Advice to next semester's students

The computer class is very helpful and allows you to understand and learn things that you may not have known previously. My main piece of advice would be to come to class and, if possible, stay back to get your homework done straight away. On many occasions, I left it to the night before and had often forgot exactly what was done in class. If you do it straight after, everything is fresh in your mind, so you will get it right.

Enjoy the class, cause you will learn things that are very helpful.

Website Presentations

I really liked all the presentations. 

Although I wasn't in class, I looked at all the people's websites who presented and three stood out for me. 

I really liked Kelly's. Her navigation bar was really interesting and very simple. She had some great photos of place that I have never been to which was nice.

I also like Morgan's. She had a great website with a nice layout. She had some great quotes from authors that I am studying at the moment which I thought was a nice touch. The african American history section was amazing too, as I know little about this subject. 

Ali's website was excellent. It had great photos and and excellent layout. It was eye catching with great information as well. 

My website can be found at www.cs.trinity.edu/~lfogarty

Power Point Presentations

I thought that all the powerpoint presentations were excellent. Everyone listened to and applied the advice that we studied and all the presentations were effective. I especially liked Nick Alexander's presentation as his topic was very simple, although it was quite unusual and thought provoking. I especially liked the video that he used about the 7th ingredient in Coca Cola. I also thought that Lindsay Marotta's presentation was awesome. She had a nice song playing in the background of the presentation which created an ambient mood as she discussed art therapy. It was a nice touch! The topic was very defined and not too broad and she was very passionate about what she was saying. I was impressed. 

Power Point

After reading the articles on the class web page, I've learnt a great deal about what it takes to make a great power point presentation. When making a power point, it is important to keep in mind that their purpose is to add to the speaker's presentation and should keep the audience engaged. Thus, the powerpoint should be simple, with pictures and not much text. Youtube videos and audio clips are also another way to make the power point more engaging. I didn't like that two of the articles said to never use animations; I don't agree at all. Here are my top five essential elements of a good power point presentation.

1. Be original. The templates on powerpoint are great, but most people have seen the more popular ones. If possible, create your own template that is engaging and eye catching. 

2. Use Pictures that relate to what you are talking about. Try not to use too many though, as they can distract the audience from what you are trying to say. 

3. Never have plain text as a slide. The power point is not meant to be a word to word replica of your presentation. Slides like this will be very boring, and everyone in the audience will fall asleep. 

4. If using text, use bullets and keep it simple. Don't make the audience read too much on the power point. Use pictures instead. 

5. Design the slides well. This includes color combinations and slide layout. The better designed the slide show, the more engaging it will be.

A bad powerpoint presentation will not engage the audience and have no relation to what the speaker is saying. Remember to keep it simple and engaging and it should be a great presentation. 

Excel

I have learnt many new things about excel over the last few weeks in class. I now feel alot more proficient on excel, alot more than before the class started. One area that I never knew how to work was the formula bar (probably the easiest thing to do on excel!). Now I know that you can pretty much calculate anything on excel using the formula bar. I also used to have difficulty with keeping the same formula flowing down a line of cells. I would drag down the cells to calculate for cells under the original calculation but it would always be wrong. Now I know to use the absolute cell reference, which is where you press F4 to keep the subject cell of the formula constant throughout the cell range. An interesting, but very useful tool.

I've also realized how useful excel will be throughout my career, whatever avenue I choose. Any career involves money, and excel is the best way to formulate balance sheets and spreadsheets of data. Also, any business will need to keep its expenses recorded, and excel is the best way to keep the books of a business up to date. Any job now days asks the employee to be self sufficient in excel and Microsoft word. I feel that after the class and I well on my way to be sufficient.

CLT

On Tuesday we went to the CLT center in Coates Library. Hidden near the library's depths, CLT is a great resource for students who wish to make movies, record music, play with digital photographs and to increase their technological skills generally. When I first went down there, I had no idea it existed and was very impressed. Robert Chapman showed us that there are computers with XP, Vista and Mac operating systems to suit whatever skill set students may have on computers. Each computer has a scanner; and various computers have photoshop which allows students to create and manipulate photographs of professional quality. The CLT centre will be very useful for me personally as I can go there to complete projects and presentations. Mr Chapman said that we can go down there and ask any technological question and the CLT operatives will help. I have a video to make over the next few weeks for a friend's birthday back in Australia and I will definitely go into CLT and ask if they can help me out -- a great resource at Trinity. 

Manipulated Photograph

The picture I chose is the one that depicts the bombings in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. I chose the image because it has been deliberately manipulated to depict two bomb sites instead of one. The photographer copied the original smoke stack, and pasted it again nearby to present the illusion of two bombs hitting the city in clase vicinity. The picture was published on the Reuters news agency website in August 2006. The picture was manipulated to emphasize the devastation that occured in Beirut and greater lebanon during the bombings of 2006. With such a large amount of smoke covering the majority of the upper half of the picture, it gives the viewer the impression that many bombs hit the city, rather than the one bomb that the original, undoctered picture represents. The doctored picture is harmful as it could act as false propoganda during the warfare. Although the Israeli's bombed lebanon extensively, the false picture shows that many bombs have hit the city, when really only one had hit when this photo was taken. This false image could cause a negative response from the lebanese authorites and greater populace, and increase the severity of the warfare that took place. It was lucky that Reuters realized that the photo was doctored and took it down from its website. The photo provides a lesson that photos should never be doctored, especially during warfare as it could cause dire consequences.