Advice for future students

Taking this class was a great experience!! I learned so much and feel much more comfortable with computers in general. To do well in this class I would suggest to come to class everyday so that you won't get behind. If you don't come to class the homework is based on what we do so its pretty important. Thats probably the best advice I could give you. If you do that you'll be great!!

Enjoy the Class...Dr. Belisle is awesome!!!

My Favorite Websites

I really liked Erin Camp's website. She used a great background that was really artistic and had tons of pictures. The colors and fonts matched throughout. I also liked Adan's because of the personal fonts that he used and all of the hyper-linked pages he had to his favorite websites and artists, etc. I also liked Hey-Won's website because of the home page background. It was really nice and stood out. The purple flower up close like that definitely made it unique. You can find my own website at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~edesmara. Enjoy!!

Power Point Presentations

The powerpoints were really great. I learned a lot of new things and thought the presetnations were very effective and informative. I really liked the graphics that were used and the consistent color shemes throughout the presentations. I really liked Adan's presentation about music and the recording industry. He was engaging and very informative. I also liked the pictures that Eduardo put in his powerpoint from Brazil. They were beautiful.

Powerpoint Presentations

Falling asleep in class is never my intention, but when a teacher presents a power point with bullet points covering the pages, that they read off of like a teleprompter its hard not to. I think the websites abotu making effective and interesting powere points should be looked at more closely. They have many good points and advice on how to make a PowerPoint interesting. I liked the link titled "Really Bad PowerPoints". It was blunt and honest telling you exactly what not to do. I also liked the website that had the 10 most importatn things for a powerpoint, which I will definitly keep in mind. My top 5 tips for making a better PowerPoint would be to...

1. Do not have bullets on every slide.
2. Use professional looking pictures that draw the audience in.
3. Use color throghout the presentation
4. Have a unique template or theme for the presentation.
5. Use sounds and videos when appropriate.

For me the thing that annoys me the most about PowerPoint presetnations would be when people read of the powerpoint like its a telprompter. Everyone makes taht mistake and its hard not to, but its definitely not the best way to present an idea.

Benefits of Excel

After learning about the Excel program and all it has to offer, I know I will be using it in the future for academic reasons and also other reasons outside of school. As a science major, I use excel for most of my labs. It is a good way to keep track of data and statistics like standard deviation. Excel also allows me to put this data into visual meaningful graphs that further represent the outcome of the experiments. Outside of the school I am excited to use excel as a way to budget myself and keep track of my money later on in life. The program allows you to keeping a running budget making it easy to keep track of expenses. I have learned a lot about specific formulas that will help with this in the future. Using the Excel program will and has become a necessity to know in my life and I am glad that I have gotten to learn more about it.

Learning Center

The AT&T center for learning provides lots of software programs that could be used for many of my classes. When starting digital imaging and Photoshop it will definitely be nice to have place to practice. In some of my other classes using Photoshop and other programs like that would help in presentations. I might even use the Digital Audio room in the Learning Center to add to the presentation. Of course I would have to learn how to use the technology, but they have a help desk right there. Its also a good place to study since its out of the way and a lot quiter then the rest of the library. I'm glad we took a little field trip down there.

Pictures That Lie

I chose the picture with the helicopter and the shark because I thought it looked pretty cool. The image was originally just a snapshot someone took of a hovering U.S. Air Force helicopter that was then posted on the internet. The picture was manipulated by flipping the image so that everything was turned the other way and pasting the shark into the picture. The shark was pasted in to look like it was jumping out of the water about to eat one of the rescue crew. It was probably manipulated like this to make the image more dramatic and impressive. It definitely attracted a lot more viewers then if it was left alone. I don't think the manipulation was harmful at all. It wasn't poking fun at anything and it didn't infringe on anyones personal rights. The image is very impressive but for me not completely believable because of the location of the helicopter. It looks like it is near the Golden Gate Bridge or some other large bridge. For me I wouldn't expect sharks to be this close in.