Favorite PowerPoint

The two blogs I liked the most where Jessica's and Nick's. Jessica talked about her theory of the cause of the horses as a symbol in Phoenicians boats. For Jessica's blog what I mostly liked was the way she talked. The words she used were very formal and exact about the subject she was talking about. She used simple terms that people who haven't taken a mythology class could relate to. The background and other elements she used were relative and coherent with her topic. This is another presentation which I liked because the presentation did not over power the presenter. Such as using animations that weren't needed, distracting sounds or long texts.

I especially liked Nick's because of the material he covered. It was very interesting for me especially because we are studying some of these interactions in Biology. His presentation was also very simple and it concentrated more on what the presenter had to say. One of the key elements I was looking for in the PowerPoint presentations was the fact that the presentation would overshadow the presenter. This was not the case for Nick. His presentation complemented what he was saying. The colors he used were also very appropriate with the topic of his presentation.

Another aspect that these two presentations had were that they weren't as time consuming. They were had short important information and did not go into the details of their topic.

The Power of PowerPoint

While reading the articles, I agreed on most of what they were saying but I had a few questions. I mainly didn't understand why the writers of the articles advise not to use animations or sounds on PowerPoint presentations. Personally, every time I am in the audience in a PowerPoint presentation and there is an animation or a sound, I wake up and pay more attention to what the person is saying.

Another aspect I didn't know that was really crucial, and in all three articles they had repeated it, was the quality of the pictures someone uses. Even though these articles were mainly talking about presentations in businesses and at a corporate level, I can tell the impact it might have to an audience, instead of using a clip art.

One thing that shocked me was the amount of information someone used in their presentations. In most of the ones I have been in and even presentations I have made, the information in the slides aren't less than six words. In one of the examples there was only a background picture and a number (72%). After reading the article, it made sense to use as little amount of information as possible in the slides and explain it better. By creating visual and vocal connections, the audience will remember what you are saying better.

This would be one of the biggest advices to give to my classmates with their PowerPoint presentation. Use more visual support because in this way the audience will remember more visually then just by using bits of information. Images stay longer in my head rather than words.

Another tip I would give to my classmates would be to use cue cards. This way you will have time to organize what you will say during the presentation and with a few words on it you will remember what comes next. You will also avoid using your PowerPoint presentation as a teleprompter.

The suggestions they made in the articles were very good ones. Especially the amount of information you put on your slides. Thinking about past PowerPoint presentations, the ones I would fall asleep in would be the ones that had 20 points in one slide. The most entertaining one I had seen was about 5 slides. Two of them had 3 bullets each and the rest were images. Your audience will pay more attention to what you are saying and not so much on what they have to read in the slide.

These were the main guidelines I thought were important. And what I really find annoying about some PowerPoint presentation is the simplicity. For example having a white background and writing in black letters. Why not a clear blue background with dark green letters? I like it better :D

Go, Excel, Go!!

During these past few weeks we have been working mainly on the program: Microsoft Office Excel. Before this class I had a very good understanding of how to work in Excel. I am a big fan of this program. Even though I had some problems working with Excel I learned to work around it.


What I mainly learned from this class were different functions like the IF function. Even though I don't think I will use it any time soon, I didn't know Excel had that type of help in the functions section. Another aspect I learned was the conditional formatting. This tool really helps to visualize data you are trying to find in a large table.


Excel can become a really important program especially if you are in a class that involves stats, graphs, etc. Excel makes this hard processes of making columns or scatter plots of tables that can be 50x50 so much easier! Personally I have already worked with Excel on many of my classes, especially laboratories where most of the data needs to be visualized so that in this way better conclusions can be drawn out of the experiment.
Excel might be the most useful for businesses because you can just apply function and make cell references. When the economy changes, or when a different situation in your company occurs, you can just change one small detail on the Excel program and this will go out making a cascade of correction.


Excel is a very helpful tool for anybody and I highly recommend for anybody. You can even organize your information using the sorting button.


Thanks Excel! :)

CLT !!

On our tour of the CLT room I learned many things. The first one was that is existed! The CLT room is located in the first floor of Coates Library.
This room has many sorts of resources. The most interesting resource I saw was the machine that converted old movies that came in rolls. The machines seemed very worn out, but still cool. :)
Another aspect about this room that fascinated me was the section where you can have video conferences. This is a very useful place, especially if you want to take classes with someone that is in Japan. This section was also useful for students that need to be interviewed but can’t do it personally. In the CLT, you may achieve this with the help of the kind technicians that work there.
A very helpful tool in the CLT was the fact that there were Macs as well. This could help other students that are used to Macs to keep working with them or can help other people (like me) get use to Macs.
An important part of the CLT room was the fact that they work mainly on video applications. In the CLT you can edit and burn a video you have made into a DVD. Even though I probably don’t think I will use it, this is a very important resource for college students.
I am looking forward to visit the CLT more often, especially because it is a great place to study even though you don’t need a computer.

Pictures and Videos that lie..

The picture I chose to analyze is the one shown here. This picture is a single frame of the live video broadcast of CBS for New Year's Eve. I chose this picture because of the effect that the changes made to it might have had. There is a very controversial subject behind this that I will get into more detail later on in my entry.

The picture is a fragment from the New Year's Eve broadcast video in Times Square from CBS News. The picutre was subjected to a very sutile change, that at first sight you wouldn't inmediatly realize. To be honest I skimmed through all one the pictures first before reading the description, and this was one of the pictures that didn't have a major impact. But after reading the description, I still couldn't absolutly say that it looks real or not, like in other pictures. The emblem at the upper right corner of the video/single frame, was changed from the emblem of NBC to the one of the news channel that is covering the story, CBS.

In the description it states that the change was made to hide the NBC emblem that was there before. This is totally logic having known that NBC and CBS are network channels that are in a constant competition.

I personally think that the change in the emblem was harmful for the network of NBC. This is so because NBC invested greatly to have the Times Square displaying their emblem. CBS only had to cropp it off and put their emblem for much less money. NBC lost a lot of publicity because of this change, even if it is insignificant and almost unnoticable.

This shows that you can invest a lot of money into publicity and having your company's logo in the right location, or just alter a few pictures with the logo of your company and have it go around the internet having the same impact for much less investement. This really makes me wonder the inegratity of our society...