Barack Obama's Secret Past (Pics That Lie)

"They're sort of in a conflict with themselves for wanting to accept the hot stuff. Sometimes they accept less-than-ideal material." - John Krueger (taken from the article "Journals Find that Many Images in Research Are Faked")

I chose a picture of Barack Obama giving some sort of speech, with just a plain colored background. I pulled this image from Google images, and it was a pretty neutral picture, so I figured I could place it into any situation. I chose Obama because he is the most well-known figure in America and I chose to portray him speaking in front of a background of the Black Panther Party to make it controversial. To manipulate this image, I used the "Magic Wand Tool" to remove

Obama and the microphone from the original picture. Then I put in the background and converted it all to back and

white to match. I then adjusted the contrast to make the pictures blend together better. As mentioned before, the reason for making this was just to be very controversial, but it is harmful in its portrayal of Obama. It associates him with a Black Power Party with socialist and communist doctrines and it was very controversial in its practices. It is in no way realistic, but it would certainly still be considered a harmful manipulation. It goes to show that with modern editing programs,

pictures can be manipulated in ways that they were never meant to be and taken way out of context. Do your research and make sure that pictures that you are viewing come from reliable sources and are not taken out of context.

PowerPoint Presentations

My favorite presentation so far has been Will Prudich's "Bonobo" Presentation. It discussed the behavior of Bonobo monkeys. The content was good and relevant to the topic throughout. Not only was it entertaining, but it also followed many of the guidelines for what makes a good powerpoint presentation. It applied the same background for each slide and had clear, readable text that was easy to look at as a viewer. There were not any crazy or distracting animations within the main part of the presentation and the pictures and sounds used were appropriate for the message that he was presenting. Although the presentation seemed like a joke, it was actually well-done in terms of organization and design.

Another good presentation was conducted by Caroline Arroyo. It had very good information on how to handle the task of the audition in theatre. It had great information on the subject and, in my opinion, it was superior in design compared to all of the presentations. The background designs were very clear pictures and all had the same theme. All of the transitions flowed smoothly from one to the next. Everything down to the text style was relative and applied to her theme nicely.

Power Point

PowerPoint can be a very effective tool for presenting ideas to a group. However, it can only be effective if it is used properly. All of the readings discussed what made up a good PowerPoint presentation, and what can make it a disaster. These readings were effective because everyone has seen enough PowerPoints to recognize these common flaws. In my opinion, this is a list of the top points:

• One recurring theme of each of the readings was perhaps the most important point of all: simplicity. Keeping the slides simple can keep the audience more engaged and does not confuse them. Simple means not
• Another point that was brought up was, to me, probably the most annoying flaw of PowerPoint Presentations: distracting transitions and build ups. These are completely ineffective and very unappealing to look at.
• Good use of color is also more important than most people think. Make sure that when you choose a color, that it is clearly visible in the slide.
• Choosing fonts well can also be an effective tool for appealing to the audience. They should be somewhat boring, because they should not distract from the presenter.
• Although keeping slides simple is important, pictures are a necessary part of a presentation. Since there should not bee too many pictures, however, they should be of high quality and relevant to the presentation.

CLT

The visit to CLT was very informative. I had not known what this place was used for or what CLT even was. I was surprised when I walked in and saw this center filled with both Mac and PC computers. The Center serves a wide variety of functions ranging from working on group projects to a recording studio to video editing. It has different stations designated for certain uses, but for the most part, the computers can be used for anything.
I also learned that CLT is a great alternative to your personal computer, because it stays completely updated on pretty much all of the latest programs and technologies that you would need throughout college. The best part is that it is free to use, saving you the trouble of illegally downloading these programs, or having to spend hundreds of dollars on them. It has a great video editing program and the computers run very quickly.
I am glad that we had the opportunity to discover this library facility, and I am sure I will use it in the future.

Exploring Excel

Coming into this class, I thought that I had a decent understanding of Excel. I knew how to enter data sets and create graphs of them with fancy colors. I had even understood how to make equations in the cells. To my knowledge, that was the extent of what excel could accomplish. However, from the very first lesson working on Excel, I was shocked to learn that all of the other icons and tabs could be used for something useful.

Being able to work hands-on with the program helped me learn the material quickly and effectively. One tool that I had very little understanding of was the basic function key. Letting Excel solve formulas such as standard deviations and averages for you and being able to apply that drag function for many cells was something that I had only dreamed of doing in this program. And the fact that you could display the data using conditional formatting and presenting it in certain orders blew my mind. I even was excited to learn how to simply make the spreadsheets look presentable by using themes and heading styles to organize it.

I do not know exactly what I will need Excel for in the future, but now I am aware that it can be used for a wide variety of tasks. Perhaps I will use it to calculate my personal finances or use it for a profession in which I need to record travel expenses or income statements. For now, however, I am using it in an academic setting for tasks such as keeping track of my grades and to creating data tables with graphs.

Chris Nolan Presentation

Chris Nolan's presentation on searching the Internet was very informative and taught me a lot of useful tips for being much more efficient in that aspect. Many of the tips were about effective techniques for narrowing searches to access the exact information that you are looking for. And because Google is the most popular search engine, it was the search engine specifically addressed. One technique that I learned was how to narrow searches to a specific type of URL. By going to the advanced search window, you can specify whether you wish to view only sites that are .com, .gov, .org, etc. This is useful because it can lead to more reliable sources. There are other simple techniques that I learned that can be applied directly in the search box. By putting quotes around a phrase, it allows you to search for those specific words in the order that you want them. Another way to narrow the search is to subtract key words from the search. Perhaps the most useful way I learned to narrow the search was to select the Google Scholar section. For college research, it is necessary to use these resources. I was surprised at how much searches could be narrowed down and also at how inefficient I was and how little I really knew about using search engines.

Pictures that Lie

I chose the fifth photo, taken from a CBS news broadcast. I selected this photo because I thought it was interesting how they manipulated the image. The frame was taken from a New Year's Eve broadcast in 2000. They manipulated it by placing their logo in the background, in order to conceal a NBC emblem. The manipulation is not harmful, they are just trying not to promote rival networks.