Advice for future students

In order to be successful in this class, the best thing you can do is actually complete all of your homework on time. The work is not overly difficult, and as long as you actually do all of it you will do fine in this class. Another way in which you can be successful is by coming to class and paying attention. Some of the tools that are used in this class can be a little tricky, so coming to class to hear the explanations of these tools is essential.

My Picture that Lies

In my picture that lies, I combined a picture of a UFO and a picture of an explosion, creating the illusion of an alien attack. I chose to do this because there are a lot of fake alien-related pictures in circulation, and I wanted to see how easy it would be to make one myself with Photoshop. Both of the pictures that I used came from flickr.com. I manipulated my picture by first removing the UFO from a previously created UFO picture. I then inserted the UFO into the picture of an explosion. I used the clone stamp tool in Photoshop to add some clouds to where I inserted the UFO in the explosion picture. I also used the clone stamp tool to make the explosion look larger, and to cover up an object that was on the ground in the original picture. In Photoshop, I created adjustment layers that turned the edited picture black and white and darkened it, making the UFO look more realistic. I manipulated the pictures in this manner to make a realistic looking scene of a UFO flying above a giant explosion, implying that aliens are attacking earth. The manipulation I created is not harmful in and of itself. Really it is just a product of me having some fun on Photoshop, and it does not harm anyone else. However, if I tried to convince people that this picture is in fact real, then it would become harmful. In that case I would be lying and trying to portray a fictional event as real.

Powerpoint Presentations

I enjoyed all of the Powerpoint presentations I saw last class. However, the two that stand out most in my mind are Aubrey's and Monica's. Aubrey's presentation was about the Myers Briggs personality indicator. The background she used for her slides was really cool, and it matched her content well. Monica's presentation was about simple tips to help make your photography look more professional. She used animations well in combination with her pictures, making the concepts she explained, like leading lines and the rule of thirds, very easy to understand.

PowerPoint

After reading the articles regarding PowerPoint, I noticed a suggestion provided in all three. Each author suggests that you should try to avoid cheesy clip art and large amounts of text when creating a PowerPoint presentation. The articles also warn you not to simply read your slides when you are giving a PowerPoint presentation. After reading the three articles on the class web page, and just from personal experience, I have come up with a list of five guidelines that are important to follow when making a PowerPoint presentation:

1. Use animations/transitions to make your presentation more interesting, but do not use any that are too over the top
2. Use pictures that will grab the audience's attention rather than large amounts of text
3. Choose a color scheme that is aesthetically pleasing and legible
4. Don't just read your slides. Presentors who do this are usually very boring
5. Make sure you spellcheck all of the text in your presentation beforehand

The CLT at Trinity

Today, we learned about the CLT (Center for Learning and Technology). Honestly, I had absolutely no idea that such great resources exist at Trinity. Before today, I had never even heard of the CLT and its video/audio editing equipment, media presentation lab, and its high-tech Mac and PC computers. Now I know where to go if I need to use audio or video recording/editing equipment and software for any of my classes. The fact that students can use almost all of this equipment for free is amazing in my opinion. When I visited Trinity as a prospective student, I didn’t get a chance to see the CLT. However, if I would have, it would have made choosing Trinity an even easier decision. I might visit CLT in the future if I need to record or edit video footage, if I want to practice a presentation in a classroom-type environment, if I need to use Photoshop, or if I just have the desire to use a high-quality Mac or PC.

My Experience With Excel

After working with Excel so much in class, I feel as if I am now well equipped to use the tools Excel offers to their full potential. Before taking this class, I had a very limited amount of experience with using Excel. Now, however, I know how to use formulas, cell references, conditional formatting, charts and graphs, and many of the other tools Excel offers. I had no idea Excel had so many built in formulas that can be used for a multitude of calculations. I also didn’t realize that you could make absolute or relative references to other cells in Excel. Excel is very useful because it allows you to easily manipulate and work with a large amount of data. It is a helpful tool for businesses and some academic fields because you can quickly apply formulas to large amounts of data with a small amount of effort. For example, a small business owner could use Excel to analyze their expenses and income using Excel’s built-in formulas and cell references. A teacher could use Excel to calculate grades for all of their students at one time. I plan to use Excel in the future if I have a large amount of data I need to organize and manipulate or if I need to make a chart or graph.

Chris Nolan Presentation

During Mr. Nolan’s presentation, I learned a tremendous amount about using Google to its full extent. Before the presentation, I had no idea that there is an “advanced search” button you can use to filter and sort your results, making Google searches much more useful. With the advanced search features, you can filter your search results to site type, so you can eliminate annoying “.coms” from your results if you are searching for something academic. I also learned that different countries have specific country codes for their websites, and that you can look for Google search results from specific countries. I was also surprised to find out that you can search for scholarly articles on Google by using Google scholar. Before discovering this, I always considered Google to be an unreliable resource when doing academic work. Now I can use Google when looking up scholarly articles, along with Academic Search Complete and the other library databases. I also learned some good web-site evaluating techniques from Mr. Nolan’s presentation, such as checking who the creators of websites are. I was very surprised to learn that martinluthering.org is actually a white supremacist web site. If someone were to quickly glance at the website, they might believe that it is a legitimate website offering information about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. However, a closer look reveals that the creator of the website is a white supremacist group and the content of the website is racist and bigoted.