Advice for new students

One piece of advice I would give would be to make sure to save in the correct folder. I had only saved on the computer desktop before, so this was kind of confusing at first. It would have been a good idea for me to go back and check to make sure the folders were in the right place after I had saved the assignment.

Website presentations

I enjoyed watching people present their websites because each one was so unique and interesting. If I had to pick some that stood out to me one would be Mica's. I didn't expect a colorful, repetitive background would work on the pages, but it did. Even though each background was different, they all tied in the theme of curves and the grid pattern they were placed in. Another person's website that caught my eye was Avery's. I liked the different color backgrounds for each page, and the informal style the website was written in. After seeing it I feel like I know more about her as a person. Really nice job. Monideepa's website was also very well done. The image map (with corresponding symbols) was a nice touch. I also liked how the music page had both pictures and links to the sites of the musicians. All three of these people did well in presenting and summarized instead of just reading captions.

Why HTML

Even though web-authoring software can be very helpful and can make creating a web-page more efficient, there is still reason to know the general HTML codes. When something goes wrong with the website, the only way to see exactly what is wrong with it is to look at the HTML to fix it. If the web desighner has no idea how to read the HTML code, he or she cannot fix the problem.

Blog Favorites

There were a lot of really well done powerpoint presentations, but two of my favorites would have to be Daniel's on being a PGA golf instructer and Mica's on Malinche. Although I didn't expect to be interested in the subject of golf, the presentatation itself was interesting with the incorperation of animations and the video. Mica's presentation was interesting because Malinche was a historical figure that I knew only a little about, but is referenced in literature fairly often.

The Do's and Don'ts of Power Point

It is really important that the powerpoint slide is used as an acessory and not the main part of the presentation itself. Bad color combination or neon colors (especially backgrounds) is something easily avoided. Putting 3 minutes of animations for the words to enter on a slide gets boring very quickly. I also like the idea of using visuals that the audience can connect with instead of clipart. The one thing that annoys me most about these presentations is having to sit in a classroom and watch someone read long paragraphs verbatum off slides. Thinking of powerpoint as a tool to evoke emotion through pictures and depictions of data rather than a strictly unemotional tool was interesting to me.

Using the internet

In Chris Nolan's presentation I learned that I could use Google Scholar to find more scholarly sources when researching. I also was interested in the fact that 70% or more of the internet is invisible in journals or databases. I had wondered exactly how Google and Yahoo ranked their entries in search engines. Google uses keywords in the title, in the article, and number of links from other sites to rate which webpages come up first in a search. Google was also the first large database to use an automated bot to search web pages.

Copyright debate

I believe that the way the publishing industries make huge profits off of educational books is appalling. I understand that it takes a great deal of money and time to research, compile, produce and sell textbooks, but at the same time, it is hard to believe that the cost of production is only a little lower than the selling price. It is legal to charge as much as you want for a textbook or any other copyrighted work, and there may not be much selection for a university to choose from in certain subjects. Regardless of the legality of it though, it is still very much taking advantage of students that have no choice but to by that certain book from that specific publisher if they want to pass the class. There is absolutely no exuse for charging $220 per book when the book costs nowhere near that to produce. Even buying used books or older versions is hugely expensive, and there is no alternative for a student who wants to be in that class. The price of books is a huge burden on several of my friends because they have to pay for the books themselves from money earned from a summer job or taken from savings. I don't believe it is entirely eithical for companies to charge such inflated prices for books that will be used only for educational pourposes and thereby further increase the already high cost of getting an education.