room. Being a note taker was maybe easier now since there wasn't a lot I needed to write down but it was still difficult to try to focus and get everything written down. I didn't know what I was signing up to when I first agreed to be the note taker this week.... But I think the branding stimulus is quite interesting.
                  At the end of the meeting our tutor asked us to share our thoughts conserning Problem Based Learning (PBL) and the stimuli's. Most of us agreed on that they hadn't learnt much but the second year student said that she thinks it's the best way of learning. Maybe our minds will also have changed this time next year.

(Coca Cola was the number 1 brand in the world, these are some pictures from their campaign they did with Jean Paul Gaultier)