Helpful Tips for Computer Skills

Computer Skills is a fun class if you just make sure to keep up with the homework. The grades are point-based. Do the readings that Ms. Belisle posts online, you are sure to have a couple quizes over them but they will not be difficult if you just read it. If you keep up with all the homework and make sure to apply yourself and make decent grades on the midterm and final you will do fine in the class. Don't just meet the standards for your homework and projects, try to go above and beyond what is asked; make things creative, don't be afraid to express yourself. Also, do not procrastinate on your work, especially the projects towards the end of the semester such as the website and powerpoint. If you follow all these tips you will have a good semester in Computer Skills. Ms. Belisle is a wonderful teacher, you will have a lot of fun with her and learn a lot!

Favorite Websites

My three favorite blogsites were Michelle's, Alisa's, and Brittany's. They had showed their creative sides with the imagemaps and made their sites fun to look at. I also liked how Brittany put music on her homepage that fit the title to it. Alisa did a really good job with using her imagemap as a constant link to pages. They all used a really good choice of color and kept it constant. All the pages flowed. The pictures used were really good too and fun to look at.
Making the website was really fun and I enjoyed making it. It seemed very tedious at times, paid off because now we have our own websites about us!! Feel free to check mine out!

Knowing About HTML

It is important for web designers to know the basics of HTML instead of relying on different programs such as Expression Web for many reasons. One obvious reason is because you cannot always rely on the use of newer technology to do work. At any point in time these programs could fail and if you do not know the basics, then, well...what are you going to do??

Knowing the basics gives you a great background on how HTML and the web was designed. There is bound to be something in those programs that is not offered, some kind of feature that you want to add to your web page that is not found in Expression Web or Dreamweaver. In this case you would just have to do it the old school way and use HTML coding. So if this happens, you better know how to use that!

Also, knowing the HTML coding is pretty cool. Yes, it is very time consuming typing in all the symbols but I find it really intriguing that when I type in those words and symbols then click save and refresh my web page that what I typed in shows up as text or a picture or table or a new font. Knowing the basic coding is fun...most of the time. You just have to commit to memory all the coding for certain features.

Class PowerPoint Presentations

I thought that Brittni had a wonderful presentation. She had good animations and kept the information on her slides limited. Brittni did a very good job at not reading off her notes or slides but knowing the information. I really liked her presentation the most because even though I am not going into that field, I find it very interesting. Her presentation gave me some good insight in not only the field of research, but also to what she is going to be researching. The background and text she decided to use fit her presentation well with no distractions.

Ellie's presentation was also really good. Her personal experience helped a lot in what she was presenting. I am not from San Antonio so I did not know much on the history of the city. Henry Guerra had a long history in San Antonio and it was very interesting learning about it. The lay out she used in her powerpoint was very subtle and not distracting at all. The animation used added an interesting feature.

PowerPoint Presentations

The articles all bring up very good tips to making a powerpoint presentation. Consistent color schemes, word limitation, and simpleness are key points to making a good presentation. I think the most important tips we learned in class are to:

• Limit text
• Keep bullet points down to a minimum
• Keep color schemes simple and consistent(no bright colors on top of bright colors)
• Use appropriate charts and/or pictures
• Limit animation

If you follow these tips you are well on your way to a successful presentation. Just make sure to deliver your presentation well too!

Searching the Internet

Chris Nolan's presentation taught me a lot about effective ways of searching the internet. I learned how to limit the domain of a search just by adding a few extra words and characters into the search bar. For example, if I wanted to search for only sites with .gov at the end of the url i could just by adding site: .gov in the search bar after the subject. The highlighted tool, cached, surprised me. I never knew about this and I think that if I did know about this tool then I could have followed through some of my researching for papers much more efficiently. Evaluating some of the sites in class was fun. I thought the MLK site was a very good example of a false internet site. The evaluation points that were given to us is a very useful piece of information that I plan on looking at in future researching.

Copyright

I learned many things about copyright from the notes in class. I thought it was very interesting that copyright is older than the Bill of Rights. I also learned about people getting caught for illegally downloading music and how big of a deal it really is. I found it amazing that one person got sued for $250,000! What this person did is extremely unfair. They stole hundreds of songs which is cheating the artists of these songs out of a lot of money. I think that downloading one song is not bad, but then again one song can lead to many songs and soon you could end up like that person who was sued for 2.5 thousand dollars. The RIAA really needs totake their attention away from these people who have only downloaded one or two songs and focus on the peple who illegally distribute music for a profit. I think that the artists will be fine with all the money they already have if someone just downloads one song of theirs.

Excel with Excel!

When coming into this class I did not know how to use Excel. I learned a lot in this portion of the class because I now know a useful way to balance a checkbook and keep track of my grades easily. My favorite thing about Excel was making the charts, I thought it was fun playing with the color schemes. Also, it was interesting using the formulas in the cells and being able to drag down the corners so that you didn't have to retype the formulas in. I think that so far this is the most interesting and useful information we have learned this semester.

Pictures That Lie

I chose the picture of Oprah Winfrey on the cover of TV Guide. This picture has pieced together two different people. Oprah's head and the body of Ann-Margret from a publicity shot. They did not get permission to use the body of Ann-Margret in this picture from 1979. I do not agree with splicing these pictures. First of all, it was illegal. Second, I feel like they manipulated this picture because they are trying to tell the public through the picture that everyone should look like this if they want to be the richest woman. This was very harmful because Ann-Margret's fashion designer noticed the picture and ratted them out.

Using the TU Wireless Network

The Trinity wireless network is my life.
Ok that may be a little exaggerated...but I do use the wireless network daily. Facebook is huge distraction for me. I check it all the time. That is not an exaggeration. I use facebook to look up people that I have recently met and I become friends with them so that I can talk to them more.
I also use the Trinity e-mail to get messages from professors, swim coaches, and friends that prefer to use e-mail over facebook.
The Trinity wireless network is not just a distraction for me, but also a huge help academically. Some professors post their lectures and power points online. This makes note taking in class easier because when I get back to my room I can just print out the notes. Google is also a huge help. I can find a lot of information on this search engine for research papers and to find pictures for classes.

Here is a link to information about how Lynchberg College deployed an outdoor wireless network and its benefits to the school:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/wireless/ps6302/ps8322/ps6366/prod_case_study0900aecd80636b91.pdf

Word Skills

I think that I have a fairly good background with Microsoft Word. I have never taken classes to actually teach me how to use it...I have just played around with it and figured it out as I go. The more I use it the more I learn about it. I feel comfortable with it and I think it is safe to say that I know more about it than a lot of other people. I guess the only thing I would like to review are the shortcuts for some special characters such as italics, bold, underlining, etc.

Back-up plan

If my computer were to show the "blue screen of death" when I needed it the most, the first thing I would try would be to use my roommate's computer. If hers did not work then I would make the five minute walk to the library to check if any of those computers worked.