Powerpoint Tricks and Tips

I thought that the three different articles did a really great job both giving some background on the reasoning on why and how we use PowerPoint and I was surprised to learn that they taught me a couple lessons that I will now be able to use on my PowerPoint presentations in the future. I thought it was very interesting to learn that powerpoint was created by a group of engineers so that they could better communicate with their marketing teams. I also was surprised to learn rules such as standard backgrounds and graphics from powerpoint should not be used and bullet points are rarely needed. It just seems that based on other presentations I have seen people use these two techniques a lot. Two of the most important suggestions that I took from the articles were that texts should always be size 28 or above and the B key can be used to make a slide go blank so that the audience focus' on the presenter and iformation.

The Guidelines that I found most important and interesting were:

1. Keeping the PowerPoint simple. A very valid point was made in the "Top Ten Slide Tips" article was that the slides are not supposed to be the star of the show, the presenter and the information presented should be the main focus.

2. Limit transitions and builds. Everyone has sat through a painfully drawn out, over-animated presentation at some point during grade school because one of their peers was overly excited or just thought it would be funny to make a slide with a different transition for every single word on it. It is horrible to sit through and it is nearly impossible for the audience to listen to any sort of message or information presented because they are so distracted.

3. Use high-quality graphics. I thought it was interesting that the point was made to use photographs always, and never clip art. I have seen many of my teachers, professors or professional presenters over the years use clip art in their presentations. I think it is a valid point though, clip art does look a lot less professional than a high-quality photograph.

4. Avoid PowerPoint templates for a visual theme. I would not have thought about this either before reading the article "Top Ten Slide Tips." I always thought it was semi-professional to use a standard template from PowerPoint but using an original background would definitely better captivate the audience and make it easier to remember in the viewers head because of its originality.

5. Use color well. I love that the article spoke about color linking to emotions. I find that to be incredibly true. I have so much appreciation for a slide show that uses a combination of colors wisely. It helps me relate to and appreciate the information and the slide so much more than a standard black and white slide would. I also found the information about cooler colors being better for backgrounds and warmer colors being better for foreground text and objects because it pops out at you very beneficial and interesting.

Experience with Excel

The most important and useful thing I learned in Excel was definitely how to use equations and cell references. I will be able to use that in any career I end up pursuing, but it should be especially useful since right now I am majoring in accounting. Until we get to upper level classes a lot of our work is done on either word or excel. I wish that I would have had the Excel knowledge I do know for my past 2 semesters of accounting, it would have saved me a lot of time. The most interesting part of Excel that I learned how to use though was how to merge cells and how to decorate and format documents to make them more aesthetically pleasing. This is just an anal-retentive issue I have with organization and presentation of projects, they are minor details but I really appreciate how much nicer they make a document look.

Pictures That Lie

I chose the photo taken by Hany Farid that spliced Oprah Winfrey’s head on the body of actress Ann Margret. I chose this picture because it reminded me of when I was younger and my cousins and I would use photoshop to splice each other’s heads and switch the bodies. The picture was first published on the cover of TV Guide in August 1989. The picture was manipulated by splicing and placing Oprah’s head onto the body of Ann-Margret. The photograph of her body was taken from a 1979 publicity shot. The picture was manipulated probably because sex sells and this photograph of Ann-Margret’s body sitting on top of a pile of cash would sell more copies than if it were Oprah’s real body, American’s have gotten so used to seeing perfect bodies on the covers of magazines that a normal shaped body sticks out. Also the posture and dress Margret is wearing in the photograph looks very glamorous and the cover title is “Oprah! The Richest Woman on TV? How she amassed her 250-million fortune.” The manipulation can be harmful to both Ann-Margret and Oprah Winfrey, neither gave permission to have their pictures altered. It is unfair to use Ann-Margret’s body because she should be getting paid for the use of her photograph and Oprah is being falsely exposed to the public with her head mounted on a body that isn’t hers.

CLT Blog

On Thursday when we went into the AT&T Center for Learning and Technology I was amazed that we had such a huge resource right under our noses and I had never seen or heard of it. I really liked the media conference room that we were shown that is used for meetings among the staff, but it can also be utilized by students for group meetings or practicing for presentations, you only need to sign up. My favorite part about the CLT center was learning that we have the capability of burning VHS tapes and video recordings straight to DVDs. I have taken multiple movies that I recorded in high school to Walgreen's and payed $20 each for them to be converted to DVD format, so that was great to learn that I had the capability to do for personal use. The best thing I learned for school related projects was all the software I have available to do video or multimedia projects whenever I want. The software they had available to use there was very high quality and could make my school projects look like they were professionally done. I also really love Imovie, but have a dell and this way I can create videos for personal use on Imovie, which I am really excited about. I think this grant was used very wisely, students have a very wide variety of resources they can utilize both for scholarly and personal gain.

Copyright Laws

I thought that most of the information we learned in the copyright lecture was interesting for the most part and could be very helpful to protect ourselves against a copyright lawsuit or sharing or pirating media through out the next couple years of college and then on into the business world. One piece of information that I found very interesting was that it is legal to use a piece or clip of a certain work of an author, but there is a lot of gray area there. For example, it is legal to use a quote or part of a paper or poem, but not to use a measure or any length of song clip. Many people involved in the creation or assessment of these laws though advise others not to fight these matters because the more laws the stickier and more complicated the copyright world will get. The two sides on this issue are, on the pro, it should be illegal to take bits of a song clip because songs are such short pieces of media that taking a clip of any length, no matter how short is still borrowing a large part of the media and for the most part the beat of the song is constant so it is kind of like you are taking the majority of the song. It would also be hard to set a limit of how long is acceptable to take, since again the average song length is not that long. Making it legal to use part of the song would also probably only add to the song pirating problem that already exists, it would be very hard to control. On the con side, if a person is using the song for educational purposes it should be allowed, or even if they are just using it for pleasure to get an idea of what the song sounds like it should be legal, they are not taking the entire song, just a clip. In my opinion, I think that it should stay illegal. I think it would be much harder to control the use of the clip than it is worth. It would add many unnecessary problems and I think that artists already have a tough enough time trying to make money off of any of their songs as it is with the extensive pirating/downloading media world.