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.

Learning Excel

Now in excel I can link applications from excel to powerpoint (or for that matter, copy and paste excel pieces to other microsoft office documents). I also learned how to put logic functions in and color code certain cells (for example, now I can color red those that made under a certain number by using a logic function). This could come in handy if I am planning an event and need to calculate costs, especially if several variables are still likely to change.