Advice

My advice to you who are taking this class is to keep track of your points. Missing one or two here and there may not seem like a big deal, but they add up at the end of the year.

Web Sites

I loved watching all my classmates present their web sites. I especially enjoyed Stuart's. I really liked his list of stereotypes that society has for Canadians. I also liked his link to the YouTube video commercial about Canadians. Another website that I enjoyed was Mica's. I liked that she had a link to a site to make free contributions to various organizations such as the Breast Cancer Foundation. Adrienne also had a really good website. I really like her pictures of her friends and family. I especially enjoyed looking at her thumbnails of her own photography. Her pictures are very beautiful. If you want to learn more about me and what I like, visit my website at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~ehilliar

PowerPoint Presentations

While I was absent during the presentations, from reading the blogs of my fellow classmates I have deduced that many people enjoyed Dan's presentation on being a PGA golf pro. Apparently he had a very interesting clip on one of his slides and I am very disappointed that I missed his presentation. I have also heard that Adriene's and Avery's presentations were very interesting. I believe that I would have enjoyed Adriene's presentation because it was relevant to my own on Environmental Law.

web design

Web design is a tricky business. Designers have to be familiar with all of the HTML codes, even when web authoring programs are available because their knowledge and successful use of the codes can help them build a better website, even if they are building it through Dreamweaver or expression web. While both of these programs are very helpful, there may be a time that they are not functioning properly, and a designer may have to rely on his/her knowledge of HTML coding to use it in building a website without the help of a web design program.

How to Make a Good Power Point Presentation

I found the top ten slide tips and the faculty recommendations the most helpful articles. The top ten slide tips article emphasizes simplicity and the use of white space. There should be no distractions on your slides. This article also explains that it is ok to have an almost empty slide. Do not feel as if you need to fill up empty spaces with pictures or logos that do not really need to be there. The faculty recommendations also emphasized the importance of a simple powerpoint presentation, but it also focused on the in-slide text. There should be almost no text or bullet points throughout a power point presentation. Usually the points and information that is provided on a slide is just repeating what is going to be verbalized in the presentation. My advice for a good power point is
1. Avoid Clip-Art
Clip art is very animated and a real picture is more relatable for an audience
2. No bullet points
If a slide has any text at all there should be no need for bullet points because there should not be enough information to bullet
3. Color Coordination
Do not use an extreme variety of colors. It tends to be distracting and hard to follow.
4. Large Font
Font that is too small tends to make the presentor feel the need to cram more information into each slide and makes it hard to read for the audience
5. Avoide Excessive Animation
Slide transitions that are too slow or too elaborate and take away from the information that is trying to be conveyed to the audience.

A bad power point presentation has too much information on each slide. It also tries to make up for lack of research with colors, clip art, and extreme transitions. In a bad power point presentation the presentor will read directly from the slides and not engage the audience.

Searching the Internet

Chris Nolan's talk about search engines was very helpful and interesting. I was interested to learn that almost 50% of people use google as their dominant search engine. Yahoo and msn are the next two most used. I was suprised to learn that 7% of the information on the internet is invisible! This means that when we type in something on a search engine, we only get about 93% of the information on that topic that is available. Another really interesting thing that I found out that I was not aware of is what the .org means at the end of a web address. .org means that the website is a non profit organization. Some people make the mistake of thinking that .org sites are less biased because they are not run on money, but even though .org sites are not commercial does not mean that they are not trying to sell you their ideas....

Copyright

I was not in class today but in reading over a classmates notes on copywrite I learned a lot more than I thought I would. I found it really interesting that the copywright law is 19 months older than the bill of rights! That shows how important it is in our nation's history. I also learned that it is a felony to share more than 10 copies or a value of over 2500. One issue in the copywright area is that of the public domain. Many argue that if an author is dead their work should go into the public domain, but the law states that the dead author's work is protected up to 75 years after the death. I feel that 75 years may be a bit extensive, but I do not think that an author's work should be released of its copywrite at the moment of their death. I think that maybe 15-20 years after death would be sufficient, 75 just seems unreasonable.

Excel Skills

I liked working with excel because, once I learned all of the information, it was really easy to enter data quickly and accurately. The formulas we learned help to quickly compute numbers. I learned about excel last year in school, but one of the things that I learned this year that I had not known about before is the shortcut for the absolute cell references. I did not know that F4 was a shortcut to typing out the $ for each cell number. I think that this and many of the other things that I have learned will definately help me in my next few years here at Trinity. I am sure I will have to use this program and the things I learned about it in more than a few classes and being familiar with it will give me a step up over my classmates. I also believe that in the business world Excel is a very prominent program and being comfortable with it will help me in my job search after college.

Digital Alteration

I chose the picture of OJ Simpson's mug shot that appeared on the cover of Newsweek and TIME. I chose this picture because I found it interesting that TIME magizine would alter the photograph of him to make him appear scarier. I guess it is understandable that a more intense photograph may sell more magazines, but I think that the information that he committed a murder is scary enough without the menacing aura of his digitally altered photograph. This picture came from his mug shot and was altered by TIME magazine.

Trinity Network

The easiness of the Trinity network proves to be a bit of a distraction, with quick access to facebook and e-mail. During class I see many students on facebook instead of listening to lectures. Of course I am never one of those students : ) I try to stay focused in class, and the quick access to the Trinity network leads to less listening in class. On the other hand it keeps me in touch with my professors and I can check blackboard for notes on classes missed and updates to assignments very quickly. I e-mail my professors very often about assignment questions and lecture notes and the easiness of the e-mail network helps with that
Campus of champions was this weekend and I hosted a volleyball recruit and one of the things that I told her about Trinity was how easy the internet access is, and I used the top ten campuses for wireless access. Trinity was in top ten!
Click here to see how awesome Trinity is!

Microsoft Word

My previous experience with Word consists of a class called BCIS that I took my senior year in high school. We worked with all of the applications in Word and many other Microsoft programs. I am pretty familiar with the majority of the applications in Word and Excel, but I would like to brush up on my skills and refresh my memory of the more complicated techniques. One of the techniques that I would like to become more familiar with in Word is that of finding and replacing text. I think that this application could help me when I am writing research papers for class, and just my general use of Word.

OH NO!

It is 9:00 the night before my computer class and I start my computer to do my homework and I get the blue screen of death. OH NO! What do i do? I would probably head to the library and work from a computer there. Using my roommates computer would be more convienent, but she has a Mac and I am not familiar with them.

About Me

My name is Emily Hilliard and I am from Corpus Christi, Texas. Here is Corpus http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=27.801643,-97.391431&z=10&t=h&hl=en Corpus is right on the Gulf of Mexico so I go to the beach A LOT! I play volleyball here at Trinity, and I love going to the beach and playing beach volleyball. I am the oldest of five children. I have four younger brothers and one younger sister. I love my family, but sometimes it gets a little crazy at my house. I am planning on studying English Literature and Political Science, then continuing to law school. I took a computer class in High School, but I am not very familiar with anything other than the basic computer knowledge. My e-mail address is emily.hilliard@trinity.edu feel free to e-mail me!!!!!

Please e-mail me at Emily.Hilliard@trinity.edu