CLT - More Like HOT

The Center for Learning Technology, or the Hub for Overly-fantastical Technogear as I like to call it, looks like the place to be if you ever get in a techno-jam. Before today the giant room with the gaping door just looked like a place for only really intense techno-savvy students really in depth in Audio/Video editing and other sorts of high-gear technology projects. But today I was enlightened, awakened some may say, to not only the true power behind the HOT in the basement of the library, but the easy accessibility AND user-friendly programs and staff located there.

I realized thanks to Robert Chapman that I can use the Center and its vast and varied resources to do practically anything I need to technology-wise for any class throughout my time here at Trinity. Not only can they help with the photo-editing software we will be using in Ms. Belisle's class soon, but any media class I may take, or any class for that matter where I may need to produce something, ANYTHING involving technology they can lend their time and knowledge to help me through it. Since I will probably be majoring in business, they will be able to help with my presentations and group projects throughout my classes. Especially since they offer this really amazing room that sets up an environment just like a classroom where a group project will be presented, technology and all!

Excel Overview

When I was about 8 years old, my dad showed me how to add numbers on an excel spreadsheet. For about the next two weeks, it became my project to see just how high the numbers would go if I just kept adding the sum of my last equation to itself. It looked something like this:



Those two weeks were the time of my life! I loved adding those numbers and seeing how high they got. I even went so far as to actually memorize the sequence I had created (which went into the billions by the end of it)! It actually happened just because I spent so much time looking at it, not even because I intentionally meant to memorize it.

If only my 8 year old self could see my excel abilities now...

With how much I have learned about functions, charts, cell references and all the different kinds of formatting you can do with spreadsheets, I would have spent 24 hours a day just playing with all the numbers I had created and making them go higher then ever imagined! I would have been able to make them different styles or apply different themes to my spreadsheet that really would have made it stand out.

In the future, I plan to use excel to the best of its abilities whenever possible. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the program and all of its new artistic as well as functional qualities. At the moment I am planning to major in business so I am sure I will return to this program at some point in my career here at Trinity, as well as my career beyond the University in order to create spreadsheets to track sales, marketing quotas, and performance reports just like the ones we have already worked on in class. I cannot thank the class as well as our professor enough for teaching me all these wonderful tricks in Excel.

Search the Web? For Class? What?!

Chris Nolan, second only to the Head Librarian at Coates Library came into our class on Thursday and taught us a thing or two about searching the World Wide Web. Contrary to my prior beliefs and teachings, there is actual credible and scholarly information to be found from searching Google, Bing, Yahoo, and the like. After a lifetime of being told this myth of unreliability, Chris Nolan visited our class to correct it.

Through narrowing a search down to only the essential or most "relevant" pages, a student can actually retrieve useful and acceptable info from the Internet WITHOUT using only library databases. Whereas Benjamin Harris enlightened us on the use of the library website and its valuable and varied databases, Chris Nolan opened our minds to the whole Internet, and its literally billions of resources out there for us to take advantage of. Google Scholar, and search engines of the like with a specific aim, can filter out the irrelevant information and provide a student with what they need to succeed. Thanks Chris!

Voters Betrayed!

In the 2004 Presidential election, the following photo was pictured on major broadcasting stations:

I chose this picture because it is just like the political world of America today to attempt to deceive the voters of this country at any cost. Regardless of whether or not Kerry was a good choice for president, there is no excuse for falsely slandering his reputation, and putting him where he does not belong.

In the photo, Jane Fonda is speaking at an anti-Vietnam War protest and it appears that Kerry is sitting right alongside of her waiting to speak next. This photo is in fact a composition of multiple photos.

The major part of the photo, Jane Fonda's speech, was taken at a political rally in 1972 against the Vietnam War. John Kerry, is very conveniently inserted into this background after being taken from his original photo at a Register for Peace Rally held in 1971.

The manipulation of the two photos was done because while Kerry was campaigning as a war hero and a proud supporter of the U.S. military, a Bush supporter wanted to make it seem as if he was a hypocrite and therefore lose the favor of the populace.

This conjunction of the photos could have proven extremely harmful had the truth not been discovered. Attempting to mask a politician as a hypocrite when he is not (at least in this case) is a major crime especially when the presidential election is hanging in the balance.