Search Engines

On Thursday, Mr. Nolan came and talked to us about search engines and how to receive good results when using a program like Google. I learned a lot during his presentation about the ways you can narrow your search on Google. I had never used the ‘scholar’ option on Google before. It is very helpful to know a way to skip over websites that are not good for citation. Of course, you should always check out sources yourself before using them. I also liked the option Mr. Nolan showed us to limit the domains that show up in your search.

            I didn’t realize that Google makes so much money off of the ads on their search engine. I personally never give ads on Google any of my time, so I was surprised there is so much money invested in them. I appreciate the way Google tries to make its search engine a truthful one, and not allow websites to pay their way to the top of the list, or to stop companies like JC Penny from tricking the search engine into showing their web at the top. 

How To Survive PowerPoint

Powerpoint sets you up for failure. Everything about it tempts you to make bad decisions. Its too easy to just type away and fill your slide with block paragraphs of text. Not to mention that 'add slide' button. It's easy to get carried away with the slides. Before your know it you have fifty slides. And why bother making your slides colored when they automatically show up in white? When you're in a hurry or you can't think of a good way to put together your presentation, your presentation can turn into the most boring event of the day. Here is a list of the top ten things you should avoid doing with powerpoint to ensure your presentation isn't awful.

1. Paragraphs: when you write a short novel on each slide, nobody bothers to read anymore. 
2. White slides: nothing makes your audience go crazy faster than plain white slides. Dress them up.
3. Ridiculous graphs: if the graphs are overly complicated, nobody will know what you're talking about. 
4. Tiny text: use large fonts and graphics so everyone in the room can see. 
5. Animation frenzy: if every slide has three of four animations that eat up time, you look unprofessional and you waste time. 
6. Neon colors: use color, but don't give your audience a headache. Use easy-to-read colors. 
7. Too many slides: you should talk more than you switch slides. The maximum is usually 1 slide for every 5 minutes of talking, at least. 
8. No pictures: just a small clipart in the slide that relates to your topic will dress up the slide and reinforce your message. 
9. Nothing but YouTube: once you learn how to embed videos, it's tempting to go video crazy. Don't.
10. Be professional: don't try to be funny when you shouldn't, keep everything on topic, and don't throw in personal tidbits unrelated to your presentation. 

CLT Visit

I have used the CLT center in the library before, but only to use the computers to view movies on TriniTV.  I did not know about the conference room that had video conferencing capabilities. The video conference can support up to twelve people at a time, which is impressive. It would be really fun to see a meeting take place using the video conference system. I was also surprised at how many different jobs the CLT provides. There are many jobs just for students. There are also a lot of different services provided. They can help you use media software to edit a video on a computer, or record and edit audio. I did not know there was a studio down there that students were allowed to use. In the future I may take advantage of that to make a project for a class. I have already visited CLT a few times for computer help and to use the awesome computers there. There are both Macs and PCs in CLT and there are 26 computers total. I didn't know about the scanners, which I think will be very helpful in the future. I know from experience that the people in CLT are very helpful and knowledgeable about any issue I may have and can help me.
Below is my self portrait I made while at CLT. I'm not the best artist, but here it is!