Student Websites

I thought all of the websites were really impressive and there was something unique about all of them. With that said, my three favorites however were Emmalee's, Ashley's and Demi's.

Emmalee - I thought her website was like that of a professional. Everything was well layed out and the purpose of her website was clearly presented. I thought the black background was a good choice, as it made the page more depressing as the topic of poverty, aids, etc. should be.

Ashley - Ashley's site was very well layed out and she did a good job of using tables. I thought the Trinity tower background was a nice addition to her Life at Trinity page. I also liked how the pictures on her athletics page went diagonally and all the colors she chose contrasted nicely.

Demi - This website was absolutely unbelievable. I thought Ms. Belisle said it best when she asked how Demi made her text and backgrounds look the way they did. Everything that is on her site makes you think, "how did she do that" and "I wish I would have done that in mine." The site was really impressive and the uniqueness of it certainly worked.

Overall, the sites were very well done and I enjoyed watching all the presentations. As frustrating as I thought Expression Web was to work with, I enjoyed making my own website and was fascinated to see how well the sites turned out. Please visit my own site at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rphilli1/.

Advice For Next Semester

Even though I was upset that I had to take this class in the first place, it actually turned out to be pretty informative and enjoyable. Ms. Belisle is a great teacher and is certainly there to help if you have any trouble along the way. This course entails the basics from Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and also some other programs that are fun to experiment with such as Photoshop Elements and Expression Web. Although some of the programs may be difficult at first, you quickly get used to them and get a feeling of accomplishment after you're done. Overall, the class is a great experience and is certainly worth taking, as it will surely help you down the road.

In one sentence, my advice would be: to pay attention during class lectures, complete the homework assignments, and just have fun with the projects, as they'll certainly turn out better.

HTML Code

Although HTML code is very frustrating and time consuming, anyone who is interested in making a website, should have a basic understanding of its use. Even though software such as Microsoft Expression Web is definitely easier to use when making a website, knowing HTML can be a way of solving many problems one may run into. For example, if text on a website is bold and Expression Web will not allow you to un-bold it, by looking at the code, you might find that the font style is a default bold, and you must change the font in order to rid of the bold. Another instance may be if you would like to copy another web site's background color or perhaps some information, it is much easier to look at the code of the site and use the exact same format when writing your code. Without knowing how to read code, you would have no idea where to find what background color was used and would be stuck trying to find a match in Expression Web. A final instance where knowing code is important, is to make sure that a website is capable of being found by search engines. Search engines must parse HTML code in order to find any relevant content. If there is something wrong with your code, the search engine might drop its search from your site and the website will not come up in results. Even though Expression Web will normally contain no errors in code, if you were to have a code that contained error, it is essential to know how to read code, so you can correct the mistake and have the website be found in future searches. Overall, writing HTML code is very tedious and web-authoring software is probably the way to go. Having a basic background of HTML code certainly has its advantages however.

My Favorite Presentations

My two favorite PowerPoint presentations were Cristina’s and Emmalee’s. Each of their presentations made me more interested in their respective topics, especially anthropology. I thought that Cristina did a great job of showing us what she was talking about with all sorts of pictures and even videos. It is so much easier and enjoyable for the audience to actually see what the presenter is talking about with visuals such as she used, opposed to just writing all sorts of information on slides and continuously repeating it. I also thought her background (the outline of the lion) and her animations (lion prints) were very fitting and well done. As for Emmalee’s presentation, I thought that she picked a really interesting story and did a great job in presenting it to the class. The music surely added something to the presentation and the different pictures of Tanta Carhutha helped in gaining a visual for the story. The different backgrounds used, especially Machu Picchu, were very fitting and made you gain an overall appreciation for anthropology. Altogether, these were my two favorite presentations; they surely did a great job in capturing my interest, in subjects I thought I never cared about before.

Searching the Internet

Something that I learned from Chris Nolan's presentation was the directories that are available for use on the Internet. These directories give a good amount of sites on vast subjects and the best part is that they come from recommendations of libraries around the country. This assures you that you are getting sites that have been previously visited and the previewer believed the information was accurate and useful enough to recommend. I will surely use directories such as, Infomine or Librarians' Internet Index the next time I do a research paper. One aspect of the presentation that surprised me was the fact that Google insists they do not rank websites based on how often they are visited. Even though Mr. Nolan himself sounded skeptical, Google claims they rank the websites that appear during a search based on: how often other sites link to a site, how often the search words are repeated in a site, and also whether the search words appear in the title of the site or perhaps just in a small, insignificant paragraph. Although I too believe that Google must take site visits into some consideration when it ranks its websites, they must know what they are doing as Google is by far my preferred search engine.

PowerPoint Presentations

After reading the articles on how to create a good PowerPoint presentation, the one article that I found the most interesting was the one intended for faculty. I am assuming that the presentation that was shown to faculty on how to give a good presentation must have been boring and ineffective itself, as I cannot begin to count how many lectures I have sat through that were a waste of my time. Through my first three semesters of college, I would have to say that the amount of professors who give good presentations is about half. There are just too many professors who load up their presentations with information and just repeat it, opposed to actually teaching the material. To be fair, I have also had great professors who are capable of putting together a lecture that grabs my attention in subjects I have never had a remote interest in. They were able to do this by passing out copies of the important parts of the slides, which allowed me to focus on what the teacher was saying opposed to just trying to copy down information. Their presentations periodically also contained sample test-like questions that engaged my interest and was helpful in allowing me to know how well I was learning the material. At first, creating a PowerPoint presentation seems simple and easy, but there are many ways to quickly ruin a presentation. My list of five things to be sure to do (or not) would be: 1) Just have subjects or keywords that help you in presenting your information, opposed to a bunch of sentences/bullets that no one is going to read or remember 2) Use legible fonts and colors so that the audience can actually read your slides 3) Minimize the effects you use as they probably do not help you present the information and just end up being annoying 4) Proofread the information that is on the slides, otherwise it will be unprofessional and the audience will lose interest 5) Be creative. Use a background or some feature that the audience has never seen before and is going to capture their attention. Although there are many aspects that can be detrimental to a presentation, with proper time and concern an effective PowerPoint presentation is more than capable.

Excel

Before this class I used Excel very limitedly, mostly due to the fact that I had no idea what Excel was for or capable of. I knew it was mainly for creating spreadsheets, but I never really had any reason for using one. After our few weeks of practice with the program, I now realize that Excel is pretty much capable of doing anything that you ask of it and I will certainly use it much more often in the future. The one aspect I found the most intriguing was all the different sorts of formulas that Excel can calculate. Whether you just need to find a sum or average, Excel can do it all, not to mention various functions it can compute such as the "IF" function. I will certainly be using Excel in future business courses, such as Statistics, in order to find descriptive statistics on a set of data or to quickly compute other information. Excel really can do almost anything you ask of it and I know it will come in handy for many applications in the future.