Power Point Presentations

In class, we learned about power point presentations: what to do and what not to do. Here are some guidelines:
1) Have a visual theme, but avoid using Power Point templates. Almost everyone has seen every power point theme and people are tired of them! To keep people's attention, make your own template using the slide master.
2) Keep it simple. Avoid using too many bullets or too much text. This makes it easier for the audience to understand what the presenter is attempting to say though his or her powerpoint.
3) Use high quality graphics because they keep the powerpoint professional. When there are too many cheesy animations, the Power Point looks less professional.
4) Keep animations simple. Too much moving around is distracting for the audience.
5) Use video or audio to demonstrate to the audience what your point is or something that adds to your point. However, avoid cheesy sound effects.
One pet peeve I have with Power Points is when someone makes a Power Point with too many bullets and then they just read every single word, as if I cannot read it for myself. People should add to what their Power Point is saying.

My Photo Collage

My photo collage is of three random items that I found around my room. The first is a clorox wipes, the second is dry erase markers, and the third is a deck of cards. I named it "Dreams of Randomness" because I used those three items over and over again, except changed each of their features. The collage is like going through a random dream.

Chris Nolan's Visit

Chris Nolan, Assistant University Librarian at Coates Library in Trinity University, came to talk to our class today about search engines and how to get the best and most accurate results when searching the web. Here are a four new things I learned:

1) There are over 200 factors that influence what results come up in Google when you type in keywords. For example, one factor is: the more a page is linked to as a reference, the closer it is to being one of the top results.

2) When Google searches for your keyword/s, it also searches for synonyms.

3) When typing in your keywords, if there is a word or phrase you don't want to appear, you can just put a minus symbol before the word and it will not come up in your results.

4) There is a tab on the side that you can click to help you get closer to the results you are looking to find. It has different categories of media, different time restraints, local and distant results, and other subjects. This helps to limit the number of results that appear when a search is conducted

One thing I was surprised about was that the way Google makes its money is by letting advertisers buy ad space. I had always wondered how Google became so profitable so quickly.

Chris Nolan also showed us ways to get less commercial items by typing in the words, ".org," or, ".gov" into the search engine.