Advice for Spring Semester

The best advice I can give is not to procrastinate. Please do not wait until the last minute to work on your assignments. It will stress you out, when you don't need to be stressed out!

Project Self-Analysis

I chose a picture I found off of the internet of a young man with acne. I chose this picture from the internet so it would be anonymous. The picture originated from www.acnecreamtreatment.com. I manipulated the picture by showing a before and after. In the "after" picture, I removed his acne and made the picture brighter. I also increased saturation in order for the picture to look more appealing. I made the "before" picture a little darker and adjusted the hue so that is would look less appealing than the "after" picture. I removed his acne by using the clone stamp. I manipulated this picture in order to make an add for a made up face cleanser called Face Control. The add is claiming that Face Control, will almost completely clear even the worst acne in only 3 days. The manipulation is harmful because the clear skin seen in the "after" picture is not the result of the face cleanser, but digitaly inhanced to appear as though the face cleanser is a miracle worker. The add produces false claims about a product. I believe that this happens all to often in our world today. I believe this kind of advertising is harmful because it establishes false claims about a product and prohibits consumers from trusting further advertisements.

Favorite Presentations

I really enjoyed Lizzy and Brianna's presentations. Lizzy's design was very easy to follow and to understand. I never felt overwhelmed by the amount of material on the slides. She also presented her topic very well. I thought it was really neat that she had a picture of her own retina. I also really liked how she compared her healthy retina to retinas of people who have diseases. I feel like I learned a lot! I think she will be an awesome optomotrist.
Brianna's presentation was very personal. I could tell she really cared about young children and had a passion for helping kids in need. I was very impressed with the way she presented her powerpoint. It had emotional appeal. I also liked her butterfly theme that she used throughout her presentation. I thought it really brought the slides together.

Power Point Guidelines

After reading through several articles on Power Point presentations, I realized that creating a good presentation is harder than I thought. Here is a list of 5 guidelines I think are important.

1) Keep it simple - negative space is not a bad thing.  Too often people feel the need to cover every inch of the slide, and it makes the presentation confusing and jumbled.  I find this very very annoying. 

2)Limit the amount of words - The slides should prove what you are saying not repeat what you are saying.  You should not be reading directly from the slides, and you should not put every ounce of information on the slides.  

3)Avoid using Power Point templates - They are boring.  If you don't want your audience to fall asleep, be more creative. 

4)Use Colors Well - Color promotes feeling and emotions.  The right colors can help persuade and motivate.

5)Chose READABLE fonts - If your audience cannot read your slides, they will get frustrated, and will not get very much from your presentation. 

The most annoying thing to me is when someone feels the need to cover the whole slide with a hodgepodge of confusing information.  I get overwhelmed.

Field Trip to CLT

I really enjoyed our class field trip to the AT&T Center for Learning and Technology (CLT). CLT is located on the bottom level of the library and is the home of TigerTV and TLearn. There are tons of opportunities in CLT. They have scanners, Mac and PCs, photoshop, video/audio editing, and video and camera rentals (with professor permission). CLT is also working on a new system, in which all lectures would be filmed and available to students. Many professors feel like this would decrease attendance, but I agree with the staff of CLT that filming lectures would increase how well students retain information. The more times a student hears something the better he/she will understand it. The opportunities at CLT are really endless, especially with the help of the staff that work there. Students can make movies, songs, websites, and even art!

I will definitely use CLT in the future. It would be very silly not to take advantage of everything CLT offers. I'm sure I will use CLT in computer skills to work with photoshop! I have to make 2 websites this semester for classes, and I know I will be in CLT many times to work on them.

Excel!

I really enjoyed learning about Excel! I didn't know very much about excel before we learned about it in class, but now I feel like I do! My favorite thing we learned how to do is a running balance and how to balance my finances. I'm terrible about keeping up with my money and I have found that this really helps me. In the future being able to manage money is something I will need to be able to do. This will help me tremendously when I have a job one day as well as in my personal life. No matter what job I have, it will be important to be able to manage money. I also really enjoyed learning how to calculate my grades! That is something I will definitely use for the rest of my college career and hopefully grad school! Excel in general is a great program to know how to use. Anytime you need to analyze data Excel will make your life a lot easier. You can easily use formulas and functions to calculate the information you need instead of typing every equation into your calculator. The IF function also helps for easy analyzation. Graphs are also very easy to make in Excel. Overall, I have really enjoyed learning about Excel and I know I will use the information I have learned for the rest of my life.

Response to Chris Nolan

Unfortunately I was not in class when Chris Nolan gave his lecture on search engines, but I have looked through my classmates blog’s and notes. I learned several new things. I did not know about Google Scholar or the define feature, I think that both of these tools will help me in the future. I often need to find scholarly sites for papers and this will definitely help. I do not find it hard to believe that Google has become the most dominant search tool. I find Google to be very convenient. I have always been curious how Google makes money! Now, I know that it makes money from the ads that are always on the side of the page. I also never knew about the “Catched” link that Google has. Instead of going to the site, you get Google’s copy of the page. This would be very helpful if I needed to view a site that was down. Another fact I learned is that National Geographic would not be considered a scholarly source. I always thought it would be considered scholarly. It could however lead you to good scholarly sources. I really wish I had not have missed his lecture, because there are a lot of things I have learned from just looking at my classmate’s blogs and notes, and I know if I had been there I would have learned even more.