Wednesday, October 28, 2009
PowerPoint
The PowerPoint help articles I've read all seem to focus on making presentations for a business/professional setting; however, they do raise some good points on how to make PowerPoint presentations a little less boring. The biggest piece of advice given is to keep the slides simple, as simple as possible. Text should be limited, to avoid reading from the slide. Don't go overboard with animations and other special effects. An interesting take on making PowerPoint presentations is that the slides should, basically, be meaningless without you, the presenter. Another huge piece of advice, do not rely on the features that are built into the PowerPoint program. They have been seen a million times already. Try searching the web for new, more exciting images to use as a background or for relevant video clips.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
CLT
The CLT (Center for Learning and Technology)is filled with all of the technology you could ever need during your time at Trinity. All of the equipment at Trinity is managed at the CLT, except for the computers. There are several computers there (They have both Macs and PCs.) with lots of advanced video and audio editing capabilities. They also have a video production studio that students can use whenever they need to. It is also where they shoot Trinitv. There is another studio filled with audio equipment and pro tools for students to use. These studios can be used for class projects, making audition recordings, or whatever else you might want to use them for. Some of the equipment found in the CLT is available for checkout, video cameras for example. There are conference rooms located in the CLT that are mostly used for training faculty, but students may use them as well to practice giving speeches or presentations. These rooms are equipped for video conferencing. The CLT recently launched lecture capture where they record lectures and make them available for students online. They also have a blog service, so faculty and students can host blogs for Trinity.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Excel
So, we recently wrapped up the Excel portion of the class. Now, I knew Excel was very useful for business professionals, so I never felt it would be of any use to me personally. I was wrong. It turns out that Excel can be a tremendous help in an academic setting (especially college) as well as at home. Excel 2007 comes equipped with several common and important mathematical and statistical formulas that can be used to help you on your assignments. Since the formulas are already set, all you have to do is enter the missing data and you'll get your answer immediately. There are even engineering formulas available. Excel also comes with templates to help with budgeting and financial planning. It can help you figure out car payments, plan for fundraisers, and prepare budgets for college or Christmas. Excel has something for everyone.
Here's an interesting tidbit, you can even make an awesome Spirograph with Excel!
Here's an interesting tidbit, you can even make an awesome Spirograph with Excel!
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Chris Nolan
Chris Nolan, one of our assistant librarians talked to us about how to better utilize search engines and evaluate websites for accuracy and relevance. I learned about how Google ranks its search results. Other than by relevant terms, Google ranks results according to the number of links to the result from other sites. I also learned about setting search limits, such as adding ":gov" at the beginning of the search so that only government sites are returned or using "-site:" to dismiss certain sites. He also told us what information to look for when evaluating websites, which includes: date the article was changed or published, the domain (.gov, .edu...), and bias. Directories are also good ways to find information, especially for research assignments. There aren't as many sites to sort through, so the information tends to be a more focused. One fun thing I learned from the presentation is that Google has several "easter eggs" available for us to use. For example, there is a way to search using different dialects, like pirate and pig latin. These are just small ways to make the search experience a little more enjoyable. Chris Nolan's presentation taught me more about how to search more effectively.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
It's a fake?!
The Internet is filled with numerous images ranging from unbelievably beautiful to quite bizarre. However, with the technology available to us today, you may or may not be surprised to find that many of those images have been tampered with. It is getting harder to tell which images are real and which aren't, with sophisticated design software like Adobe Photoshop being made available to the general public. I have posted an example of an altered picture above. It is a picture of a pair of jackalope, a species of rabbit with antlers which have long been rumored to exist. The manipulation is obvious; antlers have been added to the heads of two rabbits to convince others that the creature actually does exist. This particular image was found on a postcard. No one knows when it was created. I chose this image to share because the jackalope is an interesting (though fake) creature, and the image is very convincing. It is a harmless picture because it is a fairly common knowledge that the jackalope does not exist.
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