During the second of my studies, on the HND Interactive Media course, I hope to improve both my designing and coding skills to a very high standard.

I feel my current knowledge of XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is of a reasonable standard and will provide a good platform for me to build on over the year.

As well XHTML and CSS I want to learn as much as I can about PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) and I plan to do this during the SMLP (Self Managed Learning Plan) assignment.

The SMLP will require me to manage my own time and dictate the pace of my learning. Managing my time and using it as effectively as possible is a skill which will benefit a great deal in the future.

Another assignment I am really looking forward to this year is A13 Content Is King as this involves learning about CMS’s (Content Management Systems).

After using a few CMS’s, such as: Textpattern, Drupal, Joomla etc…, over the holiday break I have become really interested in CMS’s and how they can be used to make flexible and easy to manage websites.

As well as improving my technical knowledge on these subjects I also hope to gain some real world experience as this is will be invaluable when seeking employment after the course.

After the course I hope to gain employment with a design agency as a web developer. This will allow me to use my current skills as a web developer and also satisfy my needs for learning and using new web technologies and languages.

In summary I plan to use this year on the course to gain as much experience as possible and also to gain as many skills as possible that will make me more employable.