Student Wesbsite

I had a lot of fun using Expressionweb! I never realized what went into making a website, and now I have a greater appreciation for each web page I visit. I really enjoyed Joy's website because of the photo collages. She must have put a lot of work into photoshop to create all of those image maps. I also really like Ralph's website because of all the picture that he used. The layout of the website was very nice and I liked how he picked traveling as his topic. Katie's website was also very interesting. I really liked all of her different backgrounds and her page on her travels was great!

Please visit my own website at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rgarrett

Advice

My best piece of advice for this class would be:
Pay attention to the small details. Always go back and check your work because it is very easy to leave out the little details

HTML what?

Although there is web-authoring software available, there are multiple advantages to knowing html code. For example, it is good for web designers to be familiar with html code when something does not appear the way they want it to on a website. It is very frustrating when an element of a page does not do what you want it to, but if you are fluent in html code, you can go back into the code and decipher what is going on. A problem can be fixed much more quickly if you can go in and pinpoint an error in the code, rather than tinkering around on web-design software until the problem gets fixed by trial and error. Also, if you can read html code, then you can use things from other websites, such as a background color that you like. So although software such as Expression Web makes designing a website much easier, knowing html code can help you from getting stuck at any road blocks.

Power Point Evaluation

I really enjoyed listening to eveyones powerpoint presentations! One of my favorite presentations was Abigail's presentation on Art. I really like the background that she used, with all the clouds flying in, and I thought it was very clever how she put her screen-shot into a cut-out of a cloud. The various examples of art that she used in her presentation were very interesting and I really enjoyed learning about the spacial aspect of art. I also really liked Stephen's presentation on the Dell Magazine Award. The beginning of the presentation was very well executed with the various pictures and music. I really liked learning about this science fiction award and Stephen explained the magazine very well. I also though it was really cool how he submitted his own work to the magazine.

Searching the Internet

With search engines such as google, answers to most of our questions are just a push of a button away. But after listening to Chris Nolan in class, I now realize that we must be skeptical of these websites we obtain our answers from. In order to obtain more credible results, there are multiple ways we can manipulate a search engine such as google. I learned that by going to the advanced search tool on google, you can limit a search for a particular type of source, such as .edu or .gov. There are many other useful tools available such as google scholar, or google books, that may have more worthy results for an academic setting.

Chris Nolan also described how google comes up with the display order of the website on the query page. Google calculates relevance by using an algorithm. I suspected that relevance was calculated by how many times a certain word or phrase appeared in the article/website, but I was surprised to learn that how many times other sites link to a certain website gives that site more weight in ranking. So just because a website is at the top of the list on google does not mean it is relevant or has accurate information.

Slide Show Guidlines

The most important thing I learned from reading about powerpoint presentations is that the most important thing about a presentation is not the slides, but rather the message you are trying to communicate to the audience. With this said, a simple, well-planned slide show is probably more effective that a complicated, overly detailed show. A powerpoint is an easy and efficient way to communicate ideas to a large group, but the message can be easily lost in a presentation that has too much going on. Here are 5 guidelines you should keep in mind when you are making a powerpoint:
1. Don't use too many graphics
2. Don't write more words than you need.
3. Don't repeat ideas that have already been established.
4.Don't use too many animations or transitions.
5. Don't use too many different fonts or a font that is hard to read.

Excel Experience

I learned a lot from our unit on Microsoft Excel! Probably the most important thing that I learned was that instead of repeating the same formula over and over again for a function, you can simply drag down on the box of the formula you wish to duplicate to obtain the same results. I also learned about absolute and relative cell references. Excel might be useful for me in the future in that is makes it easier to keep a running budget of my expenses.

Academically, Microsoft Excel is very useful for keeping up with your grades. With conditional formatting on Excel, it is easy to format the cells to make things such as failing grades for noticeable. Excel can be used in business for recording a budget, so that a business can see if their profit outweighs their expenditures.