More Great Presentations!

My two favorite presentations of the day were Maria Jose Trevino's and Stephanie Hill's. I definitely felt that Stephanie picked a topic that was very interesting to her which made her project even more interesting. She used great sources of information and kept the classs very engaged. I am really interested about hearing Steve come to our school to present. Maria Jose also had a great presentation. She used great backgrounds and kept her presentation very interesting and professional. I enjoyed this presentation as well. Great job you guys!

What do you want to do with your life?

I really enjoyed hearing different peoples plans for their lives, or at least the basics of their major. There were so many interesting presentations that kept me very engaged throughout the class period. I also liked being able to see how different people formed their presentation slides. My favorite PowerPoint presentation was Lindsay's on Art Therapy. The color scheme, the music, the information was all extremely interesting! I must say that I can tell she spent lots of time on her presentation and it paid off! Yay Lindsay! I also enjoyed Maddy's presentation on Business Marketing with Neiman Marcus. Maddy's background was very clean and organized yet fashion friendly which was great for her presentation! I really enjoyed seeing everyone's presentations, however these were my favorites!

Powerpoint: The Good, the bad, and the ugly!

There are certain things we should always remember in making good powerpoint presentations! Bad powerpoint presentations can be very confusing, hard on the eyes, and extremely boring. It is very important that in making a powerpoint presentation you try to keep these five things together.


1) The less words per slide the better! When your slides are packed with information it takes away from you as a presenter and what it is you have to say. PowerPoint is an AID! It is only there to enforce important parts of your presentation not to be your crutch.

2) Leave the rainbows outside! Don't let your slides be a burst of unnecessary color. Make sure your slides are professional. If you have a theme, GREAT! Remember your presentation will most likely be given in a dark room and you want your presetation to be easily read and understood.

3) Get off the slides! Make yourself cue cards. Practice what you are going to say. Use the notes section of PowerPoint. DO whatever is neccessary not to read word for word what's on your presentation. You are trying to sell your ideas and opinions and in order to be convincing you must engage your audience.

4) What's in a picture? The images you place on your slides should look professional and be interesting. Make sure they are relevant to your slides and make sure they are quality photos. When people include pictures on their slides that are obviously pixelating it is quite a nightmare! At the same time, pictures can really express important parts and features so don't leave them out.

5) EDIT! Please check for spelling and grammatical errors. The worst thing is having a slide sitting in front of an audience for several seconds or minutes and have an obvious error blaring in their faces. Especially when EVERYONE notices.

Excelling @ Excel

I can't quite say I excelled at Excel, however I have learned so many useful things about the program this semester. This class has been so beneficial! Excel was the area that I had the least amount of practice with in this class, however now I feel more than comfortable with the basic usage of Excel. Excel is a program that all college students should feel comfortable with because it is so widely used in professional atmosphere. They are most obviously used in business, technology, marketing and sales, secretarial work but they are also used in professions people wouldn't automatically expect. My mom is a teacher and she loves using excel to manage student performance, grades, and many other things. I plan to eventually work in either education or human resources and in either field Excel will definitely prove useful. Also, for organizations on campus and my involvement in other extra curricular activities, Excel is useful for organizing and displaying data. I am so glad that I now feel very comfident in my Excel use.

L is for LIBRARY

Our Library has a host of awesome resources. Today we toured the Center for Learning Technology (CLT). The CLT is a great resource for anyone wanting to figure out how to develop a technology based presentation or project. The greatest part of this portion of the library is that it is open to anyone for both school-related and personal projects. There are sections labeled to seperate different areas. There are areas for web and graphic editing, audio and video editing. There are also scanners, media converters, and a digital sound lab available for use. The greatest part about this lab is that students are able to use all software and programs on these computers for free, as well as acquire professional help from employees in CLT. I have seen this area before, but never knew the extent of what was available. I am excited about being able to hopefully use these resources in the future. I a mso grateful to attend a university that has so much available for me.

Deceptive Lenses...

I chose to talk about the picture of Oprah Winfrey. This served as the cover of TV Guide in August of 1989. Winfrey's body was substituted for the body of actress Ann-Margret. There was no reasoning as to whythe picture was manipulated, however I do not feel that it was harmful to anyone in particular. It does however send off the vibe that certain bodies are of higher value or acceptance in today's society over others. This was done without consent of either parties and is not an action that should be considered acceptable.