ADVICE FOR NEXT YEAR's CLAS CLASS...

My advice to all of you upcoming CLS kids, is...

1. GO ahead and DO YOUR WORK IMMEADIATELY... don't wait until the last moment to do your work... You most likely WILL be sorry... (I Told You So, *waggles finger disapprovingly*)

2. PAY ATTETION to what you learn in class... It;'s the little things you ignored and didn;t bother recording in your notes that will kick your butt in the long run. (Seriously, unless your a savant who has outstanding uniformation retention abilities, it will)

Basically these two gems of advice will save you form makinig usless misttakes in this class, which isn't that hard, just time consuming.

CONGRATS TO ALL WHO DEMONSTRATED FRIDAY!

First of all everyone who went and demonstrated their perosnall website last friday did great work! I now have some ideas of what I should do for my websites tahat I will produce in the future.

http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~ntoto
I loved Natalie's website because it was so beautifully rendered and detailed. It was perfect and effectively demonstrated her love for music, and her various other interests. Se took her time durin her presesntation and let us all admire her hard work. I loved her site, it was so RELATED to WHO she is, that I actually got absorbed into her webpage and felt like I could reach in and pick up the albums she posted, and like it was a well laid out interactive museaum specifically about Natalie's passions.

http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~akimura
Ali's website had fantastic graphics and an excellent layout. She made great use of opacity and the tool she used to create the "worn" edges of some of the images she had on her site. It clearly showed that she loves her Californian homeland. Ali has an eye for color shemes and design, an d=just like everything I have seen her do, she puts her heart into it.

http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~kleonard
Lastly, Katie Leonard's website was fun and cozy. She had links to her pages, and each page was colorful and kept my eyes interested in her favorite things, and places! She choose some exciting colors which fit her warm personality. Her personality was clearly shown in her webpage. It was very charming, I love it!

My perpsective about today's Power point presentations!

In my opinion the most powerful presentations which I saw today are Morgan Latin's and Stephanie Hill's. Their presentations where about real life issues which do visibly effect the lives of many people daily. Morgan's presentation was about education of people who are ethnic/language minorities, and people who are mentally and physically disabled. In Houston alone, there are many problems with the education attainment level, of many people who are ethnic/minorities, and the people who have ADD and or more serious mental disabilities, let along physical handicaps. Morgan wants to change this phenomenal so that low education attainments levels will rise and this will hopefully one day be a problem of the past, and not the present. Stephanie wants to target the problem of homelessness. She and some other people who travelled on the Washington D.C. trip, meet a man named Steve, who knows how it is to be homeless. Meeting him combined with her penchant for helping others has even further motivated her to help even more. She told the class that there about 700,00 homeless people in North America, and from a video staring Mr. Steve, I learned that many people who are actually homeless are hidden out of pride and shame. I think these are understandable attitudes to have when many people have been guilty of shaming homeless people. Basically both of these presentations were very informative and brought up two very commonplace issues.

The two presentation which MOST impressd me...

Lindsay Moratta's art therapy presentation was perfect, or "on pointe" as some people would say. I love the colors, they were rich, and brought a professional quality to her presentation. It was beautiful and she even incorporatyed calming music and real art pieces into her presentation! She most definately channeled her artisitic talent/vision ino her project. It is most definately one of the top 2-3 presentations of Friday!

The other presntaion which really impressed me with the design and subject was Lachlan Fogarty's! His powerpoint was about Beach conservation, and he utilized a good balance of font and font color, and ocean/resort related images for his presentation. I could tell that beaches and beach conservatino is something he is truely passionate about. I loved his youtube vidoe uopload as well.

My reaction to the power point info and advice for my fellow classmates.

So... I read several different articles and now know several main methods of preventing the message of my power point from being lost within too much excess clutter. Clutter means excessive graphics and also the urge to fill in spaces that are in the layout of your presentation with graphics or information that clutters your project.

1: An excess of information or excessive graphics can actually distract your intended audience from absorbing the information which you are presenting. You can even confuse yourself, with too much miscellaneous information.

2: However, there must be some graphics on your presentation; the graphics on your presentation should be high quality graphics. With high quality graphics, the images you may use in association with the concept of your project have a greater chance of being much more effective at conveying your concept.

3: DO NOT...read you power point slides out loud, because this makes it harder for people to absorb the information you are presenting. Most people cannot easily divide their attention to only your speech or just the power point.

4: Avoid using standard power default templates; try to create your own original work, because many people are accustomed to the standard power point templates which have probably seen countless times in presentations. To get them interested in your presentation, make something unique and yet very visual appealing!

5: Last but not least, remember to choose your colors and fronts of your presentation pages well. Throughout humanity, the human brain on average responds a certain way to variations of color stimuli. Colors can give the appropriate mood for certain topics of your presentation.

To me, bad power point presentation is a common disaster found everywhere! Many people think they need to use the antiquated, boring and ugly default power point page layouts. I think that people should learn how to make original fantastic and visually aesthetic power point slides which use as few words as possible. For instance instead of listing facts about the problems of world hunger, actually show a picture or a few high quality pictures on you power point to appeal to the people you are showing your presentation to. Then talk about what is happening in the picture so you can make the visual, emotional and logical connection needed to effectively demonstrate your concept.

My Experience Using Excel 10

My experience using Microsoft Excel 10 has been quite an ordeal! However, I do now think Excel is much easier to use that I previously thought. I can make graphs and intelligently show and calculate data, and understand what I am doing. Before I started using Microsoft Excel, I was clueless about how to use it. I had to use it in my Biology Lab classes, and since I had no idea of how exactly to use the program, I was dependent on my team members to graph and upload the data with whatever formulas were needed. I dreaded using Excel in any other classes, and realized I should have attempted to use the guidebook tutorials my father and mother had encouraged me to study. Now that I know how to make graphs and import and export graphics to add some pizazz to my future art and business assignments and projects within and out of college. In my opinion I am now at a high enough comprehension level that, I have an advantage over 30-40 percent of other America's population in my understanding of Microsoft Excel.

Trip to the CLT area.

Until today I did not know much about the CLT center of the library located on the first floor. In computer skills our class went and walked into this area, to learn about the functions of this place. Mr. Robert Chapman is the man who led us all on a tour of some of the CLT center's facilities. Previously I had been to the CLT center but never really explored it. Now I know that the computers there are reservoirs of software. They even contain the full versions of all the adobe software’s! We students can go and learn from the faculty how to use the sound studio and editing software's to make music, movies and a whole lot more! Since I am an artist and will be taking more art classes in the future, I may require more knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, and other editing software. Therefore the prospect of coming here and using Adobe Photoshop and other design software on the beautiful Mac computers with their superb graphics is very exciting. This will assist me in the upcoming design sections of our Computer Skills class since I will have a better grasp of the knowledge I need to do the work, and gain more skills with digital design. I plan to explore this place some more on my own time!