Final Entry

Well, it's been a great semester. I've really enjoyed this class and I'm sad to see it come to a close. My advice to future Essential Computer Skills students is to keep up with the work and have fun with the assignments. Don't let your work get away from you and take advantage of the room for creativity in the assignments- you'll have a great time and learn even more.

Thanks for a great semester, Ms. Belisle!

Photoshop Trickery

I chose to use a picture of myself from freshman year and a picture of Barack and Michelle Obama smiling with George and Laura Bush outside of the White House taken at Obama's inauguration, which I  found online.  I removed Obama from his picture and placed him into mine.  I resized him and adjusted the lighting and contrast of the two images so that they looked more natural together.  Then I made the picture black and white and used the "posterize" tool to make the image look like a political poster.  Finally, I put the campaign slogan at the bottom of the image.  I did all of this in order to create a campaign poster for 2012 which falsely presents me as Obama's running mate.  This is, of course, a fraud and completely untrue.  I did this to be humorous more than harmful, but it potentially could be harmful by spreading false information about a presidential candidate in an election.  Slander and lies are a harmful occurrence in elections, an occurrence which deceives the public into voting for candidates who don't represent their best interest.  

Powerpoint Tips

Nothing can ruin a presentation like a poorly done slideshow.  Upon reading the Powerpoint articles, I was reminded of presentations I've given in the past.  I've definitely made some of the mistakes mentioned in the websites.  What can I say- making an interesting and informative slideshow is difficult!  But the websites were very helpful and had a ton of advice on how to make an excellent slideshow.

Here are my five points on what it takes to make a stellar slideshow:

1. Design- Part of giving an excellent slideshow is in the presentation.  Slideshows are visual experiences and giving your audience something captivating or interesting to look at is crucial in keeping them interested.  Use color and graphics effectively, in a way that compliments the subject and tone of the slideshow.  At the same time, keep them simple and easy to read- don't clutter the slide with so much visual imagery that they're impossible to read or understand. Design your slides carefully, giving them a similar appearance to tie them all together but having some variation.  

2. Keep the text to a minimum- Slides should reinforce dialogue but should not be identical.  When giving a presentation, it's usually not very helpful to simply repeat on a slide what you're saying in your speech.  The audience can both read and hear, and giving them the same information twice will bore them.  Rather, you should make sure that your slides support what you say but do not simply mirror it.  If you're going to have text on your slides, keep it short and put only what you need- text is uninteresting to look at.  Keep your slides simple and visual and then elaborate upon what they show verbally.

3. Choose an appropriate font- Sure, everyone loves a cute font, but could you really understand a slideshow if all of the text were written in calligraphy or "curlz"?  Your audience needs to read the slide quickly, as you don't want to spend too much time on a single slide, so you want your font to be clear.  Try picking a font that is both stylish and easily read, but remember, clarity is most important.     

4. Use Pictures- Audiences like being given something to look at.  A slideshow of slides with nothing but text is visually uninteresting.  Be sure to include some pictures to keep the slideshow interesting.  Use them effectively and strategically to demonstrate your points or further explain what you're saying.  Using photographs of your subject will help the audience understand and stay interested.  Graphs are useful visual tools as well- a well made graph can help support your points.  You might even consider putting a video into your slideshow, if appropriate- remember, audiences are needy and can't be sustained with text alone.

5. Simplicity is a virtue- Despite all I've just said, don't feel the need to overly clutter your slides with photos, graphs, and other visual aids at the expense of clarity.  Keep your slideshow straightforward and keep your slides simple and easy for the audience to understand.  

Those are my tips for an excellent Powerpoint!  

CLT Field Trip

This week the class took a field trip to the AT&T Center for Learning and Technology in the Coates Library.  It was my first time to visit the center and I was rather surprised by how much useful equipment and software there was accessible to me.  The center is a large area downstairs filled with both Mac and PC computers, scanners, and a variety of multimedia software for creating and editing.  I never realized just how much equipment was available for students to use.  I could use the software there for a plethora of class projects.  For example, I have an assignment in my Acting 1 class involving audio recording, and the software in the center would be incredibly useful for that.  I think it could be equally helpful for our class as well- the Digital Audio Lab and Media Presentation Lab could assist with creating presentations for class!  In addition, the Innovation Studio is dedicated to educating students and faculty alike about using school software and could assist me with any troubles I have with software.  With all of it's high tech equipment and software available for students, the center could be helpful for virtually any creative project, whether academic, artistic, or personal.  I'll definitely be returning to the center soon!

Excel!

Learning about Microsoft Excel these last few weeks has been invaluable to me- I'm stunned by how much I never knew about Excel.  Sure I knew how to make pie graphs and charts, but I'd never before used the formula feature of Excel.  Excel's ability to calculate values based on the information given is truly remarkable; it's much more than simply a calculator, it's an advanced, sophisticated program that seems capable of mind-reading at times.  Excel could be used in a myriad of ways.  I imagine it would be incredibly useful to research in any academic field as a method of sorting and interpreting observations and results.  Excel would be useful in business as well; it could calculate and sort profits, losses, taxes, revenue, and, as we've done in class, even catalog the performance of different employees or groups.  Excel could be used to keep track of stocks, to predicts odds in a game of chance, even to arrange a guest list for a party.  Its uses are virtually limitless.  In the past I have used Excel exclusively to create graphs for presentations, but I have no doubt in the future I will be using it to its full potential.  I feel regretful for all of the time I've spent not knowing all that Excel had to offer.  Three cheers for Microsoft Excel!

Chris Nolan Presentation!

Chris Nolan's presentation on Thursday was incredibly helpful.  He spoke about good and bad internet sources and how to distinguish between them.  We learned about how search engines, Google in particular, list their search results.  Google does not accept payment in order to move a website up the list of search results, though there is a separate column dedicated to this.  Google sorts its results by how many times each website has been linked to or cited in a separate website.  We were surprised and saddened to find that in some cases, such as the search topic "Martin Luther King," racist, outrageously delusional results appeared near the top (the search topic "Jew" yields very similar results).  This demonstrates that the order of websites in a Google search is not linked to the legitimacy or factuality of the sites.  It's important to remember this, so as not to simply assume the top results are also the most useful.  

Chris Nolan also talked about how to search most effectively for sources.  Something he showed us that surprised me was a chart displaying the difference between results found on Yahoo and Google.  I never knew that Google and Yahoo had such different search results.  I've been a consistent user of Googles for all of my internet-using life, aside from those childhood days of Yahooligans, and and it has never really occurred to me to look outside the bubble of Google.  In the future if I have trouble finding what I'm looking for, I'll definitely broaden my horizons and try a different search engine.       

A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words

The image above is one of many photographs doctored and altered by the order of Joseph Stalin during his rule of the USSR.  I chose it because I find the history and politics of the Soviet Union fascinating.  At home I own a book called The Commissar Vanishes that contains other before-and-after photos of Stalin's political enemies.  

Political dissent in the Soviet Union was met with severe punishment, usually in the form of exile or execution.  When Stalin had his more prominent enemies exiled or executed, he would strategically have their images removed from photographs.  By doing this Stalin would effectively erase the memory of them, removing them from history.  The man removed from the photo above is Leon Trotsky, a prominent member of the Communist Party who fell out of favor with Stalin and was subsequently exiled.  Stalin removed Trotsky's image from a variety of photographs in order to eliminate him from public memory.  With Trotsky removed from records and photographs, it became difficult to prove that he existed at all and easy for Stalin to claim that he didn't.  This instance of altering photographs is clearly harmful.  Through this act of censorship Stalin eliminated all criticism of his actions by removing those who criticized him from the country and from history itself.  Stalin was able to remove proof of their existence and counted on a scared and confused populace not to ask questions.      

Copyright Lecture

Jason Hardin gave a lecture in class yesterday about copyright law in the US.  I found it pretty fascinating from a legal perspective- it makes sense that I want to be a lawyer.  In order to understand copyright law, one must first understand what a copyright is.

Copyright: noun/  a legal recognition by the government of an intellectual property holder’s rights to reproduce a work, redistribute it, and capitalize on it exclusively.

I learned in the lecture that copyright law has been around since before the Bill of Rights.  The founding fathers considered it important for promoting the development of the arts in the newly formed nation.  According to Title 17, the section of US federal law describing copyright policy, anytime you create something original and set it in a fixed, tangible medium, it is protected under copyright for the duration of the creator's life plus 70 years.  Registering it for an official copyright is not necessary, although it is advisable if you are concerned that your work might be used by others against your will.  Registering for copyrights can be expensive, however.  It is a felony to commit a copyright infringement involving more than 10 copies and a value of more than $2500.  I think that's a little harsh, personally.  If sued for this, one can claim Fair Use, in which case he or she might be vindicated based on the nature of the work, the purpose of the reproduction, the amount reproduced, and the effect of the reproduction on the copyright holder's profits.  

I found the dilemma of a non-profit organization reproducing illegally pretty interesting because from a legal perspective its legality is rather ambiguous.  Consider the case of a church choir reproducing sheet music to save money.  On the one hand, the church is considered a non-profit, and thus is viewed upon favorably by Fair Use's consideration of the purpose of a reproduction.  On the other hand, the choir did this in order to avoid paying, and it would decrease profits of the copyright holder.  Legally, this is rather complicated.  Ultimately, I would have to say that the church's case is the weaker one from a legal perspective, though morally I would side with the church or non-profit.  

My Network Diagram

Joe Hatch Presentation

Hello again, blogging world!  Last week in class we were visited by Joe Hatch from Tech Support, who talked to us about computer "survival skills" and gave us all sorts of useful tips for helping our computers run more smoothly.  My favorite tip: Defragmentation.  Defragmentation is a process that resorts all of the files and information on your computer into a neat and orderly manner.  Often a computer writes information on the disk in an inefficient way, sometimes writing different sections of a single file in multiple locations on the disk, causing programs to run slowly.  Defragmentation reorganizes this and eliminates unnecessary clutter, making your computer run much more smoothly.  Here's how it's done: Go to Start- Accessories- System Tools- Disk Defragmenter.  Make sure any unnecessary programs are closed ahead of time, and that any programs you don't want on your computer are uninstalled.  Now just sit back and relax as your computer defragments!  It should only take a couple of minutes.  Although I myself haven't done this yet (this is a PC process and I have a Mac), I can't wait to tell my mom how this is done- she struggles with her laptop frequently and will be thrilled to hear about this method.  

Have a great week!

Introduction

Greetings. My name is Rebecca but most of the time I go by Becca. I'm a sophomore at Trinity University. I hail from the city of Houston, Texas (Google Earth is not currently working on my laptop, I'm trying to fix it and when I do I shall post a link). I'm an only child, but I come from a large and loving family. I'm interested in politics, literature, theater, coffee, drawing, and general absurdity. Something you should know about me is that I idolize Tim Gunn from Project Runway. I love his style, vocabulary, and overall persona, and would love to be just like him. I will most likely be majoring in political science and minoring in English with the intention of going to law school and becoming a lawyer. On campus you can usually find me participating in theater, reading, doing homework, or just dancing with my friends. You will rarely catch me sleeping.

I was a PC user until I was 18. Despite those 18 years of PC experience, I unfortunately did not come out of that time knowing much about how to use PCs. I can use a PC as well as any average person but I would not consider myself advanced in PC usage by any means. However, I'd really like to learn more about using PCs. In the past my lack of knowledge about PCs has caused me problems and I now intend to end my ineptitude by taking this course. I would really like to learn how to deal with PC problems in particular. I also would love to learn more about photoshop. I currently own a Mac, which I absolutely adore. I find it easier to use and more user friendly, although I still feel I have more to learn in the world of Macs as well. I'm very excited to learn about computers in this course.

You can email me at Rpiller@trinity.edu if you have any questions or comments.