Powerpoint DO's and DONT's

1. Keep it simple- The more useless information there is, the less effective it is. "The less clutter you have on your slide, the more powerful your visual message will become." (Reynolds)
2. Use high quality graphics- Using low quality graphics and then trying to force them into a big space results in the image becoming distorted. This is visually unpleasing. I believe that is a good point because using a good quality photo will help capture the audiences focus instead of distracting them.
3.Example of a bad PowerPoint- don't use as a teleprompter. People don't want to view your slides information and then hear you regurgitate it to the audience. It is one of the most boring and uninteresting things to do when creating a PowerPoint.
4.Use more pictures than words- PowerPoints are made to back up what your trying to say. using pictures is a much more effective means than having bullet points.
5. Sound effects- Sound effects are good in most cases, but use sounds other than what are offered to you in PowerPoint. Try burning sounds from a CD or a website. This will sound more interesting and give you more options to please your audience.

CLT

I never knew the CLT existed until we visited during class. I was surprised to see all the updated technology in there, and all the different things available for student use. The most helpful thing the CLT offers for our class is all the computers with Adobe Photoshop. Looking ahead at our schedule, we will be doing some assignmnets in photoshop. The CLT would be very helpful in doing these assignments because I do not have photoshop on my computer. Also, the CLT staff will gladly help you if you need assistance. Something I discovered while being down there was the presentation room, which emulates a class room setting. This would have been useful for my seminar class earlier in the year because we just finished our power point presentations. Being able to use the room would have better prepared us for our presentation. Also, the recording studio would be something that I would consider utilizing. A couple of my friends and I paly guitar and it would be fun to record some of our playing.

Excel

When we first started using excel i was familiar with all the things we covered. Later on though, i had never used absolute and relative cell references. This would prove useful in keeping a running tab, such as your check book balance. Also, if in the future I was running a store and had the employees payments on excel, then it would be extremely useful. Another useful thing i never knew about was conditional formatting. This made it easier to have certain numbers stand out in a set. This helped to make the spreadsheet be a lot easier to read. Actually, in biology were are working with excel right now. We are doing histograms and t-tests for a certain set of data. Using the formulas in class has made this easier for me to do, and a lot easier to understand. Also, when running a business you can keep track of profits in a spreadsheet, keep a running balance, and to help calculate employees payment. This would allow for the business to run more efficiently and to minimize errors in calculations.

Chris Nolan

During Chris Nolan's presentation, I thought the most interesting thing i learned was about Google and how to do advanced searches. Also, what makes a website not a creditable source. I never knew how you could take out websites with .com endings or look up just .com endings. Also, the pdf he had about advanced searches was another good insight on how to do advanced searches on Google. For instance, I didn't know you could type define: then a word you wanted defined and the results would be instant definition of the word. Also, I never knew that Google offered scholarly sources for references. I assumed that you would have to go to the library or look it for them through the library's website. It is helpful to know that you can search for scholarly sources through Google and sometimes it reverts to back the library website.(Trinity's Etext) Something that surprised me was how the martinlutherking.org website was not a legitimate site for accurate information. I thought just because of the .org ending it had to be a good source. I was mistaken about the .org endings being a good, relevant source because it was obviously run by a very biased group. In the end you have to be careful of what websites you look at because a name of a website can be very deceiving.

Picture

I chose the picture of the British Soilder telling Iraqi civillians to seek cover because the picture looked appealing. The picture originated in "April 2003 on the front page of the Los Angeles Times shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq." The photo "combined two of his photographs( Solider and Civilians) to "improve" the composition." The photo was manipulated to make the war seem even worse than it actually was. The manipualtion could possibly be harmful but most likely it had no adverse impact because many people probably felt ill will towards the war but did not take any extreme actions to voice their opinions.