Reflections on Computer Skills for future students

New Students--

First of all, you are lucky to have a very helpful and kind teacher for this class; I recommend attending class, reading the class notes, using the online tutorials, putting forth an honest effort, and being creative. 

Websites Galore....

I really enjoyed viewing my classmates' websites this past week! It was interesting to see the many different ways the project was carried out, and my favorite three sites were all very different from each other.

The first site that caught my attention was Marlies'. I thought she did a really good job of keeping her design clean and simple so that her content was showcased.  She had great thumbnails of Europe, and I really liked her page with recipes on it. 

Abigail's site was also fantastic. I appreciated the fact that she chose to do a site on one of her passions.  Not only were her personal photos beautiful, but she used other artists' work to illustrate different concepts used in photography, like proportion, composition, and color saturation.

Finally, I loved Joy's work with photoshop. Her image maps were really creative and you could tell by the Anime style that she incorporated many of her personal interests. It was a truly interesting site! 

Please feel free to check out my new website! http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~ksauer

HTML Code "the old fashioned way"

When I first started experimenting in class with HTML code, I was blown away by how intricate and detailed it was.  I remember thinking "wow, you would really have to love this to type out code all day long".  Of course I later learned about Expression Web and other programs that make website creation much easier and more fun.  

Because of my individual interests and personality, I see using Expression Web as a far more efficient and enjoyable method; however, there are several advantages to knowing the ins and outs of HTML code.  Just as a pilot must know how to manually operate a plane, a programmer should be versed in code.  Even though present day pilots do a lot of switch-flipping because planes are programmed to function automatically, they must know how to fly "the old fashioned way" in case something should malfunction.  Also, I think that a programmer has to work within certain limitations or boundaries when using a formatted software; this could limit his or her creativity and eliminate the need to "think outside the box" when designing.  

What? I can only choose two?

I thoroughly enjoyed the PowerPoint presentations this past week and its hard for me to pick out two favorites to blog about! It was great to learn more about my classmates, seeing as how they're usually hidden behind their computer screens from where I sit. Also, as an undeclared first-year, it was encouraging to see students who have selected a major and really made it their own.
The first presentation that really caught my attention was over the origin of paper money. It was clear that Rachel carefully selected her graphics; on one slide she had a faded image of an old cash register, and on another she had a string of dollar bills bordering the bottom of the page. Her slide organization had a logical flow, starting at paper money's Chinese origin and progressing to money circulation in the U.S. I also really liked that she included facts about money's design, sighting 1929 as the year in which faces were put on U.S. dollars.
A second presentation that I enjoyed was over Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. Aside from creating a well produced presentation, I think Marlies introduced an entirely new concept and device that few in the class knew about. She did a great job of illustrating the use of NMRs by using the common painkiller Ibuprofen as an example. Apparently, NMRs test the content of elements and compounds on a molecular level for safety and research purposes. Her slides had great graphics like the Ibuprofen bottle and the photo of the giant NMR machine, and her over all explanation of the scientific concepts was concise.
This was really a fun project, and I hope that we get to view each other's work again with the upcoming postcard assignment!

Searching the Web

Chris Nolan's lecture on effective web researching was particularly helpful to me. I came to realize several faults in my own researching habits and found out new ways to make searching the web more efficient.
Mr. Nolan explained that the popular search engine Google reaps all of its profit from selling advertising space. Because of this, Google orders its search results according to how popular certain sights are or how much money the sites pay for advertising. Accordingly, the first few search results can be very poorly accredited resources that simply pay more for advertising.
Mr. Nolan touched on the topic of government-sponsored websites as well. It stands to reason that certain topics on government websites can be tailored or tainted to promote the platforms of current political leaders. Similarly, one must take into account that websites produced by organizations are intended to be rhetorically convincing for their cause. Both .govs and .orgs must be approached with caution because they will undoubtedly contain biased content, which can be beneficial or detrimental to research.

PowerPoint Tips

    Reading through these links reminded me of several poorly assembled PowerPoint presentations that I viewed(and co-created...) in high school. In my opinion, creating clean, simple, and to the point slides can be difficult because there are just so many cool features...who wouldn't want to try them all? 

   Needless to say, I found the tips that encouraged minimalism to be the most helpful.  "Top Ten Slide Tips" warns against creating slides that have long sentences or too many bullet points.  It makes clear that slides should only contain brief phrases or words that summarize the speaker's points.  Charts, graphs, and tables should also be simple and easy to interpret quickly; too many labels or colors are confusing to the eye and many viewers will simply give up before trying to decode the information.  Lastly, the "Top Ten" suggests that that the presenter review the order of his slides to make sure the progression has a logical flow. 

   The "Pedagogical Review of PowerPoint" also made several recommendations.  It says that presenters should be careful not to "read off" their slides, but instead they should use their own notes as supplementary information.  Appropriate use of images is also mentioned; for example, a presentation over a professional matter should have realistic images or photos instead of cartoon-like clip art.  

   Over all, I found these tips to be very helpful!  

My New Friend Excel

I have to admit I used to be very afraid of spreadsheets, mostly because my sister who is an accountant kindly warned me they were not for chronically "right-brained" people like myself.  Although the things she uses spreadsheets for are far more advanced than my Running Balance homework, I haven't really encountered much frustration using Excel. Its true that I have to always double check before selecting cells to plug into formulas, and I still work very slow, but over all I'm exited to know the basics of Excel for future use.  For example, I have multiple bank accounts with two different banks after my year abroad(and several card misplacement/theft episodes) and its become somewhat burdensome to keep track of balances online because they're on different websites. I'm planning on creating a spreadsheet so I can keep an overall running balance and better track my spending habits. My experience with Excel has been a positive one, and I'll certainly be using it in the future.