Words of Wisdom....

Always do your homework.
Make friends in the class so that you can help each other with the homework,at one point help is needed.
If you do not understand the homework, do not be shy to ask Mrs. Belisle or the teacher's assistant because they will help you.

Websites that I liked

This is the first time that I have made a website and it was a good experience. There were many websites that I liked but my favorites were the ones of Darcy Wheeler's, Jaclyn Heibel's, and Emily Hilliard's websites. I liked Darcy's because it had a lot of pictures to look at and she was really creative about the design of her webpage. I also liked how on her imagemap it takes you to a site where they have interesting pictures. I like looking at all those pictures. I liked Jaclyn's because it was very detailed. I loved how in her favorites she had lists of places and things and how she had links to each favorite item. I liked how many pictures she has; she even has a picture with me in it. I liked Emily's because I loved how she made imagemap collages on all of her pages and how she made her navigation bar with pictures. Please visit my own website at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~aliendo.

HTML codes

It is important to know how to use HTML even though there are programs out there that can do everything for you. HTML codes can be tedious to remember and to type up, but they are the foundation of websites. Yes, there are fancy and quick programs that let you not deal with the codes, but it takes away from the feeling of accomplishment when finished when dealing staight with the codes. Knowing HTML allows for a better understanding of creating websites. People who know HTML can create new things that would not be found in a programs like Expression Web or Dreamweaver. If you are a web designer, codes should be a big part of training and should be helpful if the programs malfunction or dont give the right result needed. Designers should be in control of their website not the program controling their actions.

Favorite Powerpoints

My two favorite Powerpoint Presentations are of Darcy's and Moni's. I liked Darcy's because it showed how appealing Art can be as a major. I liked her first slide where there were different color splotches that were animated. It showed that she put a lot of effort into the first slide in particular. She was very convincing in the slide where she said that it would be easy to study abroad since art is in every culture and sometimes studying other culture's art is important to advance in the major. I liked Moni's presentation because it was very descriptive of supply and demand. I have never really cared for Economics but her graphs made me want to learn more. All the animations on the Supply and Demand chart made it seem easy even. She was very sure of what she was talking about. I also like the animation of the dollar sign which made the description more reasonable. They were both great presentations and very creative in how they made their powerpoints.

Powerpoint Blog

The articles bring up very good tips to making a powerpoint presentation. Consistent color schemes, word limitation, and simpleness are key points to making a good presentation. I think the most important tips we learned in class are to:

Limit text, not too much wordiness
Keep bullet points down to a minimum
Keep color schemes simple and consistent(no bright colors on top of bright colors)
Use appropriate charts and/or pictures
Limit animation
If you follow these tips you are well on your way to a successful presentation. Just make sure to deliver your presentation well too!

Web Presentation

Chris Nolan's presentation about searching the Internet was very interesting. During the presentation I realized that although I was already using some search techniques, there were many more tools available. I had no idea that you could limit the type of web site in the results . For me, that particular piece of information will save a lot of time because it allows you to weed out irrelevant results. Also, I almost always use Google when searching the net, not for any particular reason, just out of habit. I was very surprised to see how Yahoo! was around before Google since Google is one of the top search engines. Google is such a big thing now that its become a verb (I'm googling something). I was a bit surprised by the difference between the search engines' criteria. Seeing them compared it will probably make me more likely to use both engines in the future so that I have more options.

Copyright Knowledge

I learned a lot in the copyright presentation. Copyright laws are becoming more strict and complicated as time passes. As students, we were told to sign University documents stating that we will abide by copyright laws. I learned how the Copyright law is 19 months older than Bill of Rights. Copyright is covered the length of author’s life plus seventy-five years after. That means things from the 1930’s are finally in public domain. I think that the Sonny Bono Act (Mickey Mouse Protection Act) was not a good idea becuase it is a copyright law that was passed in 1998 by congressman Sonny Bono to extend all copyright coverage for an extra 20 years just because Disney Characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were going to be in public domain. They should have just extended the copyright on only those characters not on every and anything that is copyrighted. Because of the extention, things that come out for public domain are from the thirties where there are not a lot of similarities from then and now. Is it fair for there to be a longer copyright just because of Disney characters? I can understand how they want to have ownership of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck since they are still popular cartoons but there is no reason to extend everything for them. It is interesting to see how much influence important cartoon figures have an effect on the copyright laws.