Advice

My advice for this class would be to stay caught up with your work and come to class everyday. It is important to be in class so that you can undersstand everything well to stay up with your homework.

My Favorite Websites

My favorite websites were Michelle Rangel's, Morgan's, and Courtney's.

I liked Michelle's because it was professional and organized. She did a great job of making it visually appealing and it seems like she put a lot of hard work into it.

Morgans looked like a website made my a professional. I loved her home page and navigation. If I saw this website, I would not have guessed it was made by a student. She did a great job.

I enjoyed Courtney's navigation as well. Like the other websites, it was professional and easy to read. All her information was good and the website was unique.

My Website

Please visit my website at: www.cs.trintiy.edu/~abuck1


Making this website was definitely harder than I thought. I did not realize it would take so much time to make small changes. I underestimated how long it would take and how it would be more difficult to be creative with it. I did all of my website on Expression Web. I was not able to make Kompozer work on my computer and I liked how Expression Web worked better than Kompozer. My pages are very similar, but I believe my favorite page would be the one for my brother, Willie. I like how the pictures and colors look together. I wouold have made an image map or a more creative navigation bar if I could do it again. When it came to the technical aspect, the biggest challenge was saving the website. I got a little confused in the process, but I was able to figure it out. The biggest design challenge was making sure everything was sized appropriately and center so that it would look nice and neat on the internet. I will probably show my website only to my family. I think they will appreciate it, if no one else. I enjoyed looking for all the pictures and I think they will enjoy looking at them as well. I'm not sure if I will make another website for another class, but I am very happy that this class was able to teach me how it needs to be done.

Larry Hechler Talk

Larry Hechler came to our class to talk to us about hardware. He shared a lot of information with us that I did not know! It definitely seemed like he preferred PC and i was not aware that all the individual pieces of Mac's cost so much more! If I every have a problem with my Mac and cannot use it any longer, I will consider getting a Dell now. I also learned a lot about the proper way to clean our computers and what is harmful. Larry Heckler said that products with acetone, ammonia, chlorine, or alcohol can't be sure on the LCD screen or anywhere on the computer because it can slowly ruin it! He told us that we should never spray anything directly onto the computer because it can drip down into the computer and if anything happens to the motherboard, our computers will not work anymore! I really enjoyed all the information that he shared with us and almost everything he said was new to me!

My PowerPoint Presentation

I have always loved art and art history, but more recently I have become interested in art therapy. I enjoy working with kids with disabilities and I have considered art therapy as a career working with both kids with disabilities and with at risk children. Because I am so interested in it, I chose to do my presentation on the importance of art therapy. I liked the set of of my presentations, but I wish I would have prepared more and included more information about how art therapy works. While creating this powerpoint I learned that you can put more information onto one slide than it seems. I was able to make one slide seem like five by using animations. I also learned how to put videos into PowerPoint, which I was not sure how to do before this project.
I enjoyed all of the PowerPoint presentations and thought all of them were well done. None of the used too many words and they all appeared well-organized. Two of my favorites, however, were Arielle's about Monsanto and Morgan's about Doctors Without Borders. Morgan knew a lot about the subject she chose and made her presentation very persuasive. The pictures and the organization of the PowerPoint were effective in making others see why her subject was important and why people should consider joining. It was well timed and the topic was very interesting. Arielle's also had a topic that interested me. Her presentation also had a good dramatic effect to persuade people to consider the cause. It was well organized and the lay out was effective. I did not think that any of the PowerPoint presentations were poorly done and I found each of them interesting.

Pictures that Lie

     Too often images are altered to such an extent that the public is unable to tell if they are real or fake. Nat Ives discusses the issue of using Photoshop in her article in "Advertising Age". She says,"Photoshop abuse is out of control at magazines, partly because celebrities demand protection from exposure to reality and partly because editors live and die by newsstand sales. An actually ugly Betty just wouldn't be good for anyone's business, even if it might represent something relatable." The one of the most frequently discussed issue of photo manipulation seems to be that of altering photographs of celebrities to make them appear flawless. I agree with the statement from Nat Ives. Photoshop is definitely being abused in the media and it has had a negative effect on many individuals. Ives makes several good points on why photo manipulation should be banned. There is no reason for them to make the celebrities appear "perfect" and it does not serve any purpose besides assuring that celebrities are not embarrassed by a couple extra pounds on a few common imperfections.

     Photographs can be altered to show people looking entirely different than reality or to convey an entirely different meaning. There are many reasons that people choose to manipulate pictures whether it be for political or social gain, to persuade, for entertainment, to make a point, or to harm others. However, a distinction between harmful and beneficial photo manipulation must be made.

      For my pictures that lie project I did not choose to manipulate a photo in a way that was not harmful. I chose an image of an eye and another of a rock climber from stock exchange and pasted them together in a way that is obviously a manipulation of images. The same type of manipulation is often used in advertisements. I copied part on one picture and placed it overtop of the other. I changed to contrast and converted some of the picture into black and white. I used a photo filter and changed the saturation on the colored portion of the image. I manipulated this photo to show that there can be photo fakery that is harmful, and photo manipulation that is only for entertainment. Because this was not meant to look realistic, it is not a harmful manipulation. The point of the image in entirely different than that of the airbrushed celebrities discussed in the article by Nat Ives that attempt to "unrealistic ideals of body and beauty, to the detriment of women's health." When a photograph is meant to appear as though it has been altered, it is not harmful to society, but when there is confusion about whether or not the photograph represents reality, problems can develop.

Ives, Nat. "Despite talk of ethics codes, airbrushing is here to stay." Advertising Age 79.16 (2008): 24. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 4 Apr. 2011.

Chris Nolan and Search Engines

Chris Nolan, the assistant librarian, spoke to our class about search engines today. I found it very interesting that a large majority of people use Google when searching online. Chris said that about 66% of people use Google rather than other search engines such as Yahoo!, Bing/MSN, Ask, AOL, etc. Google has become popular because they have developed algorithms that provide us with relevant, recent, and popular articles. Google and many other search engines are free. Because of this, these search engines make money through advertisements that people pay them to put on their website. Google has not allowed people to pay for their website to occur on one of the first pages of results because they are trying to keep an objective standard. They do, however, let organizations and companies advertise on the sides of the webpage.
Google has been trying to fight the problem of companies finding other ways to get higher on the list under multiple searches. The advertisers and marketers at J.C. Penny even made fake websites that would link back to their page so that the J.C. Penny website would show up among the first websites when a variety of words were put into the search bar. Google has been trying to avoid this problem and changed their algorithm to make sure that J.C. Penny would appear lower in the results. Similar events to this have occurred and Google is constantly combatting the problem. I believe this is why Google has become so popular.