Hye-Won's Blog

About "Essential Computer Skills" class..

2009-04-28T09:38:00.000-07:00

Well hello!

I just wanted to talk about how much I really appreciate this class I took this semester, Essential Computer Skills.
I was actually quite upset when I found out that I had to take this class because I failed the exam all first years had to take at the beginning of the year.

However, I am actually glad I took this course because I learned 'everything' about Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Expression Web.
Oh, I cannot forget about Photoshop Elements!
Sometimes the workload stressed me a little, but it was all worth it.

Everything I've learned this semester gave me useful knowledge in life getting internships or jobs and I actually had so much fun doing it!

I strongly recommend this class and also with Dr. Belisle.
She is very helpful inside and outside of class.
She emails you back as soon as possible and is very understanding.

You don't have to worry if you are lost in class because she will go over the material again until ALL the students understand what they are doing.

Thank you!

hkim1@trinity.edu

Building my own website!

2009-04-23T23:35:00.000-07:00

Hello there,

I have not posted a blog in awhile and I hope everyone has been doing great with last few weeks of school.

Today, I would like to talk about three websites that are my favorite and were made by my classmates in Essential Computer Skills class.

Three of my favorite websites were Hannah Linn's, Erin Camp's, and Eva Thompson's.

I have to say Hannah Linn's website has the best design out of all websites I have seen in my class. She is very creative with every single page and her pictures are very organized. Her background colors for all the pages match with pictures and other items she has very well.

I just love the background of Erin Camp's website. It is an interesting drawing and happens to match most pictures she has on her website.

Eva Thompson's pictures were very organized and her black background and purple color match very well! I love her photos because they look professional.

Please visit my website at http://cs.trinity.edu/~hkim1.

Thank you.

hkim1@trinity.edu

Presentation 2!

2009-04-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

The second time we had a presentation, my favorite one was Erin Camp's presentation.

Her background color and her picture of Socrates fit perfectly. She knew all the information about her major. She had a fun animated graphic and suitable font. I liked her design a lot. It was not messy and fit the subject of "philosophy." When she gave different examples, she also had suitable pictures or figures to describe the examples much better.

Thank you.

hkim1@trinity.edu

Favorite PowerPoint Presentations!

2009-03-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

Hello there,

today we has the whole class to check out other classmates' presentations about what their majors are or what area they are interested in.

Two of my favorite ones I examined today were John Runge's and Hannah Linn's presentations. First, I will talk about why I liked John's presentation a lot. His design was very neat. He had a picture of a basketball court for his title slide. Then he had reddish colored background for the other slides so they would be suitable with the title slide. He also memorized all the notes he wrote down so he seemed very professional and prepared because he did not look down at the notes to explain about the topic of his presentation. His animation he made with PhotoShop Elements was neat as well. (The bowling ball!)

The other one I liked a lot was Hannah's presentation. Her design was extremely creative and amazingly made! I was actually very impressed by her presentation. Hannah is interested in majoring in Communications. Her entire presentation fit her major very well because she made it seem as she was turning on the television and changing the channels as she went on. Her design was excellent once again! She also had different entertaining videos that are appropriate for her topic. She kept the audience amused the whole time. She also delivered her topic very well.

The other classmates also did a very great job!

Thank you.

hkim1@trinity.edu

PowerPoint?!

2009-03-23T15:51:00.000-07:00

Microsoft PowerPoint is a useful program for presentations.

The articles Dr. Belisle provided for the class are very helpful for good presentations. They talk about how to make effective presentations for what you are trying to deliver to the audience. There are several points that all the articles have made.

First, do not make your presentations wordy.

If your presentations have too many words, it is not only hard to read while presenting your point, but also the audience can be easily bored by your presentation.

Second, do not use cheesy clip arts that Microsoft already has provided.

More graphic and professional pictures are better for the presentation instead of cheesy clip arts.

Third, do not give out your hand-outs for the presentation at the beginning.

Seth Godin who wrote "Bad PowerPoint" made a very good point in his article. If you give out the hand-outs ahead, the audience will read them and ignore what you say or try to deliver.

Fourth, use visual items for your presentation.

Using videos and audio is good for examples to bold your point in the presentation. However, be aware when you use sounds that have already been made by Microsoft because they may not be suitable.

Finally, use correct charts for your presentation.

Using appropriate charts can be very effective. Garrreynolds.com provided some information about different charts. For example, pie charts are the best to show the percentages.

The most annoying thing about bad PowerPoint presentations is that they are too wordy and have awful audio. For example, when I was being trained to be an intramural basketball referee, the presentation was very wordy at first. So everyone in the room was getting extremely bored and tired of it. However, it used different videos for different situations and helped us understand the rules much better.

Thank you.

hkim1@trinity.edu

My experiences about Microsoft Excel

2009-03-18T10:55:00.000-07:00

Hello there,

I hope everyone had a great spring break.

Before the spring break, I have learned so much about Microsoft Excel in my Essential Computer Skills class.

I thought I had more knowledge than I thought before I took this class.

I didn't know about a lot of things that are useful such as IF function, absolute and relative cells, and so on.

Since I know for sure that I can use Excel very well after taking this class, I was able to apply for an internship for the summer. I will be going home to South Korea and taking summer classes. But I also wanted an internship and found one that I could apply for and the requirements were Microsoft Word and Excel which are the two that I learned a lot in this class.

I was very excited about this opportunity and am glad that I took this class.

hkim1@trinity.edu

AT&T Center for Learning and Technology

2009-03-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

It was the first time for me to actually visit this place on the first floor of the library. CLT is the only place that has both Macs and Windows on campus. There, everyone who prefers either Windows or Macs can work at this place. Also, the faculty who gave us a presentation informed us that innovation studio is the place where people can work quietly with computers around. Computers are pretty distant from each other so there is enough work space for everyone that works on their homework or projects. I am actually really glad Dr. Belisle took the class to visit CLT because it was a really nice place to study and relax at the same time. I also found out that students and faculties are allowed to rent cameras when they need them. Since we are learning about PhotoShop in the future, CLT would be a great place to work on pictures or any kinds of media related stuff. I am excited that I found a new studying spot on campus. Also, if I ever get stuck working an anything that is related to computer, CLT always has someone to help anyone.

hkim1@trinity.edu

"Pictures that LIE"

2009-03-01T17:31:00.000-08:00

(Copyrighted from "Picture that Lie")

"It is important to carefully evaluate the reliability of electronic web and print media, especially in an academic setting." - Dr. Belisle.

Many pictures on "Pictures that Lie" are known as manipulated pictures.

I picked a picture of O.J. Simpson because his criminal case was one of the biggest cases in the history.

The picture is originated from his jail mugshot.

The picture was fixed and printed as the June 1994 of cover of Time magazine after O.J. Simpson was arrested for murder.

Time magazine manipulated his mugshot by making the picture "darker."

I think it was manipulated to make him look more harmful and cruel because of the murder he has done.

In my opinion, it is harmful although O.J. Simpson has committed a murder. There are several effects of the darkness. By making a picture darker, it gives people a bad side of image. In arts and literatures, darkness always has been used as one of the materials to symbolize something bad, terrible, harmful, and so on.

Also, If everyone starts to manipulate pictures or resources to exaggerate the event, how can anyone trust any sources since there is no "realness" or "truth" in them?

hkim1@trinity.edu

Searching the Internet

2009-02-25T14:57:00.000-08:00

Hello again,

I would like to talk about the presentation my computer skills class had on February 24th, 2009 by Chris Nolan as known as "the right hand of Diane Graves."

It was about many search engines on the Internet such as Google and Yahoo.

ComScore website has rated different search engines in November 2008.

People use Google the most, then Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask, and AOL the least. The reason why there are some researches such as ComScore about search engines is because those search engines provide money to researches for advertising their websites.

Chris Nolan has provided information about Google when it first came out.

People could put only 100KB of information when putting information.

One of the most interesting information I gained was that popularity of search engines depends on how much people go back to the certain search engine website, not how much they search on the website.

Not only Google, but also some other search engines have an option of an advanced search so people can limit some websites since there are so many of them.

Google comes in pretty useful, but sometimes academic journals get buried. To put scholarly journals, it costs more and takes more effort.

Trinity University's Internet connection gives an option to students to look up the author and the full text if they want by clicking 'Trinity eText.'

To customize Google, Firefox is useful. Firefox add-on that adds other search engine links, suggests term, and eliminates cookie tracking.

There are several great tips that Chris Nolan has made in 2003 related to advanced search on Google. For example, to exclude a word, put minus sign (-) before the word or phrase with no intervening space. (ex: Ansel Adams Mexico - "New Mexico")

If you would like to see all the tips Chris Nolan provided, you can click the link below.

Advanced Search Tips on Google by Chris Nolan

Thank you,

Hye-Won Kim.

hkim1@trinity.edu

Copyright

2009-02-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, February 3, the class had a presentation about the copyright law.

U.S. Copyright law dates from 1790.

Public domain is materials that can be used without requesting © permission which means they are publicly available.

The term of copyright for U.S. published works is now author’s life plus seventy years. Just because the author is dead does not mean the work is public domain.

The Sonny Bono Act (also called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act) refers to a bill passed in 1998, which extended the term of copyright an additional twenty years. Disney is a powerful organization and when Disney characters were about to go public domain, this bill passed.

“Orphan Works” are publications for which no author, publisher or other copyright holder can be located.

The RIAA, MPAA, and ESA are disproportionately interested in campus-based filed sharing. RIAA is Recording Industry Association of America, MPAA is Motion Picture Association of America, and ESA is the Entertainment Software Association.

Trinity University is within Congressional District and Diane Graves is in charge of copyright law on campus.

It is a felony to commit a copyright infringement involving more than ten copies and a value of more than 2500 dollars.

An “author” applies to a poet, musician, visual artist, filmmaker, choreographer/dancer, photographer, and writer.

Many college students argue that downloading songs from shared music program such as Limewire is not illegal. Most of my friends say the same thing when this issue comes up to our conversation. "Downloading a song that is already on the Internet is not illegal! Sharing and providing your music are illegal! So we are not doing anything wrong!" I am sure I have said that more than once as well.

Yet, most colleges do not allow their students to get on or download music for free from programs as Limewire because they are more familiar with the copyright law than most students.

After I learned about the copyright law, I started feeling strongly against downloading songs for free off the Internet. Also, when my guardians who I lived with for two years in Houston found out their children and I had been downloading songs from Limewire, they started buying us iTunes gift cards for every Christmas because they said it was an illegal action.

Musicians work very hard to be famous and get people to like their music. Then money from selling their albums is a return from a hard work and another step to make better music. However, since a big number a people keep downloading musicians' songs illegally off the Internet, the musicians' financial problems get bigger and bigger. Therefore, everyone should pay for all the musicians' music for their hard work and according to the copyright law.

Thank you.

Hye-Won.

hkim1@trinity.edu

Facebook on Campus

2009-02-02T12:55:00.000-08:00

"The social-networking website isn't growing like it once did, but only because almost every US student is already on it." - Cristian Lupsa.

Facebook has been the biggest social-networking website amongst many students, especially college students. An article "Facebook: A campus fad becomes a campus fact" collects many students' and administrators' opinions about Facebook. There are different opinions about Facebook. Some people think they can do productive work on Facebook by making groups. Some other people think Facebook is bad because there is a chance for a group people to make a Facebook group to eliminate someone such as "We hate Pablo" in the article.

I have used Facebook since I was a senior in high school. Everyone in my high school had it, so I made one as well. When I was younger, all of my friends used to use Myspace which is another kind of a social-networking website. I have used Facebook for several reasons to meet new people at Trinity University, gather some people to celebrate a friend's birthday, and so on.

Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with everyone you are friends with on it. It is hard to keep in touch with 'everyone' in your life by phone. Also, there are many groups which are meaningful. For example, a student named Luke found out he had leukemia and his friends made a Facebook group to help him.

On the other hands, Facebook is very distracting academically. Last semester, I used to get on Facebook probably at least five times a day. When I was trying to write a paper, I would be constantly distracted by Facebook by looking at other people's new pictures or talking to friends on it. It also shows everyone's status changes, especially relationship statuses, on newsfeed so it is not an exaggeration to say everyone knows about your life!

Recently, I have deactivated Facebook to focus on my school work.

Facebook is a great way for students to socialize. Yet, it is horrible academically in my opinion.

If you want to read this article, please click the link below.

Facebook: A campus fad becomes a campus fact

Hye-Won Kim

hkim1@trinity.edu

My experience with Microsoft Word

2009-01-27T09:44:00.000-08:00

Hello!

Today, I would like to talk about my experience with Microsoft Word. I have been using Microsoft Word since I started using the computer which was when I was in about fifth grade.
I have used it usually for papers and projects I have turned in. I used to use Microsoft PowerPoint for presentations, but I found out I could use Microsoft Word for a presentations by using screen shots in computer skills class recently. Microsoft Word corrects your grammars when you write papers. By using Microsoft Word I can put pictures, clip arts, charts, and so on. I know how to put headers and footers for Microsoft Word when I write papers in MLA format. I actually used to use Microsoft Word 2003 till the last semester, fall 2008.

It wasn't inconvenient to use, but Microsoft Word 2007 is much better, easier, and more programs to use. I cannot wait to learn more about Microsoft Word in essential computer skills class!

Thank you for reading my blog and have a great day!
Hye-Won.

hkim1@trinity.edu

Learn about me!

2009-01-15T10:17:00.000-08:00

Hello, my name is Hye-Won Kim.

PURPLE is my favorite color.

I am from Seoul, South Korea. I was born and raised there. You can look at where I lived if you click 'Where is Seoul?'

Where is Seoul?

My family includes my dad, mom, and younger brother. I am very close to all of them and they still live in South Korea. I miss them a lot, but I get to see them once a year for about two months. They are always supportive about what I do. They are the most important people in my life.

I started going to school in the U.S. when I was fifteen in Houston area.

When I introduce myself, I say, "it's easier if you remember my name as 'hey' and 'one!' "

I love to listen to music, hang out with friends, playing on the computer, and so on. But my favorite hobby is to travel! Once, I visited Thailand with my family and while I was there the tsunami happened. It was very scary, but I survived and came back!

I am a first year at Trinity University and I love this school. I have met many great people and had a lot of fun. I am in a pre-law coed fraternity called Phi Alpha Delta. I am planning to major in political science. I am also considering about communications as my second major. I want to be a lawyer because I am very interested in politics and laws. I want to study international laws.

My secret fact is that I used to introduce myself as Helena which was my English name made by my English teacher in Korea when I first came to the United States.
When I was a junior in high school, I took computer science class. I learned how to make video games and how to work on Java. It was really hard, but it turned out to be really enjoyable and different from other computer classes just for basics. I am very looking forward to learning about more basics in computer skills class this semester because the test basically told me I needed to learn more about essential computer skills!

hkim1@trinity.edu