My Next Year

There are many options available for next year. Many people will be continuing towards working on their second year at college on the same course, in this case Level 3 Information Technology. Currently i am rather uncertain about my plans for next year. I am not quite sure if doing a second year of this course would be for me, i lack the motivation to do anything productive and my assignments are always handed in late, i struggle to bring myself around to doing the work which suggests to me that the course really isn't for me. Furthermore, the amount of times I've risked failing the qualification makes next year a risk as i could well go on to do it and fail half way through. The course is still worth something after just 1 year so can still be useful in aiding my job acceptance capabilities, however i am only seeking a basic and simple job so my qualifications should not pose too much of a problem, my GCSE's are fairly good which i hope to aid me. By simple job i mean working in a warehouse of shelf stacking, loading/unloading etc. Jobs that have physical requirements to help stop me from getting bored of my work and physically fit.

The Last Entry – How I Have Changed

It has been several months since I have first been writing on this blog, mainly based around myself, and targets to help improve myself to better ready me for employment in the near future. I do believe there has been much change in me since I started identifying my targets and started to discuss ways in which I can work on them.

I have been able to work better on my punctuality, I have submitted the majority of my work in these past few months on time which is a big improvement over the pre-Christmas period. Furthermore, out of my overall 74 minutes late, none of these minutes have come about from the after Christmas period (time from what I first started writing posts and targets on this blog) which means my methods of waking up on time have clearly worked as I no longer get late to College. These are big improvements in key areas, punctuality is heavily important to employers so I’m sure this change will benefit me in terms of keeping employment.

I have also be able to determine which types of learning style I am, something I wasn’t quite aware of or previously understood, I now understand that I am both a visual and kinaesthetic learner based on the result from the quiz I had taken part in. This helps me adjust which ways I decide to take in information, if I want to learn something new or understand something better, rather than get someone to explain it to me, I will watch a demonstration video on the internet, or try doing it myself to see how it’s done, for example remembering the layout and connections of a server, I would learn better by getting hands on to a server and seeing how the connection works.

Becoming more sociable and working better as part of a group by having more input have been a joint target I had been working on. I was very fortunate to be presented with multiple group based work to help give me an opportunity to enhance this. From the time I write these targets to how I am now, I can confidently say that my people and social skills have improved greatly, even to the point where group work has become a useful and collaborating experience, better even than if I was to work on something alone, something which I had always preferred prior to my new experiences. Furthermore I am able to have a big impact on the groups I work with now, before I would let others take charge and make the group based decisions, but since trying to achieve my targets I have even been the leader of my groups and therefore holding a lot of responsibility in the decisions made as a group, I also feel I had contributed greatly to the team effort. I am glad about this change within me as working cooperatively and inputting well with others as well as having good social skills is highly important in a variety of work roles where working well as part of a team in essential.

Lastly, the finial noticeable change with me is my improvement with self-initiative and self-confidence, I feel like I have developed slightly in this and although small, it is most certainly a step in the right direction. An improvement to my self-initiative in which I can do things off my own basis and accord is vital to me being self-efficient and less dependent on others, in the work place I won’t always have a detailed instructions of every small step in order to complete a task and although asking is always good, sometimes a good self-initiative can go a long way. The problem I originally had with this was linked to another of my targets, lack of self-confidence, I see that these two go hand in hand with each other. Speaking of which I believe overall my confidence has improved. Through a variety of ways from being able to phone in and question about work experience placements, to being group leader and having to present my work to an audience. I have undergone many experiences which have provided me with ample opportunity to build upon my confidence, and I hope that in the future I can continue to develop this as It’s something there is always room to work on. Of all my targets the one I would say I have achieved still the least, as it takes time to build.

I think I have changed and developed in numerous positive ways in the past few months and I enjoy being able to be more efficient as a person in a variety of ways by working on such targets, I am certain these changes will help me in terms of employability and working well in the work place. I should continue to develop and improve as there will always be room for improvements.

Thank you for reading!

Target Review 2

Few things have changed since I last reviewed my targets dating 4^th March 2015, over 2 weeks later I will be reviewing my targets now.

Targets I set myself to be working on since my last review were to

-          Improve ability to deal with multiple deadlines by starting work straight away.

-          Improve self-confidence

-          Improve self-initiative

Over the course of this course, it is often that deadlines are placed together in a very short period of time, and not much time is allocated to complete long and difficult assignment tasks. So having the ability to better deal with these situations would most certainly benefit me, the most best way about approaching this is to start the work at the most earliest time possible, as oppose to leaving everything closer to the time near when the deadline was due. While attempting to achieve this target I also managed to achieve other things in the process such as better time management and organisation.

I have tried to tackle improving my both self-confidence and self-initiative, as these are both targets that can only be achieved within myself, approaching these targets are more difficult than most. Having a better self-initiative can allow me be most self-sufficient, I can make decisions based on my own thinking and feel confident in what I feel is right. This skill would be very important to have in all stages of life in both general and work related skills, therefore is very important I develop on it. I believe the only way to improve on this is through development and doing things I normally wouldn’t do to help me improve. I believe heavy use of my self-initiative was used earlier this week when I was looking for work experience, I had to decide which places would be suitable in the area to find a work placement as it had to be experience in an IT related sector, I then had to contact them in a suitable way and decide what to say, using my initiative to alter what’s being said based on the company I might addressing, I feel this has been a good development of using my initiative to find a work experience placement.

I too feel that while trying to find a work experience placement I came across the biggest challenge yet in terms of achieving my targets. That was to improve my self-confidence. I had phone in some places when questioning availability of a work experience placement, this was a very scary process for me as I am least confident when talking on the phone, I spent several nights stressed and worried about this and tried to avoid where possible, such as using alternatives such as use of E-Mail, however no reply via E-Mail had forced me to phone in. As much as I did not enjoy doing this I believe it truly was important in helping me develop my self-confidence, as for some people such as myself confidence is a big issue and lack of it will make you miss out on a variety of opportunities in life, many related to the world of work, being able to make phone calls and come across as confident and deal with interviews is very important and imperative to helping me with employment.

So altogether I can say I have worked on my new targets that I had previously set myself, and at the same time made some other developments in other areas along the way, I am certain that by developing on my  targets these past few months will greatly help me in life, specifically more in terms of employability. 

Learning Styles Relation To Me

Post 8 Specific Learning Styles

Knowledge and understanding of my leaning style can potentially greatly help me improve in my approach to things. When taking the quiz to help identify me, it stated that I was infact both a visual and kinaesthetic learner. This makes sense to me as I often like to see how things are done, and make an observation so I know how to do it myself, if I physically do something I can remember it better and clear in my head. I do not enjoy verbal instructions and listening to things as it often is not remembered in my head and instructions are confused and muddled up, I then begin to doubt my memory if I had heard correctly.

Visual learners can both better learn and remember if they can see things for themselves and learn off what they have seen. Learning by the means of graphs, charts, images and videos are most beneficial for visual learners such as myself, furthermore being able to see an overview of a project before starting is also beneficial as they can see the end goal that needs to be achieved and become aware as to what steps are required to achieve this.

Kinaesthetic learners however, of course are different to this. Taking part in physical activities is best fitted to their learning styles. This can involve a range of things, for example taking part in a school trip to help learn about something. Being able to see things in practice rather than theory is theory best for of learning.

It could be said I am fortunate to take comfort in being able to learn in more than one way, as this expands my capabilities in taking information in.

I have worked part of a group on several occasions and in the process, been working with people with different learning styles to that of myself. Overall I believe the difference has helped us be able to work well better as a group and as an end result produce a better quality of work. Knowing and understanding other peoples learning styles can help you see ways in a form that you might not otherwise been able to. When working with group members in the future I will make sure I will understand their learning styles first so I can better interact and cooperate with everybody more efficiently. 

Target Review

Introduction

Over the past few weeks I have been creating and keeping track of the progression of my self-set targets in order to help prepare me for the world of work, now I will review my progression of the targets I have made over the past few weeks.

Description of Targets

Finding a more suitable means of waking up on time, reducing lateness from oversleeping. This was my first target and up until recently had proved quite difficult in achieving, this has also been very troublesome to me and has hindered my educations due to all the lateness I have stacked up over time.

My second target I had set myself was to become more active when working in groups, take part more, share more ideas and have a greater input. Although when I had first set this target I hadn’t been exposed to much group work so working on this didn’t seem likely, although in weeks to come group work became quite apparent.

Third target was a very important one, one valuable not just for employability but in all social aspects in life. Be more confident and develop a better self-initiative, this will enable me to reach out to all opportunities that are presented to me in life, and having a better self-initiative can allow me to have confidence in what I do, so they are both linked.

Progress of Each Target Through Strategies & Evidence For Progress

Waking up on time. I have Progressed in achieving this target as I have not been late since I set the target, the strategy I used to achieve this was to change the sound of my alarm, as I’m not used to it I no longer sleep through it, also placing the alarm in a place that I’m forced to get up in order to turn it off.

Evidence of completion of this target can be seen through my minutes late this term on Moodle.

I have been able to work on my group skills on two separate occasions, once in Sheila’s lessons for Unit 1, and once for Lucy in Unit 40 work. Both of these opportunities have greatly helped me in the achievements in my targets. The strategy used for this is simple, what better way to give a large input in a group and take part then to be the group leader? In both times I was group leader, once I was assigned to be and in the other I stepped forward to help achieve my targets. I took part in all the group discussion and unlike previous times I did not just take a back seat and let the other members sort things out. I interacted with everyone and without a doubt, had the largest input from all the group members towards the project. I was able to share my ideas and in fact, the group decided it was upon my ideas that we would build and work upon. I think setting myself as group leader was definitely the best way to go about achieving this target. Evidence of my completion of this target is my presentation that I created with my team.

My finial target was to build on my self-confidence & self-initiative, these targets where very personal and required development within myself and unlike my other targets I do not feel like I have been able to achieve it or even work on it. My other targets had simpler strategies, in order to stop getting late I purchase an alarm clock, to have better interaction in a group I take on the position of a leader where I am forced to have a great input.  This target however, I feel, is something more that is worked upon itself with time and experience and I am unable to come up with an effective strategy for this target, therefore I have not yet met this one.

Other Skills That May Have Been Improved Incidentally

During my group work I indirectly was able to work upon my social skills which I’ve always considered to be a target for me. Having good communication and knowing its importance is key to working well co-operatively with other people. I am glad this was also managed to be covered during my target progression.

New Targets

My new target is to keep on working on my Self Confidence and Self Initiative, as this target was never met.

A new target however that I would like to work upon or at least start to is not leaving my work that’s due in before a deadline to the last night, space my work out more to ease stress on the mind.

How Barclay's Life Skills Help Me Identify My Skills

The Barclay's life skills presented me with a series of questions related to me as to my personal preferences in the work place/social environments. I was questioned with a variety questions which i answered with a variety of answers, this was to enable to it help identify my skills and characteristics.  
By the end of the quiz, it had calculated that i came across as generally a well presented as well as a good negotiator. I have always seen myself as well presented. as your appearance is what people will see and judge first so looking smart and professional is good in terms of setting a positive image to your employer. Because i believe being well presented is important, i am happy that this came out as among my strong points.

Being a good negotiator was also something i was identified at, negotiations is very important when wanting to meet common ground with someone. This is sometimes required when working alongside other workers or wanting to present new ideas/suggestions to your employer.

While i had always been aware i am well presented, this quiz helped me identified i am a good negotiator, which is something i was unaware of before.

Week 4 Targets

I am seeing an improvement on the progression of my targets, I have managed to cut back on lateness and my punctuality has been good in recent week, as I have been on time for all sessions and not gotten late, and if anything early. I believe this has been achieved based on working on my targets, one being to go to sleep earlier the previous day and the second is having a new alarm sound so I am not used to it, and don’t sleep through it.

Another target I have progressed on is meeting deadlines, an example of this is my Unit 40 homework task where I was able to upload my homework the previous day and on time.

Lastly I feel I am able to engage more with people, thus improving my social skills, as last Friday I had to deliver a presentation on my homework to my group, which also is good confidence boost.

A new target I am going to set myself this week, is to try and hold on to these recent advancements and achievements and apply them more often, before things go back to their previous state and I am back on square one.