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.

Search Engines

I enjoyed Chris Nolan's lecture about search engines. I have really only considered Google as the official search engine, using it for everything. Now I have other options that are more specific like Google Scholar and Dogpile, both of which I did not know existed. I feel like Google Scholar will definitely help to narrow my search when looking for more scholarly journals and articles. I never really knew how results were ranked in priority. Now knowing that common, entertainment type results come up first, Google Scholar will definitely limit my time spent looking for appropriate sites and resources. The one thing I learned about Google that surprised me was how you could limit or specify your search just by putting a minus sign in front of a word that you did not want to be included. I thought that was pretty cool and useful.

Copyright issues

Before this lecture I have always understood copyright as just a side note of the music and entertainment industry, but never understood the full magnitude of it. I learned that copyright laws are considered to be one of the most fundamental and important laws in America, dating back to 1790 before the Bill of Rights was written. As a college student I have also become more aware of copyright issues, particularly those that pertain to the music industry. I know a lot of people that have some sort of illegally downloaded music file on their computer, whether directly from the site or indirectly from other people who have shared their music libraries. This issue I have deals with the government’s policy on illegal downloading and sharing of music. Currently, the crime becomes a federal issue when the person has made 10 copies and a value of over $2500. This seems reasonable as copyright infringement is a major crime, but how does the federal government know they are taking in the right person. If a person shares a computer with a family member or did not know songs were illegally downloaded then they should not be convicted of the crime. Copyright laws should be in place, but a more thorough investigation should be done to pick out who actually is the offender.

The Facebook Network

Facebook is pretty important to me socially more then academically, although I use it for both. It's really a great way to keep in touch with old friends from High school and others that are all over the country and the world. If I can't get a hold of somebody by phone for a question about homework I have asked them over Facebook before. Last semester I didn't have a phone for about a month, so Facebook was pretty much my only way of communicating with people I didn't see every day. Pretty much every college student I know has a Facebook and even parents are being to get one now.

My Experience with Word

The only experience I have with Word on a daily basis is to use it to write papers or other documents. I have copied and pasted things into Word, but from there its all pretty much new territory. I would like to learn how to do Word Art better and would also like to learn more about the other parts of the program I don't even know exist. Good thing I am in this class.

About Me

Hello! My name is Ellen Desmarais. I am from Kingwood, Texas, which is just north of Houston. I have lived in Kingwood for 18 years, but was born in Denver, Colorado. I am a sophomore here at Trinity University planning on majoring in Neuroscience. I say "planning" because I change my mind about my major almost everyday. Its an ongoing quest that I hope to end soon. I am also on the soccer team here, which takes up most of my time. Being active and involved in sports has been a constant part of my life. I have pretty much tried and played every sport you could imagine, but finally narrowed it down to just soccer for right now. My secret fact is that I am a triplet. I have one brother and one sister. We are obviously not identical, so I missed out on the chance to play tricks on people or anything fun like that. My brother goes to Boston University and my sister goes to Brown University. It has definitely been a change not seeing them everyday.

As far as my computer skills go, I would say they are minimal. I know how to use the internet and Word, but would like to learn much more about both. I am also excited about working with Excel and learning about the more complex parts of the program. It will definitely help when it comes to science labs.

If you have any questions just e-mail me at edesmara@trinity.edu