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Making website is really fun.
A good advise for future student would be to manage your files well so you don't have to worry about lossing anything.
Also, always prepare your files and images before start makeing your website.

My picture that lies & discussion

This is my picture that lies.
It is composed of two photos. The one on the background is a photo I took on the parking lot of Trinity with the bell towel at the back. The one on top is a photo of me and my grandma, which we took during summer this year. I chose these two pictures because they are easy to manipulate and kind of fitting together. I think both of them look pretty nice before being photoshoped, and looks even better after I put them together.
I manipulated it in three ways: first and most obvious, I extracted two of us from the original photo and pasted it on the background. Second, I made some changes on hue/saturation and brightness of the picture to make it look more "real". Last, I changed the date to today's to make it look like we just took it recently.
I chose to manipulate the photos this way because my grandma has never been to the U.S., and she probably will never be. Therefore, I faked the photo as if we were in Trinity together. Our dream came true in this picture!
The only reason that this picture could be harmful is that it causes the opposite effect -my grandma became more upset by seeing this picture as it reminds her that she cannot come to visit me in my college. But I think it is very unlikely.
I own the copyright of these two pictures, so I should be able to do whatever I wish. Therefore, the manipulation was not harmful.
Now I will talk about the article -journals find many images in researches are faked. I think either altering or polishing images in researches are definitely wrong, no matter what your purposes are. As this quote says: " "We like dirt -- not all gels run perfectly," she says. "Beautification is not necessary. If your data is solid, it shines through."" Especially in a science journal, honesty is highly demand.

Presentatons in Class

I really enjoyed watching my classmates' presentations last class. It is surprising to learn that everyone in the class has a different interested area of study. The variety of topics covered a lot of useful and interesting knowledge from different subjects.
One of my favorite presentations is: Noelle's presentation of classical studies about Oedipus Rex. I have never taken such class and know almost nothing about Greek literature. It is so dramatic that I feel like the story is from another world. The way Noelle presented was very attention-catching as well because she followed all the rules of good presentation such as not reading from the slides, and her voice was clear with a good volume. I also liked her design of the powerpoint. First I think the title slide is catchy, and I liked all her animations and pictures.
Another one of my favorite presentations is: Caroline's presentation about the audition. I have always loved theater, especially musicals. So I was really excited to see that Caroline's topic is related to theater. The content of her powerpoint was detailed, interesting, and informative. I learned a lot about drama in Trinity and things I did not know before. She was very engaged with the auditions while presenting to the class. Her powerpoint was very well-designed too. It is easy to read, and I liked all the background and pictures which are well connected to her topic, and gives good visualization as well.

All about PowerPoint

I found these articles are really helpful. Since we use PowerPoint pretty often for assignments and other activities, it is important to know what we need when making a presentation using PowerPoint and what to avoid. I summarized a list of five guidelines I think are the most important, as well as the what is annoying when people do not follow them.

1, have limit text on your PowerPoint.
Since you are the one who is presenting, the audience will pay more attention to you then your powerpoint. So if you have too many words on your slide, then people will not know if they should take time to read them all. Also, your font should be big and clear, and the smallest size you should ever use is 28. In the article "Really bad powerpoint", it says no more than 6 words on a slide. I think that is a bit too strict and the information would not be complete sometimes. Therefore, my suggestion would be try to include all the key words only, and make it simple and easy to read.

2. Do not read from your slides.
People tend to read from their slides when they cannot remember what to say, and it is really annoying. The audience can read, so they do not need you to read for them. It is also one of the disadvantages of having too much text. You should have interaction and eye contact with your audience in order to let them be engaged with your presentation and be interested in your topic, as well as sending the information effectively.

3. Use nice color.
I have seen some people use weird colors in their powerpoint, which is very distracting and hurting your eyes. Also, the color of font should have strong contraction with the background in order for people to see clearly and get the idea more easily.

4. Include suitable graphs/charts/videos to help you present.
Sometimes people can get bored if there is only text in your powerpoint. Nice charts for data and graphs of your topic can effectively increase people's interest and help to visualize. Video is good as well but be careful with the lengths and relevance with your topic. Get it ready to go, which means to load it before hand and do not make everyone wait for you.

5. No distracting photos/backgrounds
The point of presenting your powerpoint is to help you communicate better with the audience but not to entertain or distract them. Unsuitable photos can destroy a good presentation since people will not pay full attention to you by looking or discussing about the pictures in your slides. Same thing for the background. Do not use fancy pictures as background unless it is closely related to your topic or you need it for visual effect.

visit to CLT

I remember passing by CLT during new student orientation, but I did not really pay any attention to it and never thought there are that many things can be useful for us.

There are not usually too many people there so it is a quiet place to study and use computers. I noticed there are many different areas and rooms for different purposes. For example, the audio and video area can be used for making projects such as short video clips and editing. There are all sorts of equipments available besides computers, such as tape and DVD players. The studio area is for publishing and pictures editing. There are plenty scanners (which I have been looking for since school started), and there are many useful programs on the computers that students can use for doing their projects involving photographs.

The CLT can be used for our class since we are doing Photoshop and we can go there when we have questions about it or just go there and work if you do not have photoshop on your computer.

What I learned about Excel

I have learned about using Excel before, but I can never remember to use it for classes when I am dealing with numbers, tables and graphs. Now my knowledge of Excel becomes more solid and I know it well enough to handle many things and I think I will use it more often.

I learned a great deal that I did not know before. For example, I learned how to use the functions and got to know that there are so many more we can use such as "if", "min", "max", and "StDev". I wish I knew these before and it could help me so much for my calculus class. I also learned conditional formatting which could show a specific number differently in many ways according to the criteria you gave. I got to know how to choose a theme and layout for your spreadsheet and as well as different templates you can use and create your own. In addition, there are many useful tools I learned to use including sort& filter, format cells, create graphs, view borders, color cells, and the list goes on.

It is a useful application for many academic fields and there will be tons of opportunities that I can use Excel in the future. I can use it for math class for calculations, and for science, economics, and communication class I can use it for creating graphs for a presentation or research paper. Businesses can use it to keep track of their employee's payment and profits they made. Furthermore, people can also use it personally, such as monthly budget, tuition fee plan, spends and incomes, etc.

I think Excel is a very useful and helpful program, and I will take advantage of it in the future.

Searching the Internet

I learned a lot from Chris Nolan’s presentation about how to make high quality search on internet which we will need to use almost everyday.
First of all, I got to know what “I’m feeling lucky” on google is for, although I have been using google for years, I have never known what is that button for. It is nice to know the function is that it takes you to a webpage which they think is what you are looking for and you can find a lot of information there.
I used to be wondering about how google sort the order of its results, since most of us would only look at the first two to three pages even though there are more than millions of results. I learned that Google sorts results by the popularity of the sites, of how many clicks are there, but not by how much they pay.
You can tell the origin of the websites by looking at the URL of it and determine whether it is trustable.
There are many things google search can do besides search for websites. It also contains definitions, maps, images, news, formulas, etc.
Something that surprised me is that google has a function called google scholar, which is a tool for searching for scholarly journals. I have never known that we can actually find scholarly or peer-viewed journals on google, so I only go to academic research complete to find those articles. Now I know that google can take us there by filtering its results and makes it much more convenient for us.