February Half Term Blog

After a spate of illness lasting the last week and after a week Trip to New York City, Its time for a serious catch up in work quantity and quality starting with a new, February Half Term PDP, updating it up to todays standard.

So here goes...

Personal Development plan review

Name:  Samuel Spencer                      

Date:    16/02/11

No New Academic Qualifications

                   Notes:

Verbal Communication in a Group has improved with more group conversations and brainstorming sessions so this can stay at a 4. I am beginning to write technical reports so this will be improving recently so this can go up to a 2. My Time Management has near enough stayed as it was with deadlines still  being met and other work handed in also. My Presentation skills have improved to a 5 as I think I am fully competent now of making a presentation and showing it to others including large groups.

Skills and attributes (score: 1 = no skill, 5 = fully developed)

Skill	Score	Development activity	Target
Verbal Communication in Front of a Group	4	Be more active in class discussions.
Technical Reports	2	Learn to write technical reports and build on that.
Time Management	4	Ensure coursework deadlines are met
Presentation skills	5	Make better presentations and organise my work more.

Old Targets:

Target	By when
Become A QAI	April ‘11
Learn to Drive	May ‘11
Get Promoted at ATC	March ‘11
PASS EXAMS!	July ‘11

Comments:

Becoming a QAI is coming ever closer after the weekend missed in November due to heavy snowfall, I only now have to catch up on one weekend which has been sceduled early April, but other than that only 3 weekends left so i'm more than halfway towards that, I just need to write a 2000 word report on a subject of my choice out of a list of 7 given topics, and I need to learn to Juggle, This is to show that I am capable of improvement and able to learn through teaching methods (Long story behind this, which I won't go into now)

 

Learning to Drive is proving taxing at the moment as my instructor has cancelled 3 lessons over the past 3 weeks (One week being my trip to New York) meaning I have had a three week period between lessons which isn't very beneficial to me so I have had to change Instructors and so far am getting along nicely with them.

 

Getting promoted at ATC seems to be getting ever so far away after recent January Promotions where someone else was promoted instead of me (Even though they didn't deserve it...) Purely because of a personality clash between me and one of the staff... Because apparently it works like this: Uniform > Experience. And to be honest, which is more beneficial to newer cadets? Teaching valuable information to cadets or just having their uniform nice... Another factor in this is my CO who won't take any ideas into account or listen to any reasoning, including showing me why he promoted the other benefactor by showing me three lists of names (Which evidently were old considering one of the ranks on this list hadn't been used since September...) And these lists, to be honest looked like a child had found the MS Word templates and made it in three minutes but... Rant over about that, i'm just a little bit bitter is all, Therefore i'm moving this date back to June '11...

 

Pass Exams I am still not able to do this as I don't organise the exam times or dates...

 

So New targets are as Follows:

 

Target	By when
Become A QAI	April ‘11
Learn to Drive	May ‘11
Get Promoted at ATC	June ‘11
PASS EXAMS!	July ‘11

And Now the dates are in Chronological order!

So ending on that high note, see you next Half-Term,

 

Peace Out!

Pizza Delivery Assignment - Teamworking

Today I have started my Pizza Delivery Assignment for the Programming side of the course, This required me to work in a group of three so I will now talk about how that experience was and what interpersonal skills I used.

After being set in groups it was a slow start, with new people to work with it was awkward to get started. We got over this by the end by producing good ideas together and by communicating well to each other.
I personally feel that we all contributed near enough equally all posing valid ideas and stable arguements/agreements.
Some points where argued over what would be better which would result in choosing the best and easiest idea to reproduce.
Creating ideas was rather easy but communicating started slowly, eventually climaxing in a steady flow of fresh ideas and new concepts which was very good for my interpersonal skills.
I can see this become a very good project indeed, especially with the amount of team interaction shown towards the end, and also with all the valid ideas used.

This shows the interpersonal skills I have used today.

Happy New Year!

Just a small post to say that it was my Birthday on the 1st of January meaning I am now 17, This means I can now start towards one of my targets of Learning to Drive. First Lesson saturday. Can't wait. :)

December 2010 PDP

Its December! Time for another PDP, updating it up to todays standard.
Here goes...

Personal Development plan review

Name:  Samuel Spencer                      

Date:    19/10/10

New Academic Qualifications

                   BTEC in Public Services - Level 2

Notes:

Verbal Communication in a Group has improved with more discussions with my peers, Probably moved up to a 4. Still haven't written any technical reports so that unfortunately stays at 1. My Time Management has drastically improved with deadlines being met and other work etc. My Presentation skills have improved to a 4 as I have begun to produce better presentations and organisation of work.

Skills and attributes (score: 1 = no skill, 5 = fully developed)

Skill	Score	Development activity	Target
Verbal Communication in Front of a Group	3	Be more active in class discussions.
Technical Reports	1	Learn to write technical reports and build on that.
Time Management	2	Ensure coursework deadlines are met
Presentation skills	3	Make better presentations and organise my work more.

Old targets:

Target	By when
Become A QAI	April ‘11
Learn to Drive	May ‘11
Go Solo in a Glider	September ‘11
PASS EXAMS!	July ‘11

Comments:
All of these old targets still apply, except 'Go solo in a Glider' which probably won't happen anymore BUT I am applying for an Air Cadet Pilot Scheme which is the equivalent of gaining a PPL (Private Pilots License) for Light Aircraft, so yeah I think that might be slightly better... But I won't be able to get this until i'm 18 anyway. None of these targets have been met yet but most of them are date restricted so not much can happen. I am going to change one of these targets to 'Get Promoted at ATC' because I can see this happening in the new year and will hope this happens. So here is a NEW set of Targets.

New targets:

Target	By when
Become A QAI	April ‘11
Learn to Drive	May ‘11
Get Promoted at ATC	March ‘11
PASS EXAMS!	July ‘11

So i'll see you all next year.
Happy Christmas to all.

Peace out.

December Post

Thought I should post on this considering I haven't done so in a while. Don't worry I am still alive! I'll Come up with a long post later on this week.

A Place I want to go to...

I want to go to Biggleswade. To meet some Friends. They have decided to live there to be as much of a hassle to me as possible. This is just another of my aspirations. Plus it will develop my Interpersonal skills somehow.

Interpersonal Skills - Interview with CO (14/10/10)

Last Thursday I had an Interview with my CO (Commanding Officer) about a few ideas and concerns I had about my experiences in the Cadet Organisation.

I used a multitude of Interpersonal Skills in this interview such as; Politeness, I was polite as I wanted to get my ideas across in a good manner as well as being polite so as not to give the CO a bad impression of me.

I had confidence so that I knew what I was talking about, the benefits of this and also the fact that I wanted to show him that I knew what the ending outcome of these ideas would be.

Of course as this was a small interview about my Ideas and Concerns I had to listen as well as take in constructive criticism and also get my ideas across. When I was portraying my ideas I was using a friendly tone of voice, used eye contact and had good body language so that my ideas made some kind of sense and that he was understanding them and I was also very enthusiastic about my ideas to make them seem fun and enjoyable by everyone.

When I was listening I often provided feedback as well as keeping an open mind to criticism and new ideas. With the concerns I had I used technical language and backed up my concerns with evidence of why it was happening and how things would be better if they were sorted.
I used questionning skills when the CO said things which didnt make much sense and I had to ask him what he was talking about.

I left the interview with a Positive attitude and since then these Concerns have been mostly Sorted and my ideas are beginning to shape the Squadron and change the way things are run.

The Interview was successful. :)