WebActivate programme

any joy?

Don't panic. When I was there the 2nd day I was told it would be Monday or Tues when would find out. I found out on the Thurs. They are probably just snowed under coz they are processing all of us that have started already too.

Hey B.A. definitely give them a call. Let them know you are interested. I was told I would hear on a Monday, and when I didn't i called on the Wednesday with no joy and again on the Thursday. I was told that I would hear from them soon. A few days later I got an email telling me that I wasn't accepted this time around. I replied with an email saying, thank you and if they would keep me in consideration if a place became available. Lo and behold I got a phone call yesterday. Definitely give them a call tomorrow and likewise give them a call and an email if you get a rejection email. It can't hurt, and being early days you never know if someone may drop out and make a space available for you. Best of luck

An eventful day :pac:

- Woke up to an email from The Digital Hub saying I didnt get the course as I wasn't eligible for Momentum.
- Went to the Momentum site to double check ... Seems I was eligible.
- Rang up my local fas. They confirmed I was.
- Rang up The Digital Hub & seems there was a mistake.
- They offered me a place & I start next week :pac:

Very happy now


Did you get an email, fifaa?

Welcome on board!! We will have to form our own boardsies club on Moodle!

It's finally kicking off. Looking forward to tomorrow now

Nice one B.A delighted you got on. One more for you fiifaa and we'll have a full house. Sounds like a similar mess up that happened with B.A so fingers crossed.

So how did youse get on?
The mac vs pc war has begun early :pac:
Ended up going in with the mac crowd to see what a mac was all about having only used one for the first time at the aptitude test. Happy that there was actually a lot of ground covered today and there was a good bit to learn already. I'm glad I did that primer in HTML/CSS on codeacademy last month as I think I might have been a bit overwhelmed going in cold. Anyway, very happy with the course so far.

Lock Knife wrote: »

Nice one B.A delighted you got on. One more for you fiifaa and we'll have a full house. Sounds like a similar mess up that happened with B.A so fingers crossed.

So how did youse get on?
The mac vs pc war has begun early :pac:
Ended up going in with the mac crowd to see what a mac was all about having only used one for the first time at the aptitude test. Happy that there was actually a lot of ground covered today and there was a good bit to learn already. I'm glad I did that primer in HTML/CSS on codeacademy last month as I think I might have been a bit overwhelmed going in cold. Anyway, very happy with the course so far.

We only have pc coz only access to computers we have is to our own laptops. The lecture was a bit of a head wreck coz its been awhile since I would have sat and listened to stuff like that which was very tough for someone without coding experience. That said, as soon as she was working it through step by step it wasn't that difficult at all.

Loved it!

ABajaninCork wrote: »

There was a photographer come down from Dublin today. Showed all kids of interesting tips and tricks according to my husband. He seemed to enjoy it.

We had him with us on Monday. Was really useful. Find myself looking at almost everything from the viewpoint of what kind of lighting etc would work to make a good photo!

Photography class sounds cool.
So how long has the course started? i thought this week was only introduction week.

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

Photography class sounds cool.
So how long has the course started? i thought this week was only introduction week.

Everything that we learned today was from a tutorial video. They put these videos up onto the digitalskills moodle so you can watch them again. So when you start you will be able to watch these. Tuesday wasn't much, just learning how to set up our emails.

how is the course going for everyone?

In Portlaoise we would be interested to know how the other locations are getting on with the course as we head into our summer break today.

We have had a number of issues from day one with DSA, most of which have being glossed over and ignored. The overall feeling here is that DSA care not or have any regard for the participants, which is extremely disheartening, as we have a fantastic bunch of people here who are eager to learn and wish to further themselves.

Right now the main issues we have are

1) Our lead lecturer, TA and administrator who began the course with us have all now left. We know that 2 left due to issues with DSA and the other to a better job.
We have now being told that the TA and admin will not be replaced.
We have a new lead lecturer Ronan who is great, but he is now doing the job of 3 staff with 36 participants! This is not satisfactory to the participants here in Portlaoise.

2) The disaster that is the SME's and our work experience !
Participants here in Portlaoise have received SME clients as far away as Cork and Sligo.
Marty states we do not need to visit, yet Nessa in her lectures states the importance of face to face meetings ????
Many of the SME's have no interest and don't care about having a website designed.
The attitude we have received is, its the way it is, get on with it!!

3) It has just this week come to light that 25% of the overall course credits are assigned to module 9 Work placement, as delivered by Jamie Kelly.
Considering the fact that the SME work is not gradable, this makes no sense to anyone here.
Jamie Kellys assignments completed to date(3 in class and 1 take home) are considered more important than any other assignment to date.

This post could be pages long but the above are the pressing issues we have here.

Enjoy the break

irishwaldo wrote: »

We have had a number of issues from day one with DSA, most of which have being glossed over and ignored. The overall feeling here is that DSA care not or have any regard for the participants, which is extremely disheartening, as we have a fantastic bunch of people here who are eager to learn and wish to further themselves.

I'm on the Dublin course and speaking for myself (and a few classmates I've just now asked about it) that's not the experience here. I've spoken to the class rep casually in the past and he seems happy enough with his meetings with our DSA crowd.

Support, feedback (barring maybe 1 lecturer!) and course itself has been really good to date (though we haven't had any of the major problems you've had!).

irishwaldo wrote: »

1) Our lead lecturer, TA and administrator who began the course with us have all now left. We know that 2 left due to issues with DSA and the other to a better job.
We have now being told that the TA and admin will not be replaced.
We have a new lead lecturer Ronan who is great, but he is now doing the job of 3 staff with 36 participants! This is not satisfactory to the participants here in Portlaoise.

Yeah that's terrible, has your class rep made it clear how disenfranchised you are? You're clearly at a disadvantage compared to other courses so that doesn't sound right; maybe there's something in the course contract that states we're to be afforded a certain level of training support?

Might sound crazy but worse case scenario get in touch with local media/TD's about how Portlaoise is shafted compared to other centers?????

irishwaldo wrote: »

2) The disaster that is the SME's and our work experience !
Participants here in Portlaoise have received SME clients as far away as Cork and Sligo.
Marty states we do not need to visit, yet Nessa in her lectures states the importance of face to face meetings ????
Many of the SME's have no interest and don't care about having a website designed.
The attitude we have received is, its the way it is, get on with it!!

This attitude isn't actually to bad; brusque as it sounds that's kind of the way it is in the working environment?

We don't have any of the travel issues you have; in the real world I'd go with just phone and email meetings with the client.

Nessa's info is in an ideal situation, Marty's is in the real world scenario.

There's something up on moodle about travel expenses would this help?

The thing is; me and my team have adopted the attitude independently, that 'this is the way it is, just get on with it'!:
ESW is a terrible programme but it's what the sponsor Eircom wants so give it to them; worse case scenario we're learning lots of other web skills other than ESW, best case scenario we're the only folks who know the dreadful programme that Eircom will pay us to build sites for their thousands of customers.

If the your current sme clients aren't interested (maybe the next lot will be better) don't get frustrated; just use it as a learning ESW exercise and make sure your project manager keeps MARTY up to date with clients dis-interest!!!!!! If the client only wants 1 page; do it! spend the rest of the time using the DSA resources learning a program me that will allow you to design GOOD WEBSITES!!!!

irishwaldo wrote: »

3) It has just this week come to light that 25% of the overall course credits are assigned to module 9 Work placement, as delivered by Jamie Kelly.
Considering the fact that the SME work is not gradable, this makes no sense to anyone here.
Jamie Kellys assignments completed to date(3 in class and 1 take home) are considered more important than any other assignment to date.

Yeah this isn't good; I'll have words with our TA and class rep and if this isn't changed I'll approach the course heads and keep you updated.

Hope you get a TA soon,

Darth

Interesting to hear the differing opinions. What are the thoughts of the Monaghan crowd?

I myself am based in Cork and quite frankly find the whole process lacks an awful lot of substance. My opinion is it is basically just a sales and marketing course sponsored by Eircom. Sure you get a few things about photoshop and wordpress, but in all honesty, if this were a web design course, we would not have been burdened with the joke that is ESW. Nor would we have had to deal with the poor standard of lecture content and delivery. Nothing personal against the lecturers, but only 2 or 3 can actually teach. I also find it hilariously ironic that we have to deal with such dreadful project management regarding the implementation of the SME's and the constant re-jigging of the time tables week to week.

Overall I feel the course is a microcosm of Ireland in general: It's marketed very well, but has piss all substance when you peek behind the curtain.

Darth Marehngi wrote: »

Yeah that's terrible, has your class rep made it clear how disenfranchised you are? You're clearly at a disadvantage compared to other courses so that doesn't sound right; maybe there's something in the course contract that states we're to be afforded a certain level of training support?

I was one of the class reps and when problems were highlighted we got lack of response and communication, after weeks I addressed it to my TA( we had no lead lecturer at this time she had left/sacked you choose which) to make it known how unhappy I was and wanted some action, the response was a rather nasty email threatening my continuation on the course, it addressed losely some of the problems but highlighted issues in manners we were not overly concerned about and made it out that I was using the class rep role for my own personal platform. Oh and I was not to communicate my problems to TA's in future rather use the complaints section of the handbook and fill in that form and send it back.