Week 2

After reading "Effective Study Skills" the top 3 items that I feel I am good at are my thinking skills since I regularly question the material as I study, which helps understand the concepts efficiently. As well as review, I often like to go back over my notes/readings to reinforce on what I need to understand the most. Next, organization of study/course material, I like to keep my notes structured and categorized since it makes it easier to recall information. The top 3 areas I feel most weak in is my time management since I tend to procrastinate before starting an assignment. My study environment as well should be better in maybe putting my phone to side and letting my family know when I’m studying/learning the course material. Then my reading strategies also can be better when it comes to reciting the material into my own words.

Activity Log:

The Project Management presentations showed me a foundation by explaining that successful projects begin with clearly defined goals, understanding stakeholder expectations, establishing scope, assigning resources, creating schedules, and monitoring progress. Then building on that, the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) demonstrates how to break a project into smaller, manageable pieces/phases, deliverable, and tasks so that the responsibilities are clear, nothing is overlooked, and planning is more precise. After that, a Gantt chart visualizes all those tasks over time, mapping dependencies, deadlines, and task durations so one can see what needs to happen when. Combining these tools help define the goals and scope for the project, breaking tasks down, and visualizing the schedule to create a workflow that helps stay organized and track progress more effectively. 

After watching a few capstone festival presentations, I liked the dKOMP project which was an organizational management tool built around Elliott Jaques's Requisite Organization methodology. I found this project interesting because it tackled a unique area of business management by helping managers and business owners structure roles and responsibilities more effectively. The project was well done as well as the presentation being presented clearly in the video showing us how each feature worked. The project could be improved by not limiting its access to just Microsoft.

A Birds Song project was a project I really enjoyed watching. This project was a short video game about the story of the Kauai O'O which was a bird that went extinct due to environmental destruction in the Hawaiian islands. The project was well done as you can see the detail that went to it and the gameplay/level design to tell a story. The presentation was well done as well since they show a quick gameplay so you can see which buttons are used and how each has its own unique feature. One improvement I'd suggest would be to keep maybe a tally of each mate/nest that is found to maybe make it competitive and have a high score or have different levels each being more difficult.

The Town-Hub project is another project I enjoyed reviewing. Town-Hub is a website that allows users to host or rsvp to small neighborhood events like garage sales or parties. This website reminded me of a similar app called Nextdoor where you can connect with your neighbors/community to announce or share anything that may be relevant to the people around you. Overall, the project was well done, the user interface seemed easy to navigate to be able to make an account and post garage sales or rsvp to any local event. The presentation was good on showing us how the website is navigated and the different features it has to offer. I feel the project can be improved with maybe having a communication feature where neighbors can message amongst each other.

This week was really fun to work with my team and collaborate on what our team's name was going to be and come up with a resume that highlights our skills as a collective. As I continue to improve my collaborative skills as well, I really enjoy being able to work with my team and look forward to connecting with them on a weekly basis.