What ruins a PowerPoint Presentation

Through my years at Trinity I've seen a lot of presentations. Using these as a guide I've been able to discover what makes a presentation appealing to an audience and what puts them to sleep.

1) Be brief. Adding too much information onto one slide makes it seem as though you are reading aloud what the class could read on their own. Keep you bullets as minimal as possible so you can elaborate on your own and keep you audience engaged.

2) Don't use too many animations. Animations may seem like they would keep your audiences attention but they actually detract from you overall message. The content of you presentation is what's important not how it appears on the screen or how the slides transition.

3) Use a professional quality template. Nothing shows that your a novice as much as a poor template and design. It is worth the extra time to design a high quality template that is appealing and goes with your overall message. Using one of the pre-made templates is acceptable over creating mismatched color schemes that tell the audience you didn't take the time to work it.

4) Not every slide needs a visual. This was the most important thing I learned during my internship. Not every slide needs to have a photograph or design. People learn differently so mixing up the styles from visual to audible will help the group as a whole understand your message.

5) Be consistent. Do not change your formatting for each slide. It will confuse your audience and they will have to adjust to each different slide. Choose a format and stick with it.

Excel

I've had quite a bit of experience with Exel before taking this class. I used it all summer during my internship as an anaylst and created many spreadsheets that the new intern is currently using. But during this section of the class, I have learned a lot of shortcuts that will allow me to create spreadsheets quicker and more efficiently.

I didn't have any hands-on experience with the new version of Excel so now the layout is much easier for me to understand and manipulate. I hadn't used conditional formatting before so this will allow me to format my spreadsheets without slowly chaning each cell. This is going to be useful in the future because as a finance and accounting major I will be looking at spreadsheets. Being able to quickly understand and formulate ways to manipulate the data will be a great advantage I will have over others who may not be as familiar with the program.

The Truth of a Photograph?

I choose to analyze the pictore of "Goodnight Moon" illustrator Clement Hurd. This picture is from the dust jacket of their famous childrens book. The picture was manipulated by deleting a cigarette that the subject was holding in his hand. The publisher did this because during the time of the photograph, smoking was a socially accepted norm. Smoking was acceptable in almost all locations including doctor's offices. However, since the harmful side-effects of smoking have been exposed mainstream America has become overwhelmingly repulsed by smoking. Smoking is now banned in many public areas and is now regulated in movies and television by causing the show or movie to have a higher rating. The publisher (and likely many anti-smoking groups) did not want children to see pictures of people smoking in the books they read. I don't believe this editing was harmful since the idea of the picture has not be altered in any way. If the illustrator had intended to promote smoking with his picture and book then it may be construed as wrong to edit the picture. But since societal norms have changed since the taking of this picture, I do not believe that the publisher has done any wrong.

CLT

I've actually used the CLT before while I was taking Quantitative Management. A business owner called in and the class was able to have a two way discussion with him while he was in Dallas. Having the technology to be able to learn in such a way is a huge advantage for Trinity. I wish that more professors knew that the school had this technology.

The CLT seems really cool. I just wish I took more design classes where I could utilize everything that is there. It's great that Trinity has a place where people can add creative ideas to their presentations. But since I'm a senior, I probably won't be able to use it.

Copyright laws

I had no idea copyrights lasted so long. However, it's easy to see why they need to be that way when a corporate icon like Mickey Mouse will soon be in the public domain. I believe that people should be able to profit from their creations without worrying that someone will either steal or manipulate their idea and take some market share. Our economy would be much different if copyright laws didn't exist.

Downloading music or movies has become very prevalent in society lately. I don't know anyone who hasn't downloaded a song or at least owned a song someone else downloaded. I was shocked that the RIAA predominately targets college students while they only constitute 4% of the total file sharing network. CDs have become increasingly expensive, and many people have decided that it is not worth $20 to buy a CD that is mostly filler songs. While I believe that file sharing has become accepted among society as more of a norm, it doesn' t make it ethical.

Essentially when you download a song, you're taking someone elses creation without paying for it. Although many musicians are rich it doesn't validate the fact that stealing is ok. Just because Apple makes millions of dollars selling iPods doesn't make it ok to steal one. Many alternatives have been created such as iTunes or Rhapsody which allow a used to download songs for only $1. Wal-Mart even has a website where certain songs cost 88 cents each. With these cheap alternatives, there is no reason to illegally download music.