UMUC: Classes Review

I want to give a run-down on each of the classes I've taken at UMUC. My degree is in cybersecurity and software development, and I've taken three classes total. Keep in mind the classes are 8-weeks long, and usually consists of 4 projects, 4 discussion posts, and any number of quizzes/tests. 

*********************************************************************************

I took my first class in Spring; it was a prerequisite coding course titled CMIS 102. It went over coding basics using C.

Class: CMIS 102, Professor Goode

Pros:The class teaches important coding fundamentals. 

Cons: I felt this particular teacher had confusing notes for his lessons. Each week he would post a much more 'helpful' lesson himself. Having taken 2 more classes, his notes were definitely confusing, but I was also a noob at programming. Like all the teachers, he would meet on Skype if you asked him to. 

Most Difficult and/or Important Concept Learned: I learned the very important basics of coding. Almost every concept in this class was fairly easy to learn up until arrays and for loops. 1D, 2D, and 3D arrays and for loops were the most difficult concept for me.

*********************************************************************************

Class: CMIS 141, Professor Pitocco- JAVA

Pros: I really appreciate the teacher's involvement, and I appreciate timeliness with which he grades your assignments. Definitely an example of good teaching on an online platform.

Cons: His first two tests are difficult and not the kind of knowledge you could study for as the notes were ginormous. I'd suggest taking the test once at the beginning of the week, doing the week's work and take notes, and then taking the test again at the end of the week (you are allow two attempts). 

Most Difficult and/or Important Concept Learned: I learned a lot of JAVA fundamentals in this course. I'd say some concepts that were *cough* fun to wrap my head around:

-creating an instance of an object using a constructor in another java file.

-creating and calling on methods

-nesting code...IE:  toString(myNumber(input.keyboard)));

*********************************************************************************

Class: CMIS 320, Professor - SQL, ORACLE, SQLITE

Pros: Like CMIS 141, I really struck gold again within another great professor. He grades quick, is always willing to answer questions, and his notes weren't terribly difficult to follow. 

Cons: The fact that I used a Macbook Pro made this class a little more difficult. We had to connect to UMUC's servers and the instructions for Macs were less clear. It seems Windows is preferred at UMUC. 

Most Difficult and/or Important Concept Learned: 

SQL itself is easy to learn and implement. I had a lot of fun on the terminal with Sqlite on my mac. I'd say a difficult aspect of this class was learning the normalization forms. 1NF, 2NF, and 3NF can be a tricky concept to wrap your head around at first. The final project is centered on the concept.

*********************************************************************************

This Fall I'm taking CMIS 242 (Intermediate Java), and cmis 350 (Database Security). I'm very excited to continue this coding journey!!!

MY CODING JOURNEY

This is my first blog post!!! As the blog title suggests, I'm currently a 30-year old 11th grade English teacher in Maryland. I've recently decided to migrate from the education career to a career in IT. Why would an English teacher, who teaches the nuances of shakespearian inspiration, want to move into the passionless(at first glance) field of 1's and 0's? I'm glad you asked. :)

I started my journey by acquiring a BA and MA in English Literature. Plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Levinas, Marx, Derrida, Jameson, Habermas and a host of other literary theorists and philosophers captured my attention for many, many years. I eventually graduated, moved to MD, and took a stab at becoming a college professor for about three years (I failed miserably...although adjuncting was a fun if unprofitable endeavor). At the age of 26 I decided I needed to make some real doe-rae-me. (as well as a girlfriend and dodge challenger). I took part in a teacher certification program, and within the year I found myself teaching a classroom full of young minds in Prince George's County MD.

Three years have passed since I first entered the classroom. Not enough time to say I'm a veteran, but long enough to know how the education system works. Why leave? It's quite straight-forward. 1) The salary/salary-potential isn't high enough. 2) Discipline is not taken very seriously. The former case is self-explanatory; I want a family and it's hard to make a living in one of the most expensive housing states in the US. The latter involves many experiences in the last three years that have shown me that education administrators are more interested in passing students than passing educated students. Enough said.

I became interested in coding last summer. I was good at the English language, so how hard could a computer language be? I poured through youtube videos and Team Treehouse archives for about 6 months. Then this last spring I began a cybersecurity and software development degree from UMUC. I've been learning code ever since.

I hope this blog may be used to express my opinions, track my learning, and help others on their learning path. I'm glad I've set foot on this journey, and I hope others might be inspired to see someone change career tracks and know it's never too late to begin coding.

-JG