favorite websites

I think my three favorite websites were Demi's, Ashley G's and Emmalee's. I really liked the design of Demi's,it was really unique and i honestly have no clue how she did it. I liked Ashley's for the same reason; I also really liked the fact that she incorporated her own poetry into it. It was cool how she scanned her poems in; it added a cool personal touch. I really liked Emmalee's becuase she was creative in her topic. It really stood out from the others because of this. It also was designed really well and looked very professional. Overall, all the websites were awesome!
check out my website at www.trinity.edu/~klyon

Advice for Next Semester

I think my best advice for next semester's class is to keep up with the work. If you keep on top of the work and do all your homework you will do fine in this class. Your homework grades add up in the end and if you start to forget some your grade can suffer some. Also, have fun and be creative with projects because usually there is a lot of room to do so. Overall this is a really fun course so have fun and enjoy!

html

Even though there are fancy programs such as Web Expressions, it is still important for web designers to know html code. These programs do not by pass code, they just help you translate information into code. Html code is still used and not a dead idea. Web pages are still written in code no matter what manner the code was written in. It is useful for web designers to know html code becuase it is still the language that web pages are written in. It is important for them to understand how web pages work. The programs make things easier but it is still important to understand what works beyond the programs.

Evaluating Websites

The Internet is an amazing resource full of all sorts of useful information but unfortunately not all information displayed on the Internet is accurate. Because it is so easy for anyone to post information, you have to be careful when evaluating websites. They might not be a credible source. I had no idea about the elephant saga with Stephan Colbert until Mr. Nolan talked about it in class. Colbert told his viewers to edit Wikipedia to say that elephants are running rampant in Africa and that they are not endangered at all. Before the end of Colbert's show, the page had been changed and rechanged and so on until Wikipedia had to lock the page because so many people were changing it to display the wrong information. This is an example of how easy it is to post incorrect information on sites such as Wikipedia that some people see as credible. The only reason the errors on this page were caught quickly was because of the mass amount of attention it was gaining.
Something that surprised me was the way in which google ordered its results in searches. I had never really thought about how they decide which sites are the most rel event. It is interesting that there is a method behind it. They choose the sites that contain your search phrase or word that are most often linked to by other sites. The fact that they are commonly linked to is supposed to demonstrate their credibility. This strategy, however, is not foolproof because when you search for Martin Luther King Jr., the site martinlutherking.org appears which is funded by a white power group. Basically, when using sites such as Google, you have to be careful about how you evaluate your sources to make sure they are credible.

How to Make a Good PowerPoint

1. Keep information on slides short and sweet
Too much words on a slide can be distracting. You want to put the most important information on the actual slide and back it up with your words.
2. Do not read directly from slides when presenting
Since the information on the sides should be to the point, you should back up your slides with additional information and never read them verbatum which would bore your audience to death.
3. Avoid cluttering slides
Having too much clip art and sounds can be a distraction. Blank space on slides is often a good thing. When there is too much on a slide, the audience often gets distracted.
4. Avoid using transitions that might distract the audience
Some transitions are long and to be honest take away from your presentation. Only use transitions when they will benefit your presentation. Just because Microsoft supplies transitions does not mean you have to use them.
5. Link slides together through a common theme or template
Have your slides connect to eachother visually. They should look similar to eachother. When slides contrast with eachother too much, the audience can get distracted.

What I have learned about excel

To be honest I really didn't know anything about Excel coming into this class except that an equals sign makes a function. I have learned so much though that i can use later on. I had no idea that you could create an absolute cell reference before this class. I could not perform any functions besides the basic ones and did not know that you could tell the spreadsheet to compute the standard deviation of the data. Before, instead of creating cell references, I simply typed in the number i thought appropriate. If i had to change one piece of my data, I would then have to find and replace every number related to the number I previously changed. Now, I can have the program do that for me. I wish I knew all these skills before now because they would have helped me on so many other projects.
The opportunities of using these skills seem limitless. You can use them to keep track of data such as grades, sports statistics, and finances. Who knew that keeping track of your budget could be so easy? Businesses can also use it to keep on top of their finances so it is not only helpful on the small scale. It is an easy way to manage lists and charts because they aer easily changeable and adaptable to many circumstances. If you have to make some sort of change to the data you entered early on, you don't have to worry because Excel will take care of it for you and, if you have been using the program correctly, the data you entered after it will be corrected or not harmed by your changes.

Photoshopped Pictures

It is very common for photographs to be doctored using Photoshop before they are published. Sometimes these changes are minor but someitmes they change the perception of the picture completely. Depending on the circumstance and the outlook you have on altering photographs, this act of doctorign can be positive or negative. I looked at a picture of Clement Hurd, the author of the children'd classic Goodnoght Moon. His picture which is displayed next to his biography on the inside cover has been changed since the original publication of the story. The picture used to display him with a cigarette in hand but now the cigarette has been edited out most likely using Photoshop. In this particular instance, I think the change is a positive one. Seeing a popular author smoking can craete a positive affiliation between young children and cigarettes the same way ads create positive relationships betweeen the products and the audience. There are many instances where editing photographs can have a negative effect, but this is one example of when editing can improve the messege of the picture.

AT&T Center for Learning and Technology

The CLT is hidden in the bottom of the library and can easily be overlooked. It, however, houses so much resources, it would be a waste to not take advantage of what is offered there. Because I am interested in digital art, i was immediately drawn to this area. It has scanners, printers and all sorts of accessories that can be helpful to anyone who usually wouldn't have access to such things. You can also use these resources to help you with a presentation for class. The CLT contains a Studio, a Digital Audio Lab, a Media Presentation Lab, a Video Conference Center, and an Innovation Studio. I know that to this date, the only reason I have used this area is for class when we watch movies in the Media Presentation Lab. They project the movie on a large screen for us. But now that I have explored the room more, I feel that i will use these resources more often. There are TVs mounted on the walls displaying silent newscasts allowing students to be hooked into the world while doing their work. The technology in this lab goes above and beyond what I expected.

Copyright Blog

One thing about the presentation that interested me was the part about music file sharing. I am not a huge supporter of downloading music even though I've done it myself in the past but I also think that Cd's are grossly overpriced. I think there has to be a compromise somewhere and I guess a lot of the legal downloading sites are trying to find the median.
In the presentation on copyright, Ms. Graves brought up the point that law officials are targeting colleges when looking for illegal downloaders. From their point of view, they are trying to catch criminals and they see nothing wrong with their tactics. It is ways to target colleges because of the amount of people on a single network. They can look through the IP addresses attached to the school easily. They find the accessibility to college students a convenience and they believe they are merely taking advantage of this. On the other hand, however, one could say that even though targeting college campuses is the easy way to catch some downloaders, it is not right to target one group of people to punish for a crime all sorts of people commit. College campuses only download about 4% of the total amount of files downloaded per year therefore these people would say that the government is focusing too much on campuses. They would say that the other offenders should be searched out as well. I agree with the latter argument. i think it is unfair to target one group of people for a crime many groups commit.

Wireless Blog

I feel like I am constantly on the Internet I bring my laptop everywhere. I'll admit right now I'm one of those people who is addicted to Facebook. I'm always refreshing my page hoping for new notifications and friend requests. It's getting to be a little unhealthy because I am constantly putting off work that i have to do to waste time doing nothing on Facebook. Another Internet addiction of mine is Perez Hilton. He keeps a blog on celebrity gossip; his site www.perezhilton.com is hilarious. I'm even a little ashamed to admit that his page is my homepage; everyone makes fun of me for that. The Internet for me isn't only a distractive force, however. I am also always using it for academics too. I basically only do research online; I'm not really into the whole book research thing and Google is my god. I use Google for everything. I guess my one weakness is email. I've always had a thing against email. I hate it. But it's sort of a required thing in life now so I'm reluctantly trying to get used to using it. I probably couldn't survive here if i didn't use my email. I guess i take pretty full advantage of Trinity's wireless network. I love that I can pull my laptop out basically anywhere and I'm pretty much guaranteed to have access to the Internet.

First Post!

Hey guys! My name is Kat Lyon. I am a freshmen from Baltimore, MD so its a big change for me being in Texas. People see Baltimore on shows like The Wire or Homicide and basically stereotype it as a dangerous place but I've never really expierenced that. Those shows only depict a portion of the city. I guess it can be really dangerous in places but I love the city as a whole. I am an only child so living with so many people has been strange for me but I really like it so far.
I grew up in a technological household where my father built all of our computers and we never had any issues that he couldn't fix so he was a little disapointed when he found out I failed the computer skills test. I guess I never really learned a lot about computers becuase he was always there to fix any problems but I wouldn't consider myself computer illiterate.
I havn't decided on a major...I can't see myself narrowing anythign down to one topic. I love so many different subjects!