Advice

My advice to the incoming students would be to keep up with your work and go to class! Dont let yourself fall behind. Good luck!

Student Websites

My three favorite student websites were Joy's, Casey's, and Philips. I thought Joys image maps were amazing. They were original and creative, and very visually pleasing. It was a well organized site that is easy to navigate. I liked Casey's website because it was interesting. It had many different texts and pictures, so it was a fun website to interact with. Philip had a good website because it was clearly organized and simply. It was not cluttered, and it was easy to navigate around.

You can find my website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~cetnyre. Go check it out!

HTML blog

It is important to know how to use the HTML code, because web-authoring software is not always reliable. If one of the programs fails or is not doing what you tell it to do, you need to know how to fix that on the HTML code. If you did not know how to use HTML codes, you would not be able to manually fix the glitch. As Ms. Belisle informed us in class once, she was trying to bold some text in Expression Web, yet no matter how many times she highlighted and clicked bold, the program simply would not respond. How did she fix this problem? She knew the code and was able to bold the text.

It is important to know how to manually do things, because sometimes shortcuts fail us. You have to be able to have knowledge to revert back to.

PowerPoint Presentations

My 2 favorite PowerPoint presentations were Steven's and Ben's.
I was really interested in Stevens through the whole time. The music and pictures went well together and the information was concise but interesting.

In Ben's, I really liked how he made the baseball diamond animated with umpires that popped up in different locations in correlation with what he was talking about.

Both kept me interested, engaged, and visually stimulated throughout their presentations.

Chris Nolan

I thought the lecture Mr. Nolan gave us was very interesting. I was surprised, (and happy) to find out about google scholar. I search things a lot for research and always have to worry about whether my sources are credible or not, and sometimes that is difficult to tell. Now that I know about google scholar, finding credible sources will be easier and I can do my work more efficiently.

What surprised me to learn was that there is a difference between directories and search engines. To tell the truth, I hadn't heard of directories. I thought the only way to look things up was through search engines. Its nice to know that there are more specific ways to find sources and information.

PowerPoint

The articles we had to read were very helpful. I agree with the points they make about good PowerPoint presentations being concise, uncluttered, stimulating, and direct. It is important not to use graphics, colors, fonts, or backdrops that are too distraction. They take away from the PowerPoint and make it harder to focus on the information. I also agree that graphs should be easy to read. Information should be presented in a clear and concise manner.

My 5 tips for the class would be
1) Do not put everything you are going to say about your slide on the slide. It makes it very boring when you know what the person is going to say already. Why should you listen to them when you can read everything they are going to say anyway?

2) Make your PowerPoint's emotionally connected. If you are trying to prove a fact or state a claim, do not simply list data facts. Show a picture of what you are describing or give an example that people can relate to. This helps involve the audience instead of bore them.

3) Do not clutter your slides. Make sure you use appropriate font, graphics, animations, and sound. If your slide is too distracting, people will not focus on the information you are trying to give them. I get annoyed when people have slides with so much going on, that by the time I figure out the point of the slide, they have already moved on and I didn't hear what they had to say.

4) Don't use too many transitions or animations. This can make your PowerPoint's look less professional and sometimes even cheesy. Again, it can detract from the over-all message you are trying to convey.

5) Lastly, limit how many words are on each slide. Even if you don't have everything you are going to say typed out on the slide, there can still be too many words. You should just have a few bullets as a reference for yourself and the audience, while using cue cards to give them the rest of the information. Make your slides clean, minimal, and to the point.

Excel

I had never really used Excel bofore this class. I was always scared by it, becuase it seemed so overwhelming. As a result, everything I learned was something I hadnt known before. MOst simply (and importantly), I leanred how to type formulas so the computer understans what im trying to tell it. I learned where the "SUM, AVERAGE,IF" ect...keys are located and how to apply them to the spread sheet.

I think Excel will come very much in hand when I start having to manage my own finances. This makes the task of keeping track of the days, the income, the debt, and everything else seem easier to handle. Im happy i learned how to use Excel. I think it is probably a tool that buisnesses such as banks, independent store owners, and schools use to help them keep track of things and do math in an easy and orginized manner.