With term 3 being finished tomorrow, here's my take on the 3rd term. In my opinion term 3 wasn't much of a surprise besides one particular course. I don't like to say every term the material and work gets harder, but it is in a different way; in terms of the actual work load it's very similar to term 2, but in a way it's a bit more difficult I found it, having to spend more time on assignments because of the difficulty jump and more efforts required if you want a good mark.
Due to a certain course I have to add a brand new difficulty level!
Difficulty level - - easy , - medium , - difficult , - super difficult
Let's begin shall we?
Project Management -
course detail: http://www.bcit.ca/study/outlines/mdia2082
Project management is of course a course about managing projects, different considerations to consider when doing big projects or freelancing work. In terms of lectures there's actually quite a lot to learn from this course; if you are considering work in new media, this course is a must.
In this course you will be creating a project for a real or made up client working in groups of 3-4 and you will be creating an website just as if it's an actual client, there's also a final but it was pretty easy, just the project was difficult.
Project management is actually harder than it seems, there are a lot of factors, deadlines and other information to consider, our group kind of underestimated the project and missed some important deadlines but in the end we pulled through somehow.
I believe this course will really help me in the future when I get a job even if it's not media related.
Visual Effects -
course detail: http://www.bcit.ca/study/outlines/mdia3188
Visual effects is a course for Adobe After Effects, it's a introduction -> advance course and you will be learning a huge chunk of after effects in this 12 week course. Majority of the course is lectures and lessons on using different techniques in affect effects; there are also multiple projects to do but we had the freedom to create whatever we want, which was awesome.
*Important note about this course, you better name all your compositions and project files and keep them all ordered up or you will get confused real quick. We probably did close to 100 different things in after effects and if you don't know what you did because you didn't take the few seconds to rename something, you're screwed.
I feel that I learned a huge chunk of after effects effects in this short 12 weeks and I am very satisfied with this course.
Now you can create some awesome videos with final cut pro and after effects!
Web Design & Interaction -
course detail: http://www.bcit.ca/study/outlines/mdia3292
This is more of a continuation of "web scripting 1" from term 2 than web scripting 2 in term 3 in my opinion. This course have you working with HTML/CSS again and you will be able to create some pretty neat stuff in your websites.
It's a very easy course with little work, but that doesn't mean you should neglect it, pay attention and ask questions from your instructors to further improve on your website, you can learn a lot from your instructors since they are professionals.
Law & New Media -
course detail: http://www.bcit.ca/study/outlines/mdia2200
Hardest course out of all the courses thus far by a large margin. Law & new media is as you can except, about the law. Besides the fact that it is the hardest course, it is also one of the most interesting course, did you know you can go to a mall and film up girl's skirts and sell the videos for profit without getting in trouble?
It's a very detailed course that covers a large sum about law in general and law regarding new media, I can list out all the different laws you will learn, but that is for the course of course. It's a very important course if you are going to be working in the field of new media.
One of the reason this is the hardest course is that there is just so much to learn, we had quizzes also but that may vary from instructors. Truthfully I didn't do too bad in this course, but looking at some of my scores, I thought I might actually fail this course (only course I thought I might fail).
I neglected studying for quizzes until the last moment and got barely passed them, and the class average for the quizzes was very low also. This course also has a final exam, at that point I thought about not wanting to take this course again so I had go over the material all over again, and to my surprise I learned a lot more than when I was bsing the quizzes.
So lesson is, freaking study for this course, or you might fail.
Also the answer is not the answer, but how you get the answer, you will know if you take this course.
Web Scripting 2 -
course detail: http://www.bcit.ca/study/outlines/mdia3294
Hard courses left and right, web scripting 2 is a continuation of web scripting 1 but moves in a direction away from HTML/CSS. You will be learning a bunch new things like AJAX, JSON, PHP.
First off, the only thing I actually get from this course is PHP, and everything else is like what the heck is this suppose to do and how do I use it. I don't really have much to comment besides not understanding a lot of the material in this course.
I believe this is partly my fault and that the course seemed a bit too quick paced and didn't have enough time for the material to sink in. We had a lot of time working with HTML/CSS over and over again so maybe that's why it's easy, but this is something else.
So if you are interested in developing websites, do pay extra attention in this course and really get a well understanding of the materials. There were also some light assignments for this course.
Social Networking -
course detail: http://www.bcit.ca/study/outlines/mdia2045
Got facebook, twitter, linkedin, flickr, and a blog about yourself?
If no, then you better get started !!!.
Social networking is about social medias as you might expect, it is a requirement to have a facebook, twitter, linkedin, flickr, and a blog for this course. The lesson in this course is how you utilize these tools on the internet to generate website views either for your portfolio or other websites you may have.
You will be creating a project in a group and putting your social media skills to the test. Each of the social media accounts you have to create have requirements, such as 15 followers for twitter; 50 linkedin connections related to new media wasn't new to us, we knew since term 1, but I don't believe we knew the connections had to be new media related. Honestly finding previous graduates and adding them as a connection is difficult.
I realized how I sucked at social medias because I don't know what to tweet about or think of interesting things to blog, it's actually like a competition and a game at the same time.
In the end I like this course a lot because now I actually created a bunch of social media that I would've never done so in the first place, seems like they will be useful sometime in the future.
Advance Photoshop / Illustrator -
course detail: http://www.bcit.ca/study/outlines/mdia3155
When I think of an advanced course, I expect really advanced things to be taught, but seems that I overestimated this course tad lot. I can't say this for all of us but do leave a comment on what you think. In terms of difficulty it's literally on par with the previous intro to photoshop / illustrator courses, which shouldn't be a good thing right?
I would say about around 30-40% of the material overlaps with the respective introduction courses and the rest felt like it was randomly chosen and thrown together. I understand that it can take countless years to learn all about photoshop and illustrator, but I honestly feel like a bunch of random tutorials was found and let's put them together and call it advance photoshop / illustrator.
I haven't felt this way since Scanning & color correction because the material overlapped with introduction to photoshop, that it's just random. I am by far an expert photoshop user, I would consider myself a newbie that knows the basics, even though I did not know... let say about 60% techniques learned, I don't feel astonished of the material learned. I think this course can go a lot further as it stands, compared to other advance courses and even intro courses, this course felt lacking.
Assignments were also pretty dull, you learned this and this today, so use this and this for the assignment, I believe we had 10-11 assignments pretty much one a week.
Portfolio I -
course detail: http://www.bcit.ca/study/outlines/mdia2005
The mighty portfolio course where you create a portfolio website showcasing all the work you've done up until now to find a practicum in term 4 and future jobs.
What I love most about this course is that I finally have a fully functional website for myself.
www.divulgedavid.com I still have a lot of work to do on it and it has tons of room for improving, but it feels pretty good to have your own website up and fully functional.
This course has a lot a work for your portfolio to do but it's in fact a pretty light course; we had a couple hours of lectures in the 10 weeks, or 11 weeks of this course and the rest is free time for you to work.
It's alright to spend a large amount of your time to creating a awesome portfolio website that just stuns everybody, but there's still Portfolio II course next term, in which you will have more time for your portfolio.
One of the course I enjoyed the most because I get to create my own website fully functional and that if you are done, it's basically a free block.
Finally that's it for term 3, never-mind I lied, still one more day to go, can't get any worse right?
The worst thing about term 3 is that we actually had law class from 5 pm - 8 pm, I of course was super tired like every class, something that I should improve on. BCIT doesn't exactly have the best things to eat if you are at school at night so you should bring your own food.
At this point I am about to get worried about finding a practicum for term 4, so I should stop procrastinating... zzzzzz
The courses I enjoyed the most this term are portfolio and visual effects, I would've loved law a lot more if only it wasn't so late, and to think we have a class that ends at 9pm ... oh god.
* I forgot to mention in term 1 or 2 review, but there is a requirement to have your own web hosting all the way in term 1, but it's not actually needed until term 3, I bought web hosting at the start of term 2 because I thought we needed it, so kind of wasted a month having no websites up.
My Portfolio : www.divulgedavid.com
Project Management Project : http://playvancouver.ca/
Social Media Project : http://2getit.blogspot.ca/
I was so glad that I passed that Law class even I didn't really study for it at all...LOL
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