Personal Blogs

MU120 - Passed with 86

M150 - Passed with 94!

Happy with that...

...that's the noise of the time flying. It's been almost a whole month since I posted on here, bad times I know!

So MU120 TMA01... both parts are IN. Just need to wait and see how those come back. I'm not too worried, took the notes on part 1 on-board and made changes for part 2.

CMA42 hads just 4 questions left to tackle, but I've not yet covered the unit required to do those. Doing the CMA and TMA questions as you come across the relevant parts of the course is definitely a god idea!

As for M150...

I'm taking part in the forum posts part of it right now, once I choose my posts to include in the TMA I'll be ready(-ish) to submit. The good thing with M150 is that they use the eTMA system, unlike MU120 where everything needs to be posted off. Chatting to my MU120 tutor the other day she mentioned that they piloted the eTMA for their courses before but had only limited uptake by the students. That's strange to me as I think it's way easier and has more benefits than the royal mail.

I feel like I'm lagging behind in M150. I need to start focusing on a better balance with the courses. I've been getting into one to the detriment of the other, see-sawing between them both and running myself ragged at the same time! I don' tknow how folk study like four courses at once! Good on them I say!

OK, break over, back to M150... integrating data...

I've been doing pretty well with my studying I think. As someone new to the whole thing I think I have a pretty good routine. I've had a couple of quickened heartbeats though...

In M150 the course team are very good at linking to your CMAs and TMAs within the study planner itself, on the course website. I assumed this was an automated thing and was keenly awaiting access to CMA41 for MU120.

Maths, it turns out, is less linky than computing... I figured the MU120 team were just waiting til the appropriate start dates before publishing the text as a hyperlink but no. It turns out they're not linking it at all from the study planner or either sidebar. Thankfully I found it (and in doing so learned something!) on my studenthome page linking to CMA submission and feedback.

Why didn't I just look there first? *rolls eyes*

I'm also in the middle of TMA01 for M150 and I've hit a block. I've actually hit two blocks as I'm working through unit two at the same time and both require I wait for the tutor to post to the message boards. *twiddles thumbs*

I'm probably doing too much too soon but I'm just waiting for real life to rear it's ugly head and butt in to my timetable!

Still, at least I've saved local copies of the CDs to my home dir on this PC, I think the "setup.exe" progs just copy the contents to a wine directory, so I'll properly copy them to my OU directory instead. All linking seems to work fine etc so result. M150 course CDs are fully linux compatible from the off! w00t!

Tutorial tomorrow evening at Aberdeen College for M150, can't wait. I need to get this wireless sorted out so I can actually use the printer though! "Bring a copy of TMA01" might be pretty difficult for me to manage!

So this is my new home for the next while. Who am I and why should you read my blog?

Well, I'm Billy(thekid - no really) and there are probably thousands of reasons to read my blog, however none of those will stand you in good stead for your own personal development, so I can't condone frivolous blog reading.

For anyone still with me I'll use this blog to catalogue my journey through my OU learning experience.

I'm enrolled at the time of writing on MU120 - Open Maths and M150 Data, Computing and Information. I'm hoping to eventually gain a degree in some computing discipline, again at time of writing I'm linked to B29 BSC(Hons) Computing.

I've been interested in computing stuff for ages, I remember writing(copying) a BASIC program on my sister's Sinclair Spectrum 128K +2 computer as a kid that made an analogue clock. It took about 3 days of typing and when I ran it I realised I couldn't actually save it anywhere! I think this formed a keen bond between myself and the home computer which still exists today. In fact I am continually excited and amazed, frustrated and upset by this relationship still, much like with my partner Catty!

So I've finally bitten the bullet and decided to get some formal training on this stuff, with an extended view of gaining some employment in the area in the future.

I'm not a complete newbie as I've mentioned and as such I'm, perhaps foolishly, throwing caution to the wind and using my personal PC for the course. It's currently running Ubuntu Linux and most course software is operating so far so good under WINE. I'm sure this'll give me the added stress of trying to find equivalent software at times, but anyone into Linux in any capacity is already familiar with that particular dance.

At the end of the day(gawd I hate that phrase) I'm still a student embarking on the earliest days of my open learning (in fact any higher education - I'm a plumber to trade after leaving school at 16 into an apprenticeship) path and I hope to use this blog to document this particular part of my life.

I can be found around teh interwebz at various places such as my other blog and my twitter.  I'm happy to help anyone out when I can and I'm not shy on asking for that help either, so you'll no doubt see me around!