I think that in dealing with Power Point it is good to try and avoid extremes. You neither want to make your presentation so bland that it causes you're audience to lose interest nor do you want so many aids to where it becomes distracting. Both of these situations make your decrease the effectiveness of you presentation. I think the articles provided different view points of what goes into making power points, both good and bad. As such it was helpful to see not only what can make an effective slide show but also what makes one ineffective.
1) Make sure that you're power points are not too wordy. A slide that is completely covered in text is distressing to the audience, and they will most likely lose interest.
2)Have a visual on your slides. It makes the presentation more stimulating as a whole.
3)Having graphs it a good way to present data.
4)Make sure that the background of you slide show matches and compliments the theme of your presentation. You don't want to have a presentation over Buddhist monks and a background of Tokyo city.
5) Having music and video clips during a presentation is a good craft. However, make sure that they are not too distracting. Otherwise you're argument will be weakened as a whole.

Excel...oh Lord...

Well, what can I say about Excel? To be blunt, before this class I knew absolutely nothing about the program. I didn't know that it could do math. I didn't know that you had to type in formula's. Heck, I really didn't even know that it's primary purpose was to create spreadsheets. I am very grateful that this class has taught me how to use it, and, yes, it's information was incredible helpful. Good lord, I think excel is a great way to get organized. I can see it helping me keep a budget. I can see it helping me keep track of list and prioritize things that I need to take care of. Academic wise, I'm sure that it will be useful to me in projects and presentations when I need to present data and information. As far as my career goes, I really have no idea what I want to do. However, it will probably have to do with me being a researcher of some sort of even a professor. I know that excel will enable me to put together all of my research and information. Anyway, I am very happy that I learned how to use Excel and I know it will help me in the future.

Pictures that can lie

For my choice of photo, I decided to choose the picture of a British soldier telling Iraqi civilians to take cover. I choose this picture in because of it's strong emotional and political appeal. I also understand how altering such a photo would cause a great amount of controversy, though no harm may actually have been done. The image was altered by its creator, Los Angeles Times staff photographer Brian Walski. The image is in fact two separate images combined into one. My guess is that Walski's goal was to combined the image of the protective soldier and the Iraqi father carrying his child in order to have a stronger emotional impact on viewers. This could be that he supports the Iraq invasion and sought to use this picture as a sort of justification. It could also simply be that he wanted to create a photo that was especially potent. Either way, it's hard to say whether or not he actually did any harm. Yes, it was wrong of him to doctrine the photo's and pass it off as the truth. The TRUTH is however, that this scene depicted within the photo is all to real of a reality in Iraq. I believe that his heart may have been in the right place, but the ends do not justify the means.

Tech Center

So, I've already been to the first floor of the Library several times. But none of those times were academic. I've checked out a lot of movies already. I don't use a mac, but I must say that Mac users will be incredibly happy to see all of the different resources available to them. I can now see how this floor will come in handy for me when ever I will have to do projects. But to be perfectly honest, I felt a little over whelmed when I first entered, and didn't know where to begin. It kind of felt like a Kinko's or an Office Max. I hope that I can get more familiar with the technology before I do need to use it for some big project.

Copy Right laws

I have to admit, I did had some reservations about listen about copyright law. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find the Mrs. Diane Graves was very down to earth and relatible. She offered us relivant information for us to make wise choices. The extra bit of trivia that she would add from time to time was helpful as well. One thing that I didn't know about copyright law, or rather the RIAA, MPAA and ESA focused so much on Trinity University and that they in fact use limewire and Bit-torent themselves in order to find users.
Overall, I like that she was did not judge us on our opinions about downloading music and such. My view on the controversy between freely downloading copyrighted music and entertainment industry is as stands. Honestly, the main reason why the industry is making such a vendetta against free downloads is not out of legal rights; they want the money. And they have a right to this to a certain point. The companies need to earn money in order to produce more of it. But come on! $13,000-$17,000 dollar settlements? That's outrageous. Besides the vast of majority of the artists being downloaded have more than enough money to begin. And fans will still pay for their merchandise and to see them at shows. I also don't agree with the fact that they can issue subpoenas without warning.
In the end I can somewhat sympathise with record companies and for having their products taken from them freely. But the ends don't justify the means.