Advise for Next semester's CS Class.

Do all your homework because all the little points count for your final grade. And it would be so embarassing to fail Computer Skills.

Webpage!

I never thought I would ever be able to make my own website but thanks to Microsoft Expression I did it Yay! The webpages of each and evry student were amazing and everybody did a good job on the assignments but I had my own favorites, Chiara's and Rueben's webpages.
Chiara's webpage was really good because she incorporated her talent as an artist from the from the first page to the end. As soon as you open the index page it is possible to know right away that the owner of the webpage is an artist. I loved it.
Rueben's webpage was really good for the fact that he put a movie of his life which is so creative. I loved it too.
My last favorite webpage was Tasha's because she had incorporated her passion for travelling into that webpage. With her listing of the countries she travelled to its reall interesting. I hope one day I will go around the world.
I'm proud of myself as well because I never thought I could do this but I did it. It was fun creating the website.
Wanna take a look at my website :http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~nnjovu/

HTML!

I never knew that i could ever understand how computer geeks can easily design a webpage. But from the class on web design, I can even design a webpage on my own without the help of a computer expert. There are many web authurizing softwares that can be used to create a web page such as Microsoft expression but the most important thing in designing a web page is that the web creater should understand the HTML code. The html code is the language is used to design a webpage, the language has various synbols which are only understood by the preson who is familiar with the code. If the web designer understands the html code, he or she can design a web page without depending on the softwares. With an understanding of the code the designer can create a web page even on the absence of the softwares. The understanding of the code makes the web creater understand what he or she is doing even if there is a mistake done, the creater can easily correct it because he knows the code. With a person who doesn't know the html code it will be a hard time for him to correct the mistake. Understanding of the html code is extremely important in web designing.

Best Presentations!

All the presenations were really great and fun too watch! But in everything there is always the best of the best! My best presentations were Jordan's on Alexandra the Great and Chiara's on Drawing.
Jordan's presentation was really interesting because he had all this information about Alexandra The Great that I didn't know about since I'm not a great fan of History. I learned about Alexandra the Great via this presentation. The presentation was best on the use of visual evidence such as the maps to show all the territories that Alexandra conquered. This information on Alexandra was interesting and it made want to know more about this Great person. The content of the presentation was so interesting because he had all this information about the Great Alexandra.
The other presentation that caught my attention right away was Chiara's on drawing. I have been trying so hard to draw but couldn't just do it. After this presentation I have just been motivated to do so. This presentation displayed Chiara's talents as an artist. The images used showed exactly what she was talking about in the presentation. I really enjoyed watching this presentation. The images of begginer's drawings were really interesting. The design and the content of the presentation complimented each other.
All in all the whole class did their best in the presentations.
You can view my presentation at: file://tucc-tiger/groups/ComputerSkills/Belisle/nnjovu/19present/life

Google!

I have used google so many times in high school as my main search engine. Right after I came to Trinity most of my instructors descouraged me from using Google. The reason behind it's because it does not contain scholarly articles. After Chris Nolan's presentation I found out that I could actually use google to get scholarly articles, I was so surprised. I learned Google can be used to find scholarly articles via Google scholar. Google scholar mostly contains scholarly articles that cannot be found on the normal google web page. The normal google web page contains articles that are popular among people and those from websites that are mostly ranked, these articles may not necessarily be eduactional though you may have typed in an eduactional term. The schoalrly articles are placed on the last pages or on Google scholar since not so many people understand them. Therefore, when I'm doing a research and I want to use google I can actually use google scholar and I won't get in trouble with my professors.
I was surprised that besides the use of Google scholar to find scholarly articles, the normal google page can also be used to find important articles by limiting the results to what you are looking for. If a term is typed on google search there could a million results of which some of them are not related to the topic. You can actually limit the number of results, language, file format and the information you want to be contained in the in the article by using a plus sign or minus sign if you want to omit the information from your search results. This could be useful since only relevant articles will be provided.

Powerpoint Presentation!

I have done a couple of power pointpresentations in high school, but after reading the articles I realized that i wasn't doing a good job after all. The articles helped realize the key point to a good presentation; that is to present the ideas to the audience and not let the slides do the presentation for me. The article on how to make bad powerpoints good was an eye opener for me. I have just realized the key points to make a good presentation. The first three steps to a good presentation is to make cue cards that can be referred to during the presentation without the audiance noticing it, secondly the use of slides to reinforce ideas not to repeat the ideas and lastly creating a written document that can be given to the audiance, this is to get full attention from the audiance instead of them spending time copying down key points from the presentation.
The five guidelines that are really important to a good presentation are:

• Use less text on the slides as possible, too much text distracts the attention of audiance.
• The use of images is more effective than text. But be careful to use proper images.
• Use audio or video to reinforce keypoints.
• Use proper fonts for the presentation.
• Do not read from slides during the presentation.

The only thing that I find annoying about a bad presentation is the use of too much text on the slides. This makes me lose focus on the presentation and concentrate on reading the text rather than listening to what the presenter is saying.

Excel!

I have used Microsoft Excel a couple of times but i didn't know there was so much more to learn from it. I'm familiar with entering data into an excel sheet and perform limited functions eg sum,mean and average and inserting a chart..I didn't know for sure about absolute and relative cell reference. After knowing this it made my life much easier when it comes to manipulate data in excel. The coolest thing of them all that I didn't know and learnt about it was the If function and linking data between the excel sheet and Powerpoint via Special Paste. I didn't even know that this existed. Gaining all this knowledge opened my eyes that there is so much more that I still don't know. I can use the knowledge that I gained today in my future classes because I have four more years to go and lots of projects to present using Powerpoint Presentation and perform calculations on excel sheets. Learning new skills and tricks to do things much faster would help in the efficient use of my time instead of spending so much time on something that could be done in seconds. The knowledge I have gained will help me everywhere, even when I graduate from Trinity. I'm so sure right now that it was wise for me to take computer skills in the first semester of my freshman year. I have learned so much and I'm still learning.