Advice For Essential Computer Skills!

I am so sad this is my last post! I love this class, and I will miss Ms. Belisle so much. Some advice for doing well in this class...hmm. Well, I would start by saying that you should always turn your homework in on time, but do not just throw your assignments together--actually check them over and make sure they follow the rubric so you can get full credit. I say that because it is always nice to get a 100 on one of your assignments, and Ms. Belisle makes it possible to do so. However, do not worry if you get a bad grade because Ms. Belisle gives us a ton of opportunities to improve our grades in the class. Also, read the class notes or e-mail Ms. Belisle if you are confused. Her notes are extremely helpful, and she responds to e-mails quickly and thoroughly. When in doubt, ask her! She knows her stuff. This is a really great class that is so helpful for future classes and projects. :-)

Pictures that Lie...Or Travel to the 70's

So...I wasn't alive in the 70's. In case you did not know. But why not change a picture of my family at Christmas to a picture of us with colored hair at the disco? That sounds fun. I chose this picture because it is my favorite family picture, and I wanted to see if I could make it look weird. It was taken on a digital camera by my grandma. So to manipulate the picture: for the hair color I used the color replacement tool (I don't know if Ms. Belisle showed us how to use this, but I found it on the toolbar) to recolor the hair while leaving the same texture, so it looks slightly more natural than just painting over it with a brush. I think my mom's hair turned out especially well. I also rotated the picture using the image flip horizontal tool. It was just for fun. I recolored our shirts, as well as blurring off the images that were on my sister's shirts. Then, I decided we needed a disco background or else we'd just look like people with colored hair. I put it on a layer behind the picture. The last change, probably the most important, is that I added Neil Patrick Harris, the phenomenal actor from one of my favorite shows (How I Met Your Mother), to our family photo, as well as putting some disco dancers behind us (each person is on a separate layer). For Neil Patrick Harris, I used the magic extractor tool to put him in the picture, and for the disco dancers, I used the evil magnetic lasso tool. Oh and I gave my dad an afro with a paintbrush. This manipulation was not harmful, unless one of my family members gets offended by their hair color, or Neil Patrick Harris doesn't want to be associated with the Parsons family. But changing hair color or adding hair to someone's head can be harmful because it could technically make them look better than their natural selves...mine really is harmless though. I worked hard on this picture, even though it did not turn out quite as beautifully as I had hoped. Don't be too hard on me. :-) You can see the original picture at the bottom of the page of my blog. :-)
Now to talk about that shocking article Ms. Belisle had us read. The quote I found most shocking was that: "Doctored images are troubling because they can mislead scientists and even derail a search for the causes and cures of a disease." This is a good point. I cannot believe that someone as trusted as Ms. Roovers would make up evidence like that. It doesn't benefit our society at all! It only makes her look better...for a brief time. So pointless and out of line. It gives our society false hope. My opinion is that all of these publishing companies should check the validity of their photos before printing them.

The Fun Powerpoint Presentations!

I really enjoyed the powerpoint presentations that we've seen so far in class. I never knew that our class was filled with such interesting and unique people! It is really hard for me to choose a favorite powerpoint because I liked them all! Will Prudich's music with the photo montage of Bonobos will forever be engrained in my mind whenever I see him--and since I had never talked to him before, it was nice to finally hear his voice! Will, you have a nice speaking voice, just FYI. Anyway, I am now going to talk about the two presentations that I thought were the best so far: Daniela's and Caroline's. Both girls clearly loved the subjects they were presenting, and they were very knowledgeable about them, too. Daniela, you are great at explaining how effective the French language is! I did not know that you knew yet another langauge. I am always so impressed with people who can speak more than one language. Amazing ;-). Your slide design was really nice, too. Great job! Oh Caroline. I knew you would do something completely out there and awesome. I was right. I LOVED your script backgrounds. Those were so cool. And I liked the aspect of drama that you presented: the audition process. Very specific and clear. Well done! So, I hate just leaving all of the rest of you out, so I'm giving everyone compliments:
Will Donnan: Funny presentation with good pictures.
Aaron: I loved your topic, and those pictures were breathtaking.
Alaska: Nice job with explaining the thrill of digital photography! Pictures were AWESOME.
Cristina: Nice slide design. I loved that airplane graphic at the beginning! So cool.
Chesley: You are a great presenter! I really felt like I learned something.
Melissa: Nice presentation. I had never heard of TandemHeart before.
Grace: Great animations, interesting topic.
Asma: Nice picture effects, never knew you liked history!
Great job to everyone who presented! I can't wait to see everyone else's presentations.

The Power of Powerpoints

Powerpoints. I made WAY too many of these in high school. And seen too many of them done badly. Not that all of mine were good. I know that I tend to put too much text on my slides...I like to talk. ANYWAY, regardless of my experience with Powerpoint, I did learn some interesting facts when reading the articles that Ms. Belisle told us to ;-). I preferred the first two articles over that one by the sort of obnoxious "Bad Powerpoint" guy...he annoyed me a little. So without further ado, here are my 5 Guidelines for Making Powerpoint Presentations:

1. Don't EVER read directly off of the slides. I cannot STAND it when people do this. They sound like robots who have nothing else to say. Unfortunately, I have had teachers do this, too. This is oh-so-boring, so please refrain. Thank you.

2. Do not put too much text on the slides or else no one will pay attention because they are trying to read what's on the slide. I have definitely done this before. I cannot help it. Blank space to me looks like you did not put effort into the presentation. But apparently this is okay as long as you elaborate. I have to work on it...

3. Create original backgrounds. This was a new one for me. But it makes a lot of sense. Your audience gets tired of seeing the same old background over and over. It is more interesting and potentially more effective if you are creative with what you use for backgrounds.

4. Make notes for your presentation. Whether or not you hand them out to your audience afterwards, notes can be helpful for you to use when presenting because you do not have to look at the slides to cheat.

5. Do not use too many transitions or animations. While this can be a cool effect, it gets really old if you apply it to every slide. So use this sparingly.

So, if this was not clear in my entry, the quality that I think creates a bad powerpoint is when people read off of their slides. I really cannot stand it when a person reads slides to me. I can read. And I definitely learned a lot from reading the three articles, and Mr. "Bad Powerpoint" guy taught me some good tactics, even though I thought he was pretentious. Maybe I was reading the article in the wrong mindset. I apologize. I should not judge those who are trying to help me. On that note, I think I am going to end this entry. I'm starting to veer into a discussion of morals!

Oh and check out my animation! I am so proud of myself. I never thought this day would come. :-)

CLT is the Place to BE!

I was introduced to an amazing place the other day. Seriously. The Center for Learning and Technology. Did anyone know that existed?? I did not, that's for sure. What a neat surprise. Located on the bottom floor of the library, this fantastic place was created with the help of funding from AT&T. Robert Chapman, one of the workers in the CLT, introduced us to the many opportunities that are available there. To start with, CLT has both Mac and PC computers, so no arguments about which computer system the school likes better will be had down there. Whew. Secondly, there are all the latest versions of programs related to digital media installed in the computers, so we can put together really cool projects for our classes to impress our teachers (always a plus). Thirdly, there are SCANNERS down here. Yay. Fourthly, students can check out digital cameras/etc to use, which is SO convenient. Fifthly (how long should I keep this going?), the people who work in CLT are awesome--if you do not know how to use a program like Photoshop, they are ready and willing to help you out with learning the basics. That is so cool. Sixthly (now this is getting old), there is a classroom that groups can reserve for practicing presentations. I think I will come to CLT more often, especially now that I know it exists. I like to try out nice, new computers. I have a PC, so I think it would be fun to try out a Mac. Anyways, it was a lovely Thursday spent learning about CLT. :-)

I Excelled at Excel

I know, I am so punny. But seriously, I never thought I could be somewhat good at Excel. I would not say I excelled at it, but that worked for my title ;-). I'll be honest: I have never used Excel before this class, so when I list the things I've learned, it will pretty much consist of...everything? BUT the most interesting part of Excel to me was the formulas that we could enter into the spreadsheet and then drag down. How awesome is that?! A computer doing math for you without a calculator? It's like heaven for people who are not math experts (me). Also, the graphs that you can use are so neat. I wish I had known how to do those in high school instead of having to draw all the graphs. Computer generated graphs are so cool. I know that I will be using graphs like that in the future. What else? Hm. I did not know that Excel had so many different tools and functions and pretty colors. It is quite a complex system. Before this class, I thought that Excel was just some chart thing that was boring and pointless. I was quite wrong, clearly. I have learned that I was wrong in my assumption (that happens occasionally)! Oh! Another thing: that IF function is miraculous. How great is that?! You can label certain categories just by typing in a formula that's in English, not some gibberishy symbol thing you would do in computer science (no offense to people who like computer science). Excel can be used for a myriad of things (is that not the best word ever?): calculating how much you will have to pay back for loans per month, wedding budgets, showing data over the course of time, figuring out how much money you have in your account by using a running balance (I will definitely use that), and oh so much more! I could go on, but I think I am too hyper for this right now, and I need to stop before I start listing the 100 things I love about Excel. Thank you :-).

Searching the Internet with Chris Nolan

Chris Nolan came in our class Thursday to discuss searching the internet effectively. Once we discovered that every single person in our class uses Google as a search engine, Chris showed us that we were not abnormal: Google is the most commonly used search engine by the general population by a landslide. Yay! I'm normal. Anyway, we then proceeded to learn how Google worked. Apparently Google gathers and lists results according to how many times the words we put in the search engine appear on the webpage, and how many times other websites link to the website being questioned. The websites with the higher numbers in both categories are then listed as the most relevant to our search. I had no idea that Google was that...general? I guess I always figured that Google was a genius that just knew what the legitimate websites were. Apparently not. Some of the most relevant results are from completely untrustwothy sources! Well that is definitely disappointing. And did anyone know that when you click "I'm Feeling Lucky" on the search engine Google goes to the site for what it thinks is exactly what you're looking for? I had no clue. But, my favorite piece of information was probably pretty obvious to anyone else: what the ".com" and ".gov" and etc meant! I just thought websites picked which one they wanted. I never knew that they meant anything!! Sad...so apparently ".com" means that the site is meant for commercial use, ".gov" means that it is a government site (most of the time it is a federal government site), ".org" means that it is for a non-profit organization, and ".edu" means that it is an educational website. This is mind-boggling to me. I also never knew that we could do an advanced search on Google?! What a thrill. Seriously. Thank the Lord for Chris Nolan. :-)