Advice

My advice is to do the homework in advance to allow yourself time to ask questions if you encounter any problems. Also, make sure you thoroughly understand the directions of the assignments, as you may lose points for details you had not payed much attention to. I had most trouble with the multiple choice part of quizzes and exams so had to work on that. Focus on whatever gives you trouble and work to improve your performance.

My Own Lying Picture

I chose 2 pictures of cute animals that I had previously saved in my computer as background pictures. I originally obtained the pictures from Google Image searches. They were both taken with a digital camera. I chose a picture of a baby penguin and a squirrel to make a hybrid species of both: a penguin's body with squirrel's ears and a cute bushy tail. To accomplish this, I used the magnetic lasso to cut out the tail and ears and place them onto the body of the penguin. I had to duplicate and rotate the right ear so they would match, since the penguin was directly facing the front and the squirrel was facing sideways so his left ear wasn't showing. I changed the contrast, hue, and color of the ears and tail to match the white of the baby penguin's belly. I used the blur tool to make the fur look fuzzier and the stamp tool to fill in spaces. I changed the background of the image using the gradient tool and added text: "At Dani's...we love hybrids." I changed the image to make, what I consider, a cute animal that would appeal to people. I was pretending it could be a car commercial that at first glance, looks like it has nothing to do with cars. But after some consideration, the word "hybrid" can be taken to mean a hybrid car, which relates to the image of the hybrid "squenguin" since the same word is used to describe both. It would also have to be obvious that "Dani's" was a brand of car...I didn't feel it was appropriate to use an actual brand. I hypothetically assumed in my commercial that people would immediately relate "Dani's" to a successful car company. Since the image is not deceivingly trying to pass as a legitimate, quality photograph, I don't believe the manipulations are harmful. The changes served to enhance the image as a whole by creating a fantastical hybrid creature that is cute- in no way was the goal to convince people of it being a real organism. In contrast, the article,"Journals Find Fakery in Many Images Submitted to Support Research," displays manipulations that are harmful because they distort scientific data and the conclusions that are attained from that information. If this is done, the findings from scientific research cannot be considered valid because the results are fabricated. This is deleterious to society because it can delay the finding of real cures for diseases and information on other scientific processes.

Favorite Presentations

My two favorite presentations were Lukas’s and Eliana’s. Not only was the material very interesting in both presentations but also the designs captivated the audience. Eliana’s impressed me mostly because of the subject matter. I was not aware of body dysmorphic disorder before this class. Learning about the disorder truly shocked me because the symptoms are so severe and so counterintuitive for people lacking the disorder. For example, Eliana talked about a woman who thought she was balding and consequently put a bag on her head to hide it. When the woman later removed her covering, she actually had a thick head of hair! Eliana had a good choice of pictures; the very first photograph was astonishing. She had enough text, but not too much, and the background went well with the rest of the presentation. She used a white background, which enhanced the color of the photographs she used. The content of Lukas’s impressed me because I had never thought about physical therapy specifically aimed at amputee soldiers. The presentation was very emotional and also had captivating pictures. I liked how he started out with his animation on his first slide. The way he had the people fighting was cleverly done. He had a good incorporation of a YouTube video, which was very fitting to the overall theme of his presentation. It was touching. He also had a light background, which made the colorful pictures he used stand out in the foreground and he had little writing so as not to bore the audience.

PowerPoint Articles

The articles on PowerPoint were quite enlightening since they made me view presentations differently. I thought they were very informative and conducive to creating sophisticated, didactic, and interesting PowerPoint presentations. The article "Top Ten Slide Tips" was especially helpful since it was concise and informative. I liked the "Really Bad PowerPoint- and How to Avoid It" as it introduced an important factor needed in presentations I had not previously considered: emotion. The argument is that in order to communicate efficiently, emotion has to be conveyed to the audience. Five guidelines I consider most important for good PowerPoints are: 1)Use few words, 2) Use powerful images, 3) Avoid reading directly off the slides, 4)Know the material well enough to be able to answer questions that expand on the material, and 5) Present with emotion to convince the audience of you point. My advice is to follow these guidelines and pick a topic you are passionate about so the presentation will be more enjoyable for the class. I find it annoying when there are too many words on a slide, no images, or the writing is illegible.

Visit to CLT

On our visit to CLT, I found that many of the resources there are potentially very useful for this class and others. Not only does this place have Macs and high-end windows, but it also has other more specific stations like the digital audio lab, the media presentation lab, the innovation studio, and the video conference center. All of these have high-tech equipment that yields excellent results in the media one is working with. Whether it may be manipulating audio materials or learning about management software, the CLT offers all the state of the art equipment. Personally, I am intimidated by all this because I’m not usually computer oriented but they do have a help desk wi th nice people I could ask questions to if I ever had to. For computer skills, I could use the CLT during our focus on Photoshop and for other classes I could use the scanners, which are convenient to copy lecture notes if I were to miss a class. I did take art for four years in high school, so if I ever wanted to re-explore that area, I would probably go to the CLT to get inspired and play around with various images with editing software (with the help of someone else, at first).

Some Thoughts on Excel

Every piece of knowledge that I have acquired in this class about Excel has been useful to me in other classes. For example, in chemistry lab, I am expected to make scatter plots from series of data. After the first day we learned about Excel, I already felt more conformable creating these graphs. Also, we must calculate means, sums, standard deviation, and utlilize various other formulas for each lab. I have become quite speedy at the process of inserting formulas and dragging them across a series of cells to spread them efficiently thanks to Computer Skills. I am aware that Excel is not only useful for labs, but also for other aspects of life. For instance, the running balance exercises we did are applicable to everyday life because they help to monitor expenses and to make sure that not too much money is spent at any given time. In the future, I am going to use Excel to take track of my expenses and to create a weekly schedule. It will be fast to type out the days of the week since I learned that upon typing one day, if you drag the box down a row, the subsequent days of the week will appear with no typing needed. I also enjoyed learning how to make Excel graphs look aesthetically pleasing by changing the borders, shadows, and color fill. Overall, I think our classes on Excel have been an especially important and useful aspect of this class.

Chris Nolan's Talk

Chris Nolan’s lecture provided many tips about finding high quality information on the web and limit searches to better suit individual needs. Most of his advice was applicable for the number one search engine used: Google. Although I am avid Google user, I did not know how intricate the searches could get. For example, the “Advanced Search” option grants the user access to result lists that are more specific than regular searches on Google, such as limiting the dates of the results lists, the language, or even limiting the entries by country of origin. Additionally, Chris Nolan introduced Google Scholar to the class, which presents only highly academic papers in the results list and is useful for research. I was surprised by fact that you can set entries to eliminate results with certain words that are irrelevant to the search. For instance, if you’re searching for articles from the country Mexico and a Google search yields many results with the US state of New Mexico, which is irrelevant to the search, then you can type in the words “:-new” at the end of your search. No articles with the word “New” will subsequently appear in the result list. Another fact I found surprising and somewhat humorous is that under the language tools one of the options is Pirate. I be feelin’ lucky!