Ashley's Computar Skills Blog

Advice, LISTEN!

2008-04-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

Here is my only bit of advice for the next class: DO ALL OF YOUR WORK AND DON"T WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE!!!

Websites!

2008-04-24T05:45:00.000-07:00

All of the websites were very well done, but three stood out as my favorites. The first was Alisa's. It has a very simple a effective color scheme and it is very easy to read all of the information. I enjoyed her pictures and her "creative side" page. My favorite aspect of the site, however, was the image map. It was very well done and looks professional. My other favorite was Emily's website. It really looks like she put a lot of work into it. She included tons of information but it looks very organized and not cluttered. I especially liked that she included Harry Potter in her home page image map. Another favorite was Andrew's. It looks incredibly professional and should be used on the Trinity website! My favorite part of it, however, was that it had a personal touch to it and it wasn't all just a load of information.

Power Points

2008-04-08T05:59:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite PowerPoint presentations was Landes Randall's project on Avalanches. I liked it because I love the outdoors and my brother is training to be on ski patrol in Vail Colorado. He actually just finished avalanche school where he learned in detail how to avoid and deal with an avalanche. My favorite slide was the one with all of the safety gadgets. It was really neat to learn about some ways to stay safe if I ever find myself caught in the middle of an avalanche.
My other favorite was Andrew Gill's PowerPoint. I enjoyed how he involved the whole class by showing us how it is actually worth it in the long run to spend our money on higher education now rather than investing it in the bank. It was really interesting to see that demonstrated, especially because I've never really thought about it.

Power Points

2008-03-27T05:28:00.000-07:00

If I hear that there will be a PowerPoint presentation in one of my classes i rarely look forward to it. This is because many people go about making a PowerPoint in several wrong ways. The Top Ten Slide Tips on Garrreynolds.com are very helpful in showing exactly what not to do when creating a presentation. I enjoyed reading through this site because it was very easy to see what the author was talking about because it showed actual pictures of correct and incorrect slides.
The Recommendations for Faculty on PowerPoint page was a little less interesting. The page included great information like, not including bullet points and putting that information in the notes to be read orally, but it was less enjoyable to read about. The funny thing about the page is that it does many things that it says should not be done in a PowerPoint. I realize that it was probably all presented orally, but if it wasn't it is a great example of how not to organize a PowerPoint.
The digital booklet Really Bad PowerPoint was also very helpful and included some good information. One of my favorite points that Seth Godin makes about the things people do wrong when making a PowerPoint is that people forget that the presentation is meant to be a way to communicate with the audience. He says that slides are often used a teleprompters and I can't agree more. There is nothing worse than sitting through a PowerPoint being read to you.
After reading all of these helpful pages there are at least five things that I hope everyone remembers in preparing his or her PowerPoint:

1. Do NOT read straight from the slides
2. Limit what you put onto one slide, don't over crowd the slide with information
3. Choose color of background and letters and font well
4. Use professional looking images rather than low-grade clip art
5. If including a chart, keep it simple and don't include too many words

Chris Nolan's Presentation

2008-03-25T06:08:00.001-07:00

I learned a great deal more about searching the Internet than I already knew when Chris Nolan came to class. I was already relatively familiar with the resources that the library's website offered, but I was not aware of the entire extent of it. I particularly enjoyed choosing the difference between a legitimate education website and a fake one. I thought that was very interesting. The one that caught my eye the most was the Martin Luther King Jr. website. It seemed like a relatively informative website at first glance, but as I read into it I realized that, that was not the case. It was strange to think I was looking at a website devoted to Martin Luther King Jr. when it was really a white supremacy website.

Copyright Laws

2008-03-13T05:47:00.000-07:00

The issue of using copyrighted material for educational purposes poses has many loose ends and unresolved problems. Many people think that since most of the material that professors use was written for educational purposes in the first place, the material should be free of charge for any school or university. The other side is simple and thinks that everyone should pay for copyrighted material just the same, given the exception of time. I believe that any material meant to be used constructively toward education, copyrighted or not, should be made available to any teacher or professor at not cost. While there is the exception of time and whether a teacher has time to pay for the material, time should not be an issue. In most cases, the desired material was written with the intention of teaching so I believe that there should be no cost to fulfilling the author's original goal.

Excel

2008-03-11T06:10:00.001-07:00

There were many things that I learned about Ecell in class that I did not know before. I knew that there was a way to make equations, but I wasn't sure how to do it. After learning how, I am so glad that I have that skill because it seems very useful. I am also glad that I know how to use Excel to the extent that I do because my mother actually uses it quite often and now I will be able to help her if need be. She owns a grocery store in Alaska and Excel helps her keep track of the employees schedules, shipping dates, and basically everything to do with her income. I am so glad I learned how to use it!

Altered Picture

2008-02-27T21:49:00.000-08:00

I chose this picture because I have always been very interested in Egypt and I actually have this issue of National Geographic at my home in Tulsa, OK. The picture originally showed the two pyramids farther apart. They are two of the four Great Pyramids at Giza. Again, National Geographic altered the photograph by moving two seperate images of the pyramids closer together to better fit the page. I do not believe that the manipulation was harmful because the magazine shows the pyramids exactly as they are. The issue addressed by the manipulation was just that of a formatting problem.

Wireless Networks

2008-02-04T23:52:00.000-08:00

Here at Trinity University, I have yet to find a location where I cannot recieve an internet connection. This is incredibly helpful when I desperately need class information from Blackboard or when I just need a break from writing a paper to get on Facebook. For that reason, I believe that attending a university on the Top Ten list for most wireless campuses is great for both social outlets and academic help. Here is some information on a new wireless breakthrough for Canada's Concordia University: http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=MW&Date=20080130&ID=8111828&Symbol=CSCO

Blue Screen of Death!

2008-01-22T07:29:00.000-08:00

If I found myself running out of time to do my Computer Skills homework, a "blue screen of death" is the last thing that I would like to find on my computer when I sit down to begin. In order to work on my homework with as much time as possible I would run down to Beze Underground and use one of the computers in the lab.

My Background

2008-01-17T07:21:00.000-08:00

Hi! My name is Ashley Wright and I am originally from Fairbanks, Alaska which is directly in the middle of the state. I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma when I was five years old and I spent my elementary through high school years in Tulsa. I travel to Alaska every summer for the whole summer where I work on a riverboat as a deckhand.

I love the outdoors and all sports. Field hockey, soccer, and track were a few sports that took up the majority of my time in high school. I plan to pole vault and throw shot put and javelin for the track team here at Trinity. In high school I was a three sport captain and I was on student council as the student life chair. I planned theme days and attempted to get the headmaster to approve them.

As far as my computer skills and/or experience go, I wasn't required to take a computer course in high school. I've been exposed to computers quite a bit, but I don't know all of the technical aspects of the subject. My knowledge takes me about as far as being able to figure out how to use an application or how to fix a problem just by trying different things.

This is where I like to go! http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=27.959122,-110.98392&z=17&t=h&hl=en