Computer Skills

Advice for New Students Taking CS1300 Next Semester

2009-04-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

Don't ever miss a class! For real, you would regret it. I missed two classes the whole semester; one was because I was sick and the other one was due to an exam that I have to study for and it directly reflected in my grade. Its easier to learn stuff in class.

Student Websites

2009-04-23T13:47:00.000-07:00

I really liked HyeWon's site. It was colorful and had a lot of pictures of some good times. She used the color purple a lot on the background which can catch the audiences attention pretty quick. Another one that I liked was John's. It was simple but in a good way. He gave information about his family and the sports that he does. He is into sports a lot just like me which made his site more interesting to me because I always love reading stuff about sports. Erin's was pretty good too, including a lot of picture. She modified most of her pictures on photoshop which made them look better. Overall I liked all the websites that have been presented today!

Please visit my own website at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~usonmez.

PowerPoint Presentations-2

2009-04-01T18:47:00.000-07:00

I think the best presentation on Tuesday was Taylor Burden's, about D-Day. The best part of it was the music on the background which was very appropriate for the topic. Starting from my childhood, I was always interested about historical events and especially the wars after 1900s. The dark background color and the style of typing was related to the topic. On the other hand, he used great pictures and maps about this historical event.

PowerPoint Presentations

2009-04-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

I think everyone did a great job on their presentations and I liked all of them. People really put some solid effort preparing these presentations about stuff that they are interested in. I really liked Eduardo Bilbao's presentation about Rio de Janerio, Brazil. First of all I'm really interested in soccer and the thing he said about Rio is so true; all the great soccer player's start playing it at the streets of Rio, that is a real fact. Besides he used great pictures of the beaches to present Rio to the audience. Another one that I liked was Staci Robinson's presentation about Environmental Science. She talked about recycling and that's an issue which everyone should be interested in. Her use of animated gif was very appropriate and the bright colors increased the effect of the point that she tries to make: a "greener" world.

Power Point

2009-03-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

PowerPoint presentation is a very effective way to present your ideas, if you know how to use it well. It's amazing how often people just gets up in front of the class and just read their slides. Anyone can do that, the presenters should prepare a lot before their presentation, in order to do it well and fluent, so it would get the listener's attention. Handing out papers would distract the listeners too because they would concentrate on the papers that you handed out, not your presentation. The most crucial part, people should know that they should not use clip arts and sound effects that are available in Power Points database because they are really annoying for most of the people.

Five important guidelines for a good PowerPoint Presentation:
-The presenter should not read directly from the slides, any one can do that
-The main reason for presentations are showing your emotion by your body language to the audience, which makes it easier for them to understand your point of view.
-Try to have an interesting start to your presentation so you would get people's attention
-Do not write too much stuff on a single slide, more than the reader can read and always support it with visual elements, such as pictures and graphs
-Cue cards are crucial

Microsoft Excel

2009-03-19T08:20:00.000-07:00

To be a honest, before taking this class I totally forgot how to do stuff on Microsoft Excel because I learned how to use it when I was in middle school and never need it afterwards; however, now that I'm thinking on majoring accounting, it is going to help me a lot. Some of my friends that are taking or took the accounting five year program told me that all they do at the beginning of their career as an accountant is that they basically sit in front of a computer and due various kinds of stuff on Excel, so I'm very glad that I failed the computer skills exam at the beginning of the year and ended up taking this course. I learned a lot of features that would help me a in my future such as all different kinds of formulas, graphs, drop cap and many others. I forgot most of the stuff that we covered in class when I was in middle school but now I'm pretty sure that I can do most of the stuff in Excel, after taking this course.

Field Trip to CLT

2009-03-03T23:56:00.000-08:00

Today was the first time that I've seen the CLT, I did not have any clue where it was,the first floor of the library. The best part of CLT is that you can go down whenever you want and you would always ask questions about latest programs such as web designing and photoshop. One can easily improve his skills by hanging at CLT. On the other hand, we can check out digital cameras and other equipments from CLT, but we have to tell our instructor to inform the people before so that we would easily check the material out.

Pictures that Lie

2009-03-02T11:37:00.000-08:00

I chose the first picture, which is Katie Couric. I picked this picture because one can easily see the effect of programs such as photoshop very clearly, just looking at the two pictures which are side by side. The official first image was released by CBS in May and the other doctored image was released by the Watch magazine in September. The image was manipulated a lot, her skin color is brighter, she looks thinner and the color of her dress is changed from brown to black. All these manipulations made her look more sophisticated and pretty. CBS manipulated the image because they know that perfect appearance is a vital issue, so they tried to make her look as good as possible. I do not think the manipulations were harmful, they are just on the appearance of her, so basically it is not a big deal.

Chris Nolan- Searching the Internet

2009-02-25T18:19:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows that google is the most popular search engine all around the world, but which other search engines are popular after google? Google is the first one with sixty percent of popularity, yahoo is the second with twenty percent, Microsoft is the third with ten percent and ask and AOL have five percent each. Google's percentage is around 85-90 at universities because the new generation is basically using google as the main search engine.
While doing search at google, the google's search engine drops off words such as; the words that are searched through out the whole Internet is underlined at the right side, after you search your word. Typing the words in different orders makes slight differences to the results of your search. Most people who are searching in google are satisfied with the results that they find at the first pages, most of the time.
There are some useful features at the advanced search, such as: you can type in the word that you want to search and then put a (-) sign and type the words that you do not want to face at your results. Also you can limit the results with a particular language.

Copyright

2009-02-04T12:46:00.000-08:00

The RIAA, Recording Industry Assn of America, MPAA, Motion Picture Association, ESA, Entertainment Software Association, are interested in campus based file sharing; Lamar Smith owns this district and there is a disproportionately interest on Trinity University and TU gets takedown notices from all three of these firms. These firms should know that we are college students and most of us do not want to spend money buying CDs or paying for the music that we download from internet or from itunes every single day, so most of the people choose to download music using programs like kazaa, limewire, ares. These programs do not care about copyrights or pay dues to the copyright owners, which basically make them illegal. On the other hand, those companies which send takedown notices to Trinity University completely have all the rights to do so because they do not want their author’s work not to get paid by us, the consumers; that’s how they make profit; however, I, like every other Trinity student do not want to pay for the music that I download from internet.

Facebook

2009-02-02T13:31:00.000-08:00

Every day, after I wake up, i always check my facebook, before even going to Mabee for breakfast or going to class because that's how I stay in touch with all, not many, all, of my friends. Facebook is a great social networking environment where you can easily keep in touch with your friends by writing to their wall, chatting or sending messages.

The article talks about the effect of the facebook on individuals and it being a huge database: "That data is worth so much more than [anyone] would pay for Facebook." Academically, this site should be useful too because I'm sure that most of the college students check their facebooks more than their e-mails, so professors could assign hw or put some information in a facebook group and not in blackboard, where you have to put down your user name and password multiple times and then search the site to find the information that you are looking for.

Finally, I think when hiring a student or someone, employers should not check their facebooks because I'm sure that everyone has some pictures that they do not want it to be seen by their future bosses. On the other hand, I think it is a huge violation of privacy; however, you can prevent it by putting a block on facebook users who are not your friends, preventing them to see your personal information and even your profile picture.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1213/p13s01-legn.html

Experience with Word

2009-01-26T19:20:00.000-08:00

I knew most of the things about Microsoft Word and the information in the first three chapters were basic and I knew most of it. I used word all through my middle school and high school, while writing essays, so I'm pretty good with it; however I didn't know that there was a thesaurus in the Microsoft Word program. I would definitely use it the next time I need synonyms and I would like to review adding clip arts to a document.

About me

2009-01-15T10:23:00.000-08:00

Hello, my name is Baran.
I'm from Turkey and the following link would take you down to my hometown Istanbul. I'm into basketball a lot, in every aspect; I played for seven years and I love watching it, I'm a huge LAKERS fan! I came to America for my education, I have never lived here before. I'm playing on soccer and basketball intramural teams at Trinity and I'm also into Greek life. I have used Microsoft Word and Powerpoint a lot, and I have used many programs such as Photoshop and Excel but I have forgotten how because I last had a computer in eighth grade.

My secret fact is: I'm from Turkey.

email: usonmez@trinity.edu