Advice for New Students

The best advice for students taking this class next semester is to show up every class. There is always homework, and getting behind will be hard to catch up. If you do all of the assignments, you will learn a lot of very useful skills for the computer. They will help you for your other classes as well. If you do your homework you will get a good grade in the class. Good luck!

Favorite Websites

My three favorite websites were Morgan's, Erin's, and Hinna's. All three had excellent graphics, and I learned a lot of new information about them. Erin's had a video on it that was really cool. Hinna had a lot of personal pictures that showed her and her friends hanging out. Morgans was really good as well. She went above and beyond by adding 9 pages.

New Website!

Please visit my website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~jnathan. Making JNSA was easier in some aspects, but harder in others. Publishing the website and creating an outline were not hard. The hard part was trying to do the specifics like making sure your pictures and text do not float on the computer monitor. I only used Expression Web. I did not have to refer to HTML coding becasue I was not trying to add highly advanced schemes and effects to my site that I do not know how to do. I am most proud of my Dallas Cowboys page. I spent a large amount of time analyzing their team thoughtfully and accurately. The color scheme matches the Cowboys' team colors. I might have tried creating my pages in PHotoshop Elements first then inserting the pages as pictures onto Expression. I think this strategy could help with floating items, but if I were to have to change things after it was published it would hard. My biggest technical challenge was fixing the capitalized I that I left when I saved my index page. This caused some hyperlink problems, but they were fixed. My biggest design challenge was making my text not overlap on the background pictures making the words unreadable. It was hard to do this because of different sized monitors. I am going to show the site to parents and friends. I think they weill be impressed with the work I have done. Yes, now that I know how to make a website, I could see in the future that I could use a website in presenting information like a Powerpoint presentation.

Pictures that Lie

I chose a picture of President Obama inside of an elevator. To manipulate it, I used the magic wand, lasso, conversion to black and white, adjusted darkness levels, stamp tool, render tool, and the text tool. I chose to manipulate this picture to express my disapproval of President Obama, and to bring to light the similarities he shares with infamous leaders of history. The picture originated from Callie Shell, a digital journalist who was allowed to follow President Obama during personal times. The picture has had Kim Jong Il, Osama bin Laden, Darth Vader, and Hitler added to the photograph while President's Obama's wife and others were removed. I manipulated this picture to show my disapproval of President Obama, and make people see that he has similarities as the people in the picture with him. President Obama's new policy of universal health care is making America turn into a socialist country, when what America so great is its freedom. The picture can be harmful to President Obama, but because of the presence of radical terrorists, the picture is more of a satire than a picture being used to harm Obama's apprearance. The picture relates to the article because the addition of the extra men is clearly fake because of time, location, and ficitonal differences, if the men were more realistic, it might not be as easy to determine that the picture was doctored. The article discussed the growing difficulty in identifying altered pictures, and laws that need to be passed to stop it. I agree with the article. I think there needs to be laws passed that do not allow photos to be doctored in a negative or positive way to be published, unless that the author acknowledges that the photo has been changed from its original purpose.

Plummer, Daryl. "Give Counterfeit Reality a Closer Look." USA Today 24 July 2004: 13a. Web. 11 Apr 2010.

HTML

Even though there are Web design programs that allow you to design sites without using HTML coding, HTML is important because if there is something very advanced on another site, you can view the HTML code to see how they did it. HTML is also important because you can create your website even without having programs such as Kompozer. HTML is also important because you can refer to it when you see there is a problem in the website, you can view the source code and fix it manually.

Favorite Presentations

My 2 favorite presentations were Erin's and Steven's. Erin's had very clear and nice graphics. There was a personal touch added with photographs of herself and others that attend Trinity University. It was very clear that she wants to be in the television/broadcasting field. Steven's was really cool because he included a video that showed all the Walmarts across the U.S. and when they came into existence. His presentation also included some very interesting information about how large corporations such as Walmart are run.

Power Point Tips

Some good tips on creating power points that convey the message and keep audiences interested are: using clear images in your presentation, this allows the audience to stay focused without having to read much, this lead to the second tip, do NOT have a lot of writing on your slides, audiences can become detoured when they see a lot of words. Tip three is use backgrounds and layouts that flow and go together. Smooth transition between slides is best.