Final Reflection

Technology

I learned how to use technology to better my projects, whether by finding new code to make my websites look better or to help me solve an existing problem in one of my websites. I remember using these skills to fix my php projects because I messed up the code a lot and when I couldn't solve the problem through looking for the red error I googled the problem to try and find a solution. I also used it when I was designing my original index page at the beginning of the year I used it to find a better navbar and how to make it mobile friendly and that really helped me make my index page look good, instead of like a kindergartener put it together. I faced many challenges especially with php and being able to look up what I did wrong and figuring out how to fix it really helped because it forced me to actually understand what I did wrong and how to make sure I didn't do it again.

Collaboration

I learned that it's ok to ask for help when I didn't understand something because normally I would just give up or struggle for like two days to try to fix it. It was an important skill because it kept me from getting overly frustrated over a simple coding error. Or that it was something that was supposed to happen and that it wasn't actually a problem to begin with. I also found it important to offer help to other people because sometimes we would be stuck on the same thing and we could get together to fix it or find a different way of doing it. For example on the php projects I got stuck a lot and had to ask the people around me for help even though I didn't want to ask, but i did it and it kept me from getting super frustrated. plus there is also offering critics on other peoples work, telling them what is working well and what might need to be revisited. It helped to get peoples criticism so what I thought looked good and really didn't could be fixed and it would make my website look even better like for example the high school redesign project I got lots of comments on my logo that really helped me improve it into something that actually turned out pretty good considering I don't do graphic design.

Communication

I learned that communication is really important to the success of a project, if you don't talk to others or the teacher then you may be doing a project completely wrong and that's the last thing you want to do. I learned it by doing the color project completely wrong at first, but I asked the people around me and they were able to help me get back on track. I faced a few challenges considering I don't like asking for help and would rather try to figure something out on my own, but sometimes that isn't beneficial to the project. So in the future I'm going to work on improving my communication skills even more than what they are now which is decent at best. 

Project Management

It is no secret that this isn't my strongest area, I am an amazing procrastinator. I learned that it's not a good idea to procrastinate on this kind of stuff because I eventually have to do like three projects in two days, which is doable, but very stressful and not at all a good time. I tried to get better at it second semester, but I think I got worse instead. First semester was definitely my better semester for time management, second semester I got lazy and had to pay the price for it, attempting to do three projects in two days which I somehow managed to pull off. So it's for sure something I need to improve next year so I don't have to worry about trying to do everything at once.

Leadership

Leadership isn't something we use very often in web design, but it's not completely unheard of. /i think it will be a lot more useful next year when i'm a senior and I have to help the juniors with their projects like the seniors did this year. So I'm going to have to learn how to step up to the plate and take charge and be able to assist people next year.

Reflecting

Over the year I have learned that my biggest weakness is time management and i think to improve that i'm going to have to implement some kind of break system like 30 minutes of work five minutes of whatever I want so I don't get bored and stop working all together. My greatest strength is graphics, on all the projects we have done i enjoyed the design aspect more than the coding aspect I like coming up with little logos and other graphics to make my website look better, I know ow to use colors to convey a message and how to compliment colors with other colors. With what I have learned this year, I'm going to use to help the juniors next year not procrastinate like I did and help them solve their problems. I would change how I do my projects and not procrastinate as much on them because thats just a bad thing to do in general.

Conclusion

In conclusion this year has been really fun and I have enjoyed having less people in my class because it makes it easier to communicate with everyone and to get help and critics. I enjoyed getting to do websites that were interesting to me and getting to use Photoshop and Illustrator more because that stuff is fun and interesting to me. I'm going to miss Olson next year, he was one of my favorite teachers, but I look forward to meeting our new teacher and to see what I can learn from her as well as meeting the new juniors.