Avoiding Bad Powerpoints

I think that the links on the class page were pretty useful in teaching how to create an effective powerpoint. I think a lot of the information is self-explanatory, but very useful nonetheless. The 5 most important topics in creating and producing an effective powerpoint are:

1. Limited Text- nothing is more annoying than having to read an entire slide to pick out the important information. Only note the key, bare facts and explain the rest in the presentation.

2. Use appropriate colors- when your audience can't see the text because your background is neon pink, there is a problem.

3. Readable Font-if text is going to be included in the powerpoint, at least make it legible

4. Pictures/Graphics- definitely a key element of powerpoints; without pictures, the presentation is boring. Spice it up!

5. Be prepared- don't go into a powerpoint with the intent of "winging it"- you will fail

CLT

I had no idea that this place existed but it is so cool!! Rob was very informative about what CLT does and how they operate. The basic focus of the CLT is media. A lot of what they do is transferring media to different mediums, and helping students with media related projects. The Helpdesk is where students can rent out digital cameras, and other appliances and it is located on the bottom floor of the library in the CLT.

I think that I will use the CLT for my archaeology project this semester. It's actually due at the end of next week, so I will become very familiar with how the CLT works in the next coming days. I am very excited that I learned about the CLT and can't wait to use it in the future.

Excel

Before this class, I had no previous experience with Excel so I'm really glad I got the opportunity to learn about it. Some of the features I think are really interesting and helpful are when you can drag the cell across another cell and the formula will copy into the next cell. That is so helpful, expecially when time is an issue. I also think that conditional formatting is cool so certain statistics stand out from others. This can make a graph or chart easier to read and understand. I think that all businesses can use Excel or something like it. It is ideal for tracking employee's paychecks and sale profits over a period of time. For school, it is a great tool for showing statistics in a research paper or keeping up with debit card payments.

Chris Nolan

Something I thought was interesting about Chris Nolan's talk was how extensive Google is when it conducts its searches. Not only does Google look at the search keywords to find relevant websites, but it takes into consideration word order, how frequently the sites are visited, if the words are in the title of the web page, and how frequently the site is linked to other pages. Word order is important because "global warming" would bring up very different results than "warming globe". The popularity of the sites is significant also because if a lot of people visit the site, then it must have some kind of valuable information. If the words are in the title of the webpage, the article or page is probably dedicated to that topic, and the site is probably useful for whatever you are searching for. I had not thought about how relevant the site would be if it is linked to other sites. This last point was the most surprising to me. It is very logical, but not something that I had considered before Chris's presentation. I always use Google and I never knew that the search engine took all this kind of information into account when it searches the web. Also, the preferences in the advanced search link are very helpful and I had never used that feature before. I definitely plan on using those preferences now when I am googling.

Pics that Lie

I chose the picture of the AWOL poster with the soldiers. The picture was taken in Parris Island, South Carolina. It was manipulated to show a soldier disappearing from the ranks. I think the purpose was to show that the article was about soldiers going AWOL and showing a soldier disappear from his troop is a good representation of that. Not only was the picture manipulated, but the soldiers shown in the picture weren't even the people who went AWOL so I do think that the context and manipulation of this picture is harmful to the people who are falsely represented.