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.

Pictures That Lie: Oprah Winfrey

I chose picture 11 of Oprah Winfrey. I chose this picture because Oprah is famous all over the world and most people know about her. Also, there is a dramatic difference on how Oprah looks like in the real world and how she is displayed in that picture. The picture originated from the cover of TV Guide in August 1989. The picture was manipulated by splicing the head of Oprah onto the body of the body of an actress Ann-Magret taken from a 1979 publicity shot. The picture was manipulated to give the talk show host a better image since at that time she was having some weight problems. The manipulation wasn't harmful because it gave Oprah a better image but the manipulation was done without the permission of Winfrey.

Trinity's High Tech!

The first time I went to the first floor of the library was during my Bio lab.We were learning about citing sources from the Internet. Then i saw this open room with a number of computers, I found it interesting. But finally because of Computer skills class, I came to know the importance of the room. The area is called AT & T CENTER FOR LEARNING AND TECHNOLOGY. Though computers are not my thing but this room was fascinating.

The Studio@ CLT had so many technological equipments. And this was the actual open area I saw the other day. They have scanners, color,black & white laser printers and audio and visual editing software. This area is open for students and faculty for creating and editing videos for class presentation. Then we moved to the Innovation studio for faculty members. In this room technology workshops for faculty are held. They use PC for teaching. At the moment they are teaching the faculty about TLearn. This would be so helpful because most of my professors use Blackboard and not TLearn. Blackboard is popular among my professors.This would help balancing the softwares in posting course documents.

As if that wasn't enough, there was actually more to see. The video conference center is the room open for professors and students for making videos to be used during classes. And if you don't know what to do like me, Ruben Rodriguez is there to help. All this is made possible with the help of polycom video conference facilities. Not only can you make videos at Trinity but also there are editing equipments for sound. This happens in the Digital Audio Lab. This room is open to faculty and students. The room is used for recording and incorporating sound into the videos and presentations made. This room has sound editing hardwares to make everything perfect. On top of that, this room can be used as a recording studio. There is a guitar and keyboard, for those students who have a passion for recording but didn't get a chance, they can actually do that here at Trinity. To finish it off, there is the Media presentation lab. This is where all the videos and sounds recorded can be displayed and evaluated. This room has touch screen computer to access the presentation and speakers. All of this is powered by the Internet service provider AT & T.That was when the field trip ended.

For the four years that I'm going to be here, I will definitely use the technology from CLT. The audio and visual recording studios will help to make my presentations much more effective for most of the classes that I will be taking at Trinity.I'm going to use the technology from CLT in my computer skills class, since we will be starting Adobe photoshop and iMovie that requires the technology. I'm so glad Trinity has all this technology, because I won't have to worry when I'll need to use it.