Things I have learned from PPD

We have come to the end of the second year of our university life. We had a great time so far.
Apart from academics PPD was the only course code we had, to improve our soft skills. PPD means Personal Progress and Development.These sessions was conduced by Ms.Sarasi for two years. Now we have come to the end.

We are very thankful to our teaching unit for having these sessions for us. It was a change to us and we learned and gained knowledge as well as experience out of it. We went to Trincomalee for a field trip and also we went to Wso2 for a workshop.These helped us a lot to improve our soft skills and technical skills.

We also had a lot of in-class activities such as paper rockets, story writing, expert game etc.We developed our writing skills because we had to write blogs like these for almost every activity we did. Not only that but also we improved our presentation skills. Apart from those few of the other thongs we learned are mentioned below.

• Decision making
• Problem solving
• Creative thinking
• Time management
• Achieving goals through obstacles 

Self Reflection

What is Self Reflection?
Give evidence of the character or quality of ourselves and identifying strengths, weaknesses etc. by evaluating behavior and appearance. Reflecting means seeing something original of you.

Important of self reflecting,

Develop your skills and review effectiveness
Identifying weaknesses so can improve them
Can have a better idea of yourself to present in public
Can make better decisions
Improve of personality and confidence

Example

Strengths : Can work hard to achieve a certain goal
Weaknesses : Easily getting distracted
Skills : Good communication
Problems : Short tempered so it will affect my personal life

Habits that enhance self reflection

Be honest
Notice behavior patterns
Be able to articulate your core values
Be forgiving
Keep track of your self reflection

Reflecting helps you to develop your skills and review their effectiveness, rather than just carry on doing things as you always done them.

Curriculum Vitae

We learned how to write a CV in one of our PPD sessions. As Software Engineering students we have internships in our third year, so we have to create our own CVs and send it to companies. Because of that it is very useful to learn about how to write your own CV. Lets see how to write a CV.  

CV should not be more than 2 or 3 pages.

Photograph : Right corner of the first page. Should be colored and passport sized. This is optional.

Personal Details & contact info : Name, address, email and two mobile numbers

Personal profile : Brief description about your objectives and what you are trying to seek. Ex :- seeking a position as an intern

Educational qualification : point out tour educational status up to now.
ex:- degree in the university, Advanced level results etc.

Professional qualification : your non-academic qualifications comes under this.
Ex :- certificates, diplomas etc.

Work experience :  include the name of the company and your work role as well as the duration.
Ex :- Cashier in a Bank

Skills : Mention your technical and soft skills
soft skills - leadership, team work etc.
technical skills – Programming languages, Frameworks etc.

Training and workshops : mentioned recently attended workshops and train campaigns only
Ex :- Google i/o

Achievements and Extracurricular activities : Awards, competitions should be mentioned as well as sports achievements such as colors.

Researches and publications : mostly for people who gained their PhD or M.Sc

References : details of at least two persons those who are in higher social status who can provide correct details and recommend you.

Trust Walk

Activity : Trust Walk

Objective : Get to the ending point

Venue : Lecture Hall

Objects: Handkerchief

Members per group : Two

Rules : One partner should be blindfolded

             Partners should not touch each other

We did this game on our last PPD session. One partner of each team had to guide the blindfolded partner to a certain point to complete the task. The partner was blindfolded by using handkerchief. There were so many obstacles such as brooms, pens, chairs etc. in the middle of the path.

We had to carefully guide him/her through the path. We enjoyed this activity very much. And also we took turns and did the activity again. Somehow me and my partner managed to achieved the goal successfully.

1. We gained many things from this activity to our lives.
2. achieving goals by overcoming the obstacles
3. trusting our partner
4. co-operation and collaborative work
5. be a good listener and a good instructor
6. team work and decision making are few out of them.