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.

Digitally Altered Pictures

I chose to talk about the picture where there is a military helicopter. Hanging from the helicopter is a man on one of those rope ladders that helicopters can have, and right beside the man, there is a huge shark that jumped. I chose this picture because I had seen it before and was unaware that it was an altered pictire and that it wasn't true.The picture is awestriking because since people can only see the picture, they imagine that what happened is that the man in the helicopter was eaten by the shark. In reality, the picture of the helicopter with the man does not really include the shark; The shark was later added to give it a really tragic but amazing seemed-to-be-captured moment.
Even though it is not horribly harmful because no one's prestige or anything of the sort is really harmed, the picture can be harmful in the way that it really tricks people to believe it. I know this because I was tricked by it. I remember when I first saw it, because of the way it was portayed, it seemed that it had actually happened, so it made you think that the man in the helicopter had terrible luck.
This picture was extremely popular on the internet in 2001 and can now be found in the Museum of Hoaxes.

Center for Learning and Technology

I found out that they have really interesting features on the CLT room.
First of all, all the computers that are in the main room which is called Studios @ CLT can be used by students without any prior permission from staff or another authority. The computers have pretty cool softwares. Some of the softwares I was most interested about were the audio and video editing ones. On Macs, they have iMovie, and for PC's, they have a software called Sony Vega which is not the most complex software but it certainly isn't the simplest one. Some really cool stuff can be done to videos when editing them with this software. This really does make me want to come here more often.
Inside the room (the area) itself, they have other rooms that are specific for different and neat things. For example, they have a specific room that is made for people to come and record things. Inside, there is a computer with more recording and editing software, a piano, and other machines that control and even make sounds. Even though the room is not sound proof, according to what I was told, people outside can usually not hear what's going on inside the room no matter how loud it may be. They also have some more conference rooms and they even have equipment for video conferencing. The only problem is that in order for us students to use these rooms, permission from a professor or staff is needed. All these rooms can definitely come in handy though when a professor asks us to do some creative assignment such as a video or the like.
As mentioned before, the CLT center's computers can be used whenever (whenever the CLT center is open) and a lot of the computers have their own scanners which can be very benefitial in certain cases. This means that next time we have an assignment from our Essential Computer Skills class, we can easily got to the CLT Center and use its facilities and the same goes for the other classes.

Copyright and what I learned about it

I definitely did learn a lot about copryright. I learned that copyrighting things started back in 1790. At that time, a copyright was only good for 14 years. I also learned that a public domain can be many different things. One of the meanings is "materials that can be used without requesting permission," which means they are publicly available (for everyone). It is also "another term for national park." The last meaning is "materials that were published with taxpayer support."

Something that really interested me was how the amount of years for which a copyright is valid has changed. Copyrights can now be valid for either one of these two times: Either the author`s life + 70 years, or the date of publications + 95 years. Before, it used to be less, but due to the Sonny Bono Act, 20 more years were added to the preceding amount of time. This act was passed in 1998 and it is also commonly called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. It all started because Disney was afraid because the copyright they owned on their most famous character Mickey Mouse was about to expire. They decided to fight to extend the copyright and at the end, they won. The copyright was extended for 20 more years, but this not only affected and extended teh copyright Disney had on Mickey Mouse, but it also affected and extended all the other copyrights. The librarian even told us that before this act was passed, many people were happy that many creative works would pass to the public domain, and therefore using them would be easier. After this act was passed, people had to wait 20 more years.

For the librarians this can seem unfair, but personnally, I agree with adding more years to copyright. I feel it is unfair to simply lose the full rights and commision that people can get from their creative works. I stand on this side (on the side of the owners of copyrights) because I feel that someday I will own a copyright on something I do and to think that my ownership of it will someday be lost is not a great feeling. At the same time, it will be a long time until the owners of copyrights lose their full ownership, but it still doesn`t feel too good.