Alrighty

So I have been banging on about this Yaldex video.....

Here it is!

Specifically aimed at M150 students for the debugging features which will save hours during M150 TMA's.

Apologies for the audio, recorded on a laptop with a mic built into the screen, did my best with what I had. The video is a little small so an alternative copy can be found HERE.

Software can be found HERE

Simon

Last weekend saw the completion of TMA02 for M263, taking me to the half way point in the course which I am please about as I haven't found any concept so far overly difficult to understand. I hear the next few units on Proof etc are more complicated but we'll see.

The TMA was quite a long one, consisting of 8 questions and taking a decent amount of time to complete. The TMA had a large volume of coding surrounding it, which I enjoyed doing (when the workpad was playing along) however, the OU like you to include all source code in the TMA document as well as seperate text files, which leads to a decent sized document for submission.

I assume its an anti-plaigarism tactic, allowing there software to scan the contents of the .doc file while the Tutor marking the assignment can run the source code from text.

I began to heavily anotate my course handbook with examples of any ideas I was finding myself referencing directly from the cours texts during the TMA. (My one fear with this course is that there is going to be an awful lot to remember for the exam). We are allowed to take the course handbook into the exam so it makes sense to clarify any ideas that you know you may forget by exam time directly next to there reference in the handbook, and I would definitely recommend people do it whilst working through TMA's as they cover all of the Key Ideas of the course.

Thats all for now, hopefully I will be able to report back a decent TMA score shortly, for now I need to crack on with my amphibious worlds (M255).

I have just had a 30 min study break whilst working through some of my M263 course materials this evening and decided to take a look at the courses I would like to study next year. I noticed that under computing there is a new level 2 course called "MT264 Designing applications with Visual Basic" which is due for its first presentation in September 2008.

The over view of the course suggests users will be programming using VB.Net and building applications from a basic foundation through to database linked levels. I can't help but wonder if the OU, by dipping its toe in a technology used widely across industry (referring to the dot net framework), is beginning to change direction from very much a Java focused syllabus to a more Microsoft oriented syllabus going forward.

I am going to phone the OU up tomorrow and see what qualifications this course will count towards because the description is not very clear, and it may just swing my decision of what to study in 2008/2009.

I'll let you know how it goes.

UPDATE 29/01/2008 - I received an answerphone message on Monday 28th from a member of the IT Faculty down in Milton Keyenes, my message appears to have got slightly lost in translation. I was told that this course can be studied as any other course can (my query related to B29 computing degree specifically, which has a relatively strict study path). I will have to return the call this week and see if I can squeeze some more specific information out, otherwise it will be a case of wait and see.

Simon

Although this isn't due for a few weeks I have spent the last few days working on TMA02 for MU120. I finally wrapped it up last night and I will submit it to my tutor at todays tutorial.

I haven't been giving MU120 as much time as I should, focusing most of my time on M263 as it counts towards my degree classification, but knowing that I'm starting M255 Object Oriented Programming with Java next week I thought I best get my work in order.

Maths has never been my strong point, however the TMA was fairly straight forward with the algebra sections taking up the majority of my time.

I would say that the OU teaching materials are first class at explaining mathematical topics such as algebra, and are a big step up from the way topics were presented to me at secondary school.

Maybe the government should look at licencing materials?

I have been looking to broaden my learning whilst studying with the OU without having to worry about assignments and deadlines and over the past week I have come across iTunes U.

To put it simply, this is a place in the iTunes store where Universities can place video and audio from recorded lectures online and allow their students to download them on their PC or Mac. From here the audio can be listened to or alternatively moved direct to an iPod or CD for listening (whilst driving to and from work in my case).

Although this is intended for students of the Universities the materials and lectures are available freely to anyone in the world.

The range of subjects is incredible and best of all it is free of charge! Two particularly interesting courses I have been watching/listening to are computer science based from Stanford University and Berkeley University, which are two of the most prestigious establishments in the field of Computing. The topics are interesting and discussed from many angles with some of the best lecturers in their respective fields explaining ideas from the basics through to advanced levels. Many of the courses have video or slides which can also be downloaded which liven up the topics even more.

Many lectures can be subscribed to as Podcasts which download each week as the lectures become available online allowing you to follow the course, or alternatively you may only download lectures of specific interest to you. With each lecture lasting approximately 80 minutes they can hopefully improve the time spent in traffic on a day to day basis.

I would recommend this service to anyone as it doesn't cost a thing, requires no real commitment and will definitely engage your brain and provide a good background to topics that you may come across in more detail with your OU Studies.

Take a look, there are plenty of topics from all the different faculties at these prestigious Universities (I haven't had a chance to check if any British Universities have adopted the service yet but if not I'm sure it won't be long).

All the best and a Happy New Year

Simon

Hi all

Just thought I'd post something that I tried out just now and worked perfectly. Firstclass for MAC!

Whilst booting into my windows XP partition on bootcamp today to log into first class I noticed on the splash screen the address for the firstclass website. Now I always thought that firstclass was an internal product of the Open University, but apparently not!

If you go to this site "First Class Downloads" you can view the first class international clients. If you then go down to English UK you can see the windows and MacOSX versions. Click MacOSX you will be taken to a page to download the MACOSX universal binary of FirstClass version 9. Download it and install it.

Once installation is complete you can launch the application and you will see this screen.




You need to click Setup in the bottom right hand corner and you will be presented with this screen.



Fill in your OU server, which you will find on your windows version of Firstclass I believe it is either oufcnt1.open.ac.uk or oufcnt2.open.ac.uk so try either and see how you get on. At the top fill in your student number and password as you would normally to log into first class or the open university website then click save.

You will be back at the main screen. Click the green arrow next to the password field or hit enter on the keyboard. And Voila!! You have firstclass on your mac. See my desktop below.

I have been hard at work on my MU120 TMA01 PT1 which I have completed today, I must admit this was more of a pain than I thought it would be! All was running well until I hit question 2 part D, where I got stuck on something which happened to be straightforward but took me a fair amount of time to solve. I can't discuss the question at the moment as the TMA deadline has not passed but section 1.7 in the calculator book should give people a good grounding in tackling the question.

Now the TMA is complete I have two gripes. The first is that I cannot submit it electronically, which isn't a massive issue but it is an annoyance as up until now I have submitted all my TMA's in this way. The OU put it down to Maths being much easier to work with on paper than on the PC, which after spending a good 5 minutes trying to find out how to use superscript for the squared symbol in Microsoft word I realised is probably true. My second gripe is that you cannot search the PDF texts for this course. I know a lot of students like to work from textbooks but I personally enjoy the freedom of PDFs and the ease of reference come TMA time. Unfortunately as I learned today the old nose in the book and search method has to be used now and again, this is because the MU120 texts are written using a special piece of software to deal with all the mathematical characters which when converted to PDF, is unsearchable (Arrgghh!).

My M263 TMA was handed in earlier last week and I found it fairly straight forward however some of the information in Unit 1 threw me a bit as they were using operators without fully explaining them. The text does stress that it will expand as the course continues and I hope it does, seems a lot of effort learning a new language for a year, you'd think they would continue using javascript which is used in other OU courses including the M150 course which so many people start there computing degrees with.

This is a follow up post to an entry I wrote last week surrounding the new NUS Extra card now available to all Open University Students. After a short time from application (Around 6 days) I received my NUS Extra Card on Saturday 29th September in the post as can be seen in the two photos attached.

As can be seen in this photo, the back of the card clearly shows the Open University Student Associations Logo on the back just under the signature strip.



After activating the card online which was a quick process I have already put it to use on Amazon to get an extra 5% off! At this rate I will recoup the cost of the card in no time at all. Roll on the discounts!




For note, whilst waiting for the card I received an e-mail saying as a security measure my card would be sent to my students union and I would be e-mailed when it was ready for collection. This is obviously a measure put in place to prevent abuse in traditional universities, however I am pleased to say that despite receiving this e-mail.... the card still arrived on my doorstep without any need to go to the OU for collection.

I hope the rest of you make the most of this great opportunity, whether it is for discounted meals, clothes or nights out reward your hard work and study with an NUS Extra Card. I know I will!

If your reading this blog entry hopefully you will have noticed that the website has changed. I have added a new design layout and although there have been a few teething issues I am fairly happy with the results. I hope everyone likes it, its a lot simpler and easier on the eye than the previous design but still engaging enough to keep you coming back.

I was asked by a colleague recently what type of financial support the OU offer students and as I advised them I thought that it would be useful information to add to this blog.

This is the Second year that the Open University have assisted me financially with my studies and they have been of great benefit! The OU provide a wide range of grants and financial support to a huge amount of students and if you are considering studying anything from as much as a whole degree to as little as one course but you are not sure if you can afford it they provide ready reckoner's online which will give you an idea as to what support is available.

It is also worth noting that as well as financial support, the Open University have the Open University Student Budget Account or OUSBA which provide ways of spreading the cost of your studies by paying course fees over the year at a low rate of interest.

For more info please see the OUSBA website

If you earn under £30K and live in the England and Northern Ireland you should be entitled to financial support. The OU rate this out so if you earn under say £15k you should be eligible for a full course grant, between £16K - £26k you should be eligible for a partial course grant, these figures are approximate and change yearly. The amount of grant you will receive depends on how many credits you study and other contributing factors. Please see the OU Financial Support Site for full details.

The general Financial Support Site for the OU can be found below:

Financial Support Site for Open University UK

As can be seen on the financial support site, depending on where you live (England & Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland etc) there are different support structures in place. The amount of Support you may be eligible for depends on your country of residence. Ready Reckoner's for each country can be found below:

England and Northern Ireland Financial Support Calculator
Wales Financial Support Calculator
Scotland Financial Support Calculator

As well as support for fees, the OU provide other support such as Computer Grants to use towards the purchase of a PC or Laptop for Study, Grants for Internet Fees when used for Study etc. However, it is worth nothing that these grants tend to be offered on a first come first served basis. Judging by the leaflets and letters I get each year a lot of the funds available for these grants are not used up.

Well,
after working my way through the MU120 mathematics preperatory materials and hearing that M263 is predominantly maths based course I have chosen to postpone M255 until Febraury. To be honest I know maths isn't necessarily my strongest point and to give myself the fairest chance of passing my courses to a good standard (M263 counts towards degree classification) I want to be able to dedicate all my time to M263 and MU120.

It was a bit of a relief to get it sorted, as the last 3 weeks I have spent alot of time worrying about my workload and the thought of my first two courses which contain final exams running directly in parallel. I hope I have made the right decision... time will tell though.

I thought I would drop by as I haven't wrote an entry since my courses finished for the summer.

The good news is I received my end of course assessment back for M150 and scored 89% which I'm very pleased with. This hopefully will secure a pass for the course however I still have to await the return of the final CMA.

I have also received my registration agreements through for M263 (£355), MU120(£315) and M255(£355). After applying for financial support I managed to secure a partial grant which will cover all of MU120's costs and some of M263's. I approached my employer today regarding the remaining balance for my courses and they were more than happy to pay, which leaves me in a very fortunate position of not having to pay any fees this year.

I'm off around Europe in a few days time and will be spending 5 weeks on the continent which I am really looking forward too. It will be good to recharge the batteries before returning in August ready for a September start and another year with the OU.

I have been keeping up to date with other OU students blogs and I have been pleased to receive comments on both the ISIC card and and my blog in general so thank you to all those who have stopped by!

I hope you all have a great summer and a well deserved rest (and that the weather takes a turn for the better too!)

Bye for now.

Well what can I say?

I have submitted my ECA's for both M150 and T175 and found both of them fairly straightforward.

I was panicking over the M150 ECA as I thought I had to answer two questions both worth 100 marks. Coming from a programming background I got straight on with the first question which was programming based as I knew I could get to the bottom of it with a few hours hard work.

To my surprise when I actually read the introduction to the second question it said you do not need to answer this question if you have answered question 1! Phew and Doh both came to mind!! I went back to re-read the assignment details and noticed that whilst skim reading I had completely ignored the section about attempting only one question. So even in my last piece of work for the first year of my degree I am still learning things about myself!

I have found my first year fairly straight forward in both time management and learning, working through the course materials steadily and only really finding myself contributing large volumes of my time during assignment periods. It has been frustrating when deadlines have struck close together but I don't think I have put in the 16 hours a week that the OU recommended for two 30 point courses. I have put this down to being familiar with some of the material and more difficult ideas in the course, and I am by no means expecting this trend to continue into next year.

The most useful thing I have had from the OU is the study calendar for the course, it is good to be able to keep pace of where you are and where you should be with your studies and without it I would have certainly found managing my time a lot more difficult, so a big thumbs up goes to the OU for those and I hope they appear in future courses.

I have been deliberating whether or not to post examples of code I have submitted during my assignments with explanations of how I tackled a problem in a particular way. I am not sure how the OU would view this but I assume they won't send out the same questions to future students and it will only be of benefit to others both web users and OU students alike to get a view on how people tackle different problems in different ways.

I was thinking people may be able to respond with there examples through the comments boxes, maybe it will just be better to set up a forum? I don't know just yet although I am looking for a web based project to develop my C# and ASP.Net skills, I find learning these things so much easier when you have a problem to tackle!

O.K so the ramblings are over, I probably won't be posting on the blog as often until the start of the new academic year in September (for me anyway). Obviously if i find any useful or appropriate information I will be writing about it.

Until then have a nice summer and for those of you still studying, good luck with all your doing.

I ordered an international student identity card on tuesday from STA Travel which cost £7.00 for my trip around europe. It is the most recognised form of student ID around the world and will get you discounts and free entry to lots of places.

I applied online on the off chance that it might come through, the Open University isn't regarded by NUS as a full blown University and the only discount card they give you is an NUS Associates card, which although is fairly decent, it isn't up to par with the usual NUS Extra Card students get.

I assumed that this would be true for the ISIC card however I felt obliged to have a go at getting one and completed the form with the Open University as my place of study and ticked the box to say I qualified (It was a minimum of 15 hours study per week, according to the OU two 30 point level one courses equate to approx 16hours per week).

Two days later and i find on my door matt an ISIC card all digitally completed and ready to have my photo placed in it! Bring on the bargains around Europe!

If you are an OU student I would definitely recommend getting one of these for the U.K or if you travel abroad at all all the better! It can be used in the U.K and around the world and gives discounts for everything from CD's and DVD's to cinema tickets and museums. A full list of U.K discounts can be found here and the main homepage where you can check out the card and its benefits can be found here.

If your an OU student please do share this news with your fellow students and friends, it is definitely worth knowing about. Go forth and make the most of your student status, however young or old you may be!!

Another sigh of relief as this one bites the dust.

I have to admit I found this assignment fairly challenging, well question 3 anyway. It was a question geared at your ability to write a report in non-technical language, albeit in the most ambiguously constructed question I have ever faced at the OU. To be honest I am just glad to have completed it and know that I only have an ECA left for this course and a further ECA for T175 and then this year is done. I can look forward to 5 weeks travelling Europe with my girlfriend to recharge the batteries.

On a slightly different note I went to the last tutorial for T175 last wednesday. Only 3 students turned up, if i'm honest this is only the second tutorial I have attended for T175 but I'm glad I did, it was very reassuring and cleared up any questions I had as we talked through what was expected of us.

Whilst attending the tutorial a member of the guidance/support staff was there to discuss how we as students were finding the OU and what we were planning going forward. When I told her that I was registered for 90 points next year she laughed, as did my tutor, who then jested that my social life was gone. I hope their laugh's were unjustified but I guess this will be the place to look in twelve months time to find out!!

Once I have the results for this assignment I will post up my scores for the year for both T175 and M150, and when the End of Course Assessments are returned I will update those scores as well.

Finally!

Its taken its time this one, partly because I haven't been able to hit it in one go but also because I don't really think the questions are worded as clearly as they could be. I often spent 30 mins deliberating a question before answering it, thinking what do they really want?

TIP: Look at the learning outcomes at the start of an assignment and use them to target your answers, they are more helpful than I would have thought and to be honest I have never considered using them.

The TMA covered a lot of area's,

Question 1 focused very much on telemedicine in the UK and India and the limitations of such systems and implications of there existence. For those of you who don't know telemedicine is basically delivering medicine via technology. This often involves networks of sorts, in remote locations these will be satellite based. The result is that you can have a doctor in one part of the world viewing and diagnosing patient scans from a remote location such as a war zone or village. This can also be stretched further to telesurgery where a surgeon controls robots from a distance operating on a patient potentially from another continent. There seems to be a lot to consider here, from bandwidth and latency right through to responsiveness of the equipment. There would be absolutely no point in having the worlds best surgeon in America operating on a patient in say India if the equipment was very unresponsive and didn't behave as expected.

Question 2 surrounded the use of the U.S.A's Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) and Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC). The technology is based around the idea that cars can be equipped with GPS, and coupled with there hundreds of existing on board sensors from ABS to rain sensors, be able to communicate to roadside hubs and other vehicles their driving habits, speeds, direction of travel, acceleration, terrain and weather conditions. This should then be able to alert drivers in the vicinity of accidents and congestion and also whether intersections are safe to cross.

Question 3 targeted Databases and the U.K's pioneering National ID card programme and the Biometric data involved. You were questioning the issues surrounding a central database which stored such biometric information and the risks and implications that this could have. This question was very relevant and interesting and I enjoyed tackling it very much.

Finally, Question 4! This question covered health on-line and used this to discuss issues such as content, accessibility and usability of such services. You were asked to compare to online services such as NHS Direct and BBC health and evaluate how well the covered these basics. It was very interesting to see how different websites tackle different accessibility issues, especially the likes of health sites which are likely to have a very wide and diverse customer base.

Anyway all is done and I am looking forward to getting my End of Course Assessment done and completing this course!

Good afternoon

As I am coming around to the end of my first year with the OU I have decided to write about where I am heading and what I intend to study.
For the first year of my degree I studied two 30 credit level 1 courses. These were T175 Networked Living: Exploring Information and Communication and M150 Data, Computing and Information.

I have found both of these courses thoroughly engaging and enjoyable and they have provided a really good broad base for my future studies in computing. I have found M150 more challenging and rewarding than T175 however this is mainly because I am from a programming background and it is the route I want to persure. T175 is a newer course and the materials are probably presented in a nicer way.

My Degree (B29 BSc(Hons) Computing) should in accordance with OU recommendations, be studied over 6 years at 60 credits per year. I have followed this path for the first year however I am going to step my study up to 90 credits next year with the aim of completing my degree two years early.

The 90 credits I am going to study over the next 12 months are the level 1 course MU120 Open Mathematics, the level 2 courses M263 Building Blocks of Software and M255 Object Orientated Programming with Java.

I found my first year very manageable and hopefully 90 credits should not but overly stretching myself. At the moment though I am looking forward to having the summer off when I will be travelling around Europe for 5 weeks. I look forward to properly blogging these courses as I study them and offering any ideas and suggestions as I go.

Simon

****UPDATED 22/04/2008****
Link to tutorial video HERE

I was thinking about which course I should post information on first, T175 or M150? I have gone with the latter for two reasons, coming from a development background this course presented the most programical challenges and secondly I found a great piece of software to help me through my TMA's.

M150 is a great foundation to my degree, I will complete it in two months and I have found it fairly easy to get to grips with the wide range of content you are presented with. So far I have studied the fundamentals of computing, from bits and bytes, to data storage, manipulation, html and JavaScript programming. JavaScript has definitely been the most interesting and rewarding topic covered in this course but on the other hand it has also been the hardest to get to grips with! TMA03 is almost completely programming based, building on the foundations of JavaScript that you are taught in units 7 - 10. The first part of my TMA involved 'debugging' a section of JavaScript code which was provided to me. Debugging is the process by which you analyse or look at a piece of code which contains errors and identify and correct them. This can be an arduous task and considering this question had the smallest score allocation it still took me a long time to solve.

The reason being I am used to having a tool which I can execute code line by line and find errors in specific lines quickly and easily. With JavaScript debugging in IE or Netscape the only feedback given to you is that there is an error!! This means you can't tell whether an amendment you've made has actually worked or not as there could still be different errors causing the problem.

Luckily after hunting the Internet I found a great piece of software called Yaldex 1st JavaScript Editor Pro which had a built in debugger, allowing me to quickly step through code and solve problems. It was a life saver to say the least! It became invaluable in helping me write my code for the remaining questions in my assignment and I am sure I would not have scored 98% without it!

I used the 21day free trial however I was so impressed with the software I decided to buy it for good as I am sure it will become invaluable. It only costs around $49.00 (around £25 GBP) and was worth every penny.

I have added it to my links collection and would recommend anyone studying M150 or JavaScript makes use of it via the free trial or purchasing.

So that's my top tip for the day! I will have more don't worry!

Simon