My Advice

My advice for doing well in this class would be to do all the work, no matter if it seems trivial or busy work, just do it. I would also suggest that you don't miss class because you'll miss out on learning new techniques and may therefore feel lost in following classes.

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Power Point Presentations

I really enjoyed Anthony Cockrell’s and Chris Kradle’s presentations.

I was impressed by Anthony’s use of great pictures, his animations, and his information. I was unaware of how many famous people (who aren’t necessarily famous for being an engineer) majored or studied engineering. I knew there were many kinds of engineering but I’d never seen them all in list form. I also think that he spoke and presented well. I think it is really cool that Anthony wants to be a chemical engineer.

I also really liked Chris Kradle’s presentation. I liked that his background was the chalkboard template. Although he was talking about being a lawyer, the background fit nicely with his desire to give back to teachers. He even had apple bullet points. His animations and transitions were also good. He was also very informative and knew a lot about teacher salaries, laws, etc. His also presented it well, even making a joke about the legal “stuff” being boring.

Good job everyone!

Power Point Opinion and Tips

The articles were very helpful. The “Top Ten Slide Tips” and the “Recommendations for Faculty on PowerPoint” were both decent and helpful articles. I thought the “Really Bad PowerPoint-and How to Avoid It” was not as much as a professional seeming article. The author was sarcastic and “emotional.” The YouTube video on PowerPoint has been “Removed by the User” so I could not watch it. I kind of already knew many of the power point tips. Since middle school power point has ruled many class presentations, lectures, and lessons.
I guess my five guidelines would be:
1. Don’t read your slide or say exactly what’s on it. You should have your presentation well thought out (or memorized if you get nervous). Also, I can read what is up on the screen. I do not need it read to me.
2. Don’t use a lot of text. We’ve all had a teacher make a power point with bullet after bullet that is boring and hard to notate.
3. Organize your slides well. Slides that don’t flow or have a questionable order are irritating and harder to follow and make the presenter look bad.
4. Use appropriate, quality pictures and fonts. Text should be large and readable and pictures should be appropriate, good quality, and not cheesy (unless on purpose for humor).
5. Don’t overdue animations. If they are slow, too numerous, and too flamboyant/obnoxious, it is boring and annoying.

Good luck to everyone!!

Visit to AT&T CLT

I was not aware that the AT&T Center for Learning Technology (CLT) existed. I rarely spend time on the library’s first floor but when I do, I’m in some back corner of the stacks. I did not know TLearn and TigerTV were housed on the first floor as well. I was very impressed with all the state of the art equipment available to us as Trinity students (Macs, Windows, scanners, printers, video making/editing, audio recording, ect). In the future I will definitely be using the Digital Audio Lab to record music auditions on CD that I can send out to people (such as possible employers, family, ect.). I think that CLT will also be useful for learning more about photoshop and editing whether for class or just for fun. I do not consider myself a very technologically oriented person and when I walked into the CLT I was a little overwhelmed by all the equipment. I think that if I went to the CLT for a project, I would definitely be appreciative of the nice and friendly staff that would help me use all the equipment correctly.

Chris Nolan's Presentation

I learned quite a few things from Chris Nolan’s presentation. The first being that I didn’t know you could narrow your search on Google so well. I didn’t know you could type “Define: Whatever” and it would come up with definitions. I didn’t know you could exclude certain kinds of websites by using the keywords. I also never understood all the aspects of the advanced search (limiting domain, setting language, limit dates, set number of results, etc.) because I hardly used it (but now that I know how I can use it and use it efficiently).

I thought the differences between the search results of Google vs. Yahoo were also very interesting. I had also never used Google scholar and so that was nice to have how it worked (picked “scholarly” results) explained to me. I will definitely be using that and Infomine as part of my research now instead of regular Google and the Trinity library website.

I was surprised that we evaluated websites near the end. I felt, at least with the website that I had about white supremacy, that it was obvious that the site was not a credible source of historical information. I think it surprised me that we did this because I feel that a lot of students can, for the most part, determine what credible websites are. For example, I feel that it is common knowledge that Wikipedia can be altered by anyone and that it should not be cited as a scholarly source.

Copyright Laws

I was not in class on Tuesday and therefore did not get to hear Mr. Jason Hardin speak. However, I went to PublicKnowledge.org and read about copyrights and public sharing. I think it is an amazing idea that people want to share their works and allow other people to use them (with whatever restrictions of course). I think it is good to be able to share research without necessarily having to pay (like for a journal subscription). I believe concepts like this will be beneficial for students especially. My personal opinion on copyright is a bit apathetic, I must confess. Whether or not someone’s work was copyrighted, open access, or whatever, I would still cite that person(s) in whatever I was doing (ex. Paper, project, etc.). Copyright laws are good because they allow for people to get credit for their work and if I ever created something worth copyrighting, the law would work in my favor. BUT, as of right now, I know not to infringe on someone else’s work or to take credit for something that isn’t mine so my personal stance on copyright laws is not very strong.