The Wizard has spoken!

After reviewing my progress to date with Dean I now have a way forward to prove my competence. I stated in one of my first posts what I deem to be competence:

 ’To be competent in a subject you need to understand it but also to be able to apply your understanding, to make a product or to be able to understand why something isn’t working and how to fix it.’

Throughout this project I have been working on making functioning digital circuits. Learning about how and why they work the way they do. I consider myself competent in this area. The only thing I have trouble with is the ‘why it doesn’t work and how to fix it’ bit. Each time I’ve had a circuit non functional after powering up I have a bit of a brain hiccup and all my analysing skills seem to fly out of my head. I have needed Dean or Steve to help me get things up and running again.

To complete my work and become competent I need to be able to show that I can do this bit myself. So… I’m going to make up some prototype circuits and get one of my lovely fellow students to break them (carefully checking for any underlying stresses that may make them take the work ‘break’ to extremes ). I’ll then sit down with my arsenal of analysing techniques and equipment and try and fix them.