BSc1

This week was both productive and reflective as I wrapped up several tasks and began preparing for the end of the academic year. One of my main accomplishments was completing my technology research essay, which focused on data bias in society. After weeks of gathering sources, analysing the issue, and refining my arguments, it felt…

This past week, I split my time between two major areas: researching for my essay on data bias in technology and continuing development on a product designed to monitor plant health using environmental sensors. For the research essay, I focused on understanding the concept of data bias, particularly in the context of technological systems and…

Workshops This week, we were introduced to a new task that focuses on integrating sensors into a product of our choice. We began by exploring the Design Thinking framework, which provided a structured approach to ideating and developing our project. I found this particularly useful in understanding how to approach problem-solving from a user-centred perspective.…

As part of our continued work with Arduino circuits, we learned how to connect and use LCD screens with our circuits. This involved understanding how to wire the screen correctly, how to program it to display custom messages, and how to troubleshoot any issues with contrast, display settings, or data communication. We began by looking…

Workshops During this week, we gained a foundational understanding of electronics theory, which provided essential insight into how various components interact within a circuit. As the week progressed, I applied this knowledge by integrating sound into my Arduino circuit, enhancing its functionality and making it more engaging. We were also introduced to parallel programming with…

Lecture Additionally, we had a lecture from Max Elkins. He works for the Raspberry Pi Foundation and was able to give a good insight into his work. I found it particularly interesting to hear about his first job and the company he worked for. This allowed me to research into the company for my industry…

Lectures In this week’s lectures we looked at tech for good and the UN’s seventeen sustainable development goals. These lectures were delivered to us to get us thinking about how our work can be used in the future to help others and encourage good in the world. The first lecture was on the UN’s seventeen…

Lecture This week, we had a guest lecturer who works as an AI consultant and runs her own business. This was a good introduction to industry AI. Dr Bear shared her experience of applying machine learning methods to solve both research and business problems, giving us real-world insight into how these technologies are used beyond…

Workshops This week, I had an individual tutorial where I reviewed all the work I’ve completed so far for this unit. It was a helpful opportunity to reflect on my progress, receive feedback, and identify areas for improvement as I move forward. During workshop sessions, I focused on completing the task documentation for my XR…

Research This week I read a chapter on the physics that is used in Unity. For my project I had already been using rigidbodies and colliders, but it was interesting to read up on their exact definitions. I learnt that rigidbodies are used to make gravity and other forces affect the object their attached to…

Research I began this week by reading a chapter on 3D graphics. It helped me to understand how essential materials are to objects. Materials fully control the appearance of objects in the scene using shaders and properties. Whilst using Unity I had come across shaders and properties but didn’t understand their definitions. This chapter allowed…

Research This week’s reading was a chapter on scripts in Unity that are written in C#. C# is a language that I am very familiar with so I could easily understand this chapter. A lot of this chapter was on basics of scripting that I had learnt in the workshops whilst working on my project.…

Research I began this week by reading Part 1: Unity Fundamentals in Hardman, C. (2023), Game Programming with Unity and C#: A Complete Beginner’s Guide. This section offered a clear and accessible introduction to the Unity development environment, which was especially helpful as I was new to the platform. Through this reading, I became familiar with key…

Workshop In the workshops this week I was finishing off the documentation and research side of my work. Before I began my project, I had researched artist that use grids in their work for some inspiration. This week I wrote up all my notes on these artists and made sure my initial research fed into…

This week, instead of workshops and lectures, we had a weeklong project in Bank Plain. The project consisted of us making interactive data visuals using different sets of environmental data. My group were working with NASA global temperature data and created a piece using concentric circles and dots.  At the start of the week we…

Lecture The lecture this week was from a company called Collusion. They spoke to us about the work they have done in Kings Lynn and how they can use computing to put on events for the public. They showed us how they used projectors and worked with local students to produce instillations.  I always find…

Lecture The lecture this week was given by printmaker and programmer, Licia He. I had already come across He’s work at A-level when trying to combine computing into my art. Similarly to me Licia spoke to us about how she struggled to combine computing and art. Her way to combine the two is with plotters.…

Research: On Monday, before my workshops, I decided to write up my exercise 1 notes into an actual document. I began by looking at my notes and other sources of research I had gathered. I wrote up my introduction, explanation, positives, negatives, and summary paragraphs. These were fairly simple to write as I just had…

Workshops + Research In the workshops this week, we got on with the new task independently in a supportive workshop. On the Tuesday, I spent the morning working on the weather API task coding and the afternoon on exercise 1 – the research.   In the morning, I managed to add a day and night…

Workshops In this week’s workshops we began by creating a random dog generator website to introduce us to APIs. This allowed us to see how we can use online databases in our work instead of adding it all ourselves. I enjoyed implementing this task as it’s shown me ways I can use databases in the…

Workshops This week’s workshops were mainly independent which meant I could work on my audio player. I managed to implement two new buttons as well as removing my arrays in place of objects. I really liked this new method as opposed to the arrays, as it felt cleaner and laid the code out in a…

Workshops This week we were introduced to a new task, to do with audio and web pages. I have developed an audio player that plays five ABBA songs with a changing display and several options for the user. We worked through setting up the page in a really effective way, using diagrams for the divs…

Workshop 1 This week’s workshop was a supportive learning workshop. This meant that I could work on my gallery that I started and research into how to improve it. My gallery theme is Taylor Swift albums, meaning I had each image be the album cover from each of her albums in chronological order. The first…

Workshop 1 This week we began to focus on styling our websites which includes: background colour, fonts, sizes, images, alignment, etc. I think this workshop helped me to focus on my understanding of elements and how they can be used alongside ids and classes. Classes are a concept I was familiar with, so I found…

Workshops In the workshop this week we began to use GitHub for our work. I have used GitHub before but it was only to look at others work and not as a tool to store my code. We learnt how to commit and save our changes when working with multiple people and by ourselves. This…