Advice for new students

I think that my greatest advice is to not go into this class with a negative attitude because if not, you won't enjoy all the cool stuff that we learn how to do.

Raul Erazo

Student Websites

I thought this was a great assignment. I really enjoyed looking at the websites that my other classmates made. My favorite ones were the one of Joy Lin, the one of Katy Sauer, and the one of Andrew Moritz. With Joy's, she had a lot of images that were different from each other and yet looked really nice when she put them all together as she did. When it comes to Katy's website, I just thought her website looked really good and organized. The colors she used, the background, and the way she showed the pictures looked great. In Andrew's website, I thought it was pretty funny how he made his head move all over the place in more than one time. It was pretty cool.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I really enjoyed doing my website, and you can loo at it if you go to: http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rerazo/

Knowing HTML code

To find the reason why web designers should know HTML code when there are so many fancy technological programs that will make it all easier for them is a good question. At the beginning, I wasn't sure why, but then I thought about it a little bit closer, and it actually made sense to me. These "fancy technological programs" such as Dreamweaver and Expression Web are basically based on HTML code so it is still important to know it. On top of this, knowing HTML code will facilitate and more than facilitate, will allow the person with this knowledge to correct anything on a website, no matter with what program the website was actually made.

What I learned from Chris Nolan

I learned a lot of interesting things from Chris Nolan. Most of what I learned came from Google. This makes sense because Google is what I use the most when searching for websites for research papers and basically anything from school. I learned that there are differences between directories and search engines. Search engines are based on an algorythm and directories are just a compilation of information or in this case websites, and organized under different topics or names. I learned a little bit more about the Advanced Search option in Google and this is very useful when looking for specific information. I learned about Google Scholar too and how this can be even more helpful for research papers. It will only give me sholarly material and not just random, non important websites. He also talked about how the different top level domains can tell us a lot about the website. It can tell us things such as like if the website is governmental, or if it is an organization, etc.
Something that I found out. thought was really interesting to me, and that I didn't remember (if it is the case that I ever even knew about it) was that when looking for something in google, some websites have a "cashed" option. What this means is that google has an online copy of what the website contains. On top of that, the copy has the words we're looking for highlighted, which can definitely be very helpful when searching for a specific thing in the website.

Favorite Powerpoint Presentations

I think that one of my favorite powerpoint presentations was the one of Steven Sheppard. I thought he really knew what he was talking about. His presentation was about a literary award about science fiction stories. His background pictures throughout his presentation were really interesting and lively because of the colors used. The music he chose was very good too, perfect for his theme.
The second one that I thought was very good was the one that Ralph Petang did. His presentation was about soccer, but more than simply talking about the basics of the sport, he talked a lot about the feelings and emotions that people can and should have when playing soccer. It was all done in a very poetic and peace inducing way. His slides went by in a fluid way, not overcramming them, and the calm music he chose was really appropriate too.

My presentation which was about the business of music can be found in here:
\\www.cs.trinity.edu\rerazo\Local\HTML-Documents\Presentation

Powerpoint Presentations

What the articles talked about regarding Powerpoint presentations was true. I've seen so many times people showing their powerpoint presentations with a lot of text in them and simply reading off of them. That is not professional and completely boring. One of the things that the articles mentioned was not to use the already created templates that Microsoft has made for us. Their reason for this is because people have probably seen them already, and it will be too repetitive for them. Something that I definitely do agree with the authors of the articles and that everyone in class should take into consideration is not to put those cheesy sounds on presentations. They were really popular when Microsoft PowerPoint first came out, but now they are too repetitive and boring. Plus, the authors of the articles said it would make the presentation less professional, and would damage the credibility of the presenter. I think that whenever possible, we should definitely use either video or at least some audio (not the cheesy sounds). This really grasps the attention of the audience and makes the presentation not boring. What somewhat surprised me was about the blank spaces in the presentations, because we usually try to fill them up with pictures and other things. When we present (me and my classmates), we have to speak up and let our powerpoint presentations be our aid so that people can relate to our topic, but most importantly, the audience must listen to us. Therefore, we must speak in a loud (not annoyingly loud) and clear voice.

What I've learned from Excel

I definitely learned many things from Excel. First of all, the major thing is that I learned how to use the new Excel (the one from Office 2007). I learned where to locate all the buttons, and how to use them in better ways. Secondly, learning Excel was really helpful because before this class, I had almost completely forgotten how to write the formulas. I had forgotten that I had to write the equal sign first and later write the actaul equation. I also had forgotten (or simply didn't even know) that there were many functions such as SUM, AVERAGE, Standard Deviation, etc.
Spending so much time learning Excel was also useful because it made me think. What I mean by this is that not only did I not know how exactly to write the formulas, but I didn't even know what particular equation I actually had to use for several different things. Going through all the examples reminded me that I have to think about what I really need to find and when I figured that out, I write the formula accordingly.

For my time in college, since I am a sophomore, I know I will continue to use Excel in my classes, especially since I am business major, and Excel is a good tool for many things that can help with organization in the business world, mostly when it comes to economic issues and basically everything that has to do with numbers.

After college, I wouldn't be surprised if I keep on using Excel. I don't really think I'll use it for my home finances (or maybe, who knows) but I know I'll definitely use it to handle accounts for my business.