Advice

This class was very useful! Some skills, like Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, you may be familiar with. Even in these units, you can pick up advice for how to make your documents look better, or time saving tips. Others, however, you may have limited or no experience with, like Microsoft Excel, Photoshop Elements, or Microsoft Expression Web. Also, you'll be introduced to useful websites like Picnik, Wordle, FindSounds, etc. You may that these skills may be useful in other classes. In fact, I used the Sound Database for a movie I made in my Media Interpretation class, and Picnik for a presentation for my Dramatic Literature course!

One problem you may experience, however, is that there are many differences betweeen PCs and Macs. So I would advise practicing for quizzes, etc on computers here in Halsell or in the Library if you have a Mac.

Also, if you have any questions, Ms. Belisle is really good about responding quickly to email. So utilize this resource!

Don't be afraid to be creative! If you have a question about whether something is okay for a resource, ask Ms. Belisle. She'll probably be really encouraging.

Good luck this year and enjoy the course!

Favorite Classmates' Websites

I absolutely loved seeing my classmates' websites today. They are all so creative! One that really impressed me was CJ Roginson's. I loved the way he used photoshop elements to alter the colors of his photographs to match with the color theme of his site, and the fact that clicking on a different tiger led to a different surprise page. Another site that I liked was Lucy Cevallos'. The navbar she created in Photoshop elements was really cute and reflective of the overall tone of her website, which was cheerful and fun. She used lots of cute personal pictures as well. I also like John Nathan's website. The fact that he did his website on something he really cared about was a wonderful surprise, and he used high-quality, relevant pictures to illustrate his points. Great job to everyone in our class.

My Website

Please visit my website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~edooley1.

After studying HTML code, I figured making this website would be quite difficult, but using Microsoft Expression Web was actually a breeze. (I used Expression Web to build most of the site in class or in the CLT, and just tweaked a few things at home with KompoZer.) To do some of the more advanced things, like embedding video, etc, I had to do some hand coding , but most things I could do easily using the Expression Web menu bars.

I am especially proud of my “Relevant Experience” page. In addition to the text formatting, I was able to embed a film clip after visiting another website and right clicking, “view source.” I was also pleased that I was able to embed a downloadable PDF version of my resume for website visitors to print on the “Contact Me” page.

I might have changed the way the navbar worked, creating it perhaps in Expression Web rather than in Photoshop Elements. I wanted to somehow make it be highlighted when I was actually on that particlar page, but I’m not sure how to do that.

My biggest technical challenge was positioning the pictures exactly where I wanted them on the page. I wanted them to be aligned specifically with certain text elements, but it was difficult to do using tables. I used the “help” menu and discovered layers, which I used instead of tables.

My biggest design challenge was coming up with a home page that looked good on all computers (since some monitors are bigger than others). My first conceptualization included elements being left-justified, which didn’t look good on computers with huge monitors, as the left-justified elements actually appeared in the middle of the page. I ended up creating a homepage using centered elements instead, which I’m actually quite proud of. (I used Photoshop Elements.)

I created this website to be a companion piece to my resume. Since I am going into the communications field, I thought prospective employers might be interested in how I organized and presented my own information. Thus, I can present this website to prospective employers. I’ll also be sure to share it with my family and friends!

I know that the ability to create a website is a valuable skill in today’s job market. While I am likely create a website for another class, it’s also possible that I will create one in the course of my career.

Pictures that Lie

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A picture can't lie, goes the old adage. At one time, a photograph of an event was regarded as proof that it actually occurred. With the rise of photoshop, photoshop elements, and other photo editing software, however, this is no longer true. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Making a fantasy land where turtles fly and elephant-headed zebras with lion tails roam New York City can be entertaining. It's acceptable because the audience knows it's obviously a fake. It is also generally acceptable to blur a portion of an image to make superimposed text more readable, to crop an image to make it fit a page, etc. According to Nic Bishop, an award-winning photographer, "It's the scientific integrity of the picture itself that's important" (Bringelson). If viewers are aware that the photo has been manipulated, that manipulation isn't detrimental.

Photo manipulation becomes harmful--unethical, even--when an extensively altered photo is presented to the audience as the "real thing."

In one such instance, Lui Weiquang, a Chinese photographer, grafted a photograph of a group of endangered Tibetan antelopes peacefully grazing onto a picture of the new Qinghai-Tibet railway, which had been regarded as disruptive to the antelope population. By so doing, Weiquang "justify[ed] the controversial project as environmental friendly" ("Photo of Antelopes Unperturbed..."). In fact, the photo was titled, "Qinghai-Tibet Railway Opening, Green Passageway for Animals. He later admitted to the manipulation, admitting that he had waited for two weeks for the animals to come near the train, but that "they never did." I wonder why, Lin. It's because, clearly, the railway was disturbing to the antelopes.

This story inspired my photo. I wanted to create a photo supporting a controversial economic move, not because I myself support it, but to show how easily companies could alter photographs to protect their own interests. So, I created an image in which a dolphin is frolicking (presumably happily) in the midst of an oil spill (something that would never happen--in fact, oil in the water can lead to hypothermia, congested lungs/damaged airways, eye and skin lesions, and secondary organ dysfunction, to name a few. For more information, click here). It is the type of photo that could have been used by a company like Exxon-Valdez could have used after their oil spill to prove that they didn't really do that much harm.

Had I actually published the photo for an oil company, it would have been extremely harmful, as it might have caused an audience member to believe that oil spills are not harmful to marine life. It is "very important," Nic Bishop asserts, "never to produce a photograph that is being manipulated in such a way that it shows incorrect behavior of an animal" (Bringelson). Clearly, this image is depicting the incorrect behavior of an animal. (Because it was made for educational purposes, of course, it's fine.)

Using the magnetic lasso tool, I extrapolated the dolphin from its original photograph and put it on a layer in front of the oil spill picture. Then, I duplicated the background, cropped it to about half its size, feathered it, and layered that over the dolphin's tale, creating the illusion that the dolphin was leaping out of the water. In addition, I made the oil spill picture look less disgusting by going to enhance, color, change hue and saturation; I made the reds and yellows less saturated and lighter, and the blues more saturated. Lastly, I added a text layer, changed the font style, matched the font color to the color of the water, and added a bevel. (You can see the original photos at the bottom of this post.)

Let this be a lesson--next time you look at an image, keep in mind the fact that it just may have been doctored.



Bringelson, Carin, and Nick Glass. "Tenacity and Ethics of Scientific Photography."
School Library Monthly 26.7 (2010): 25. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web.
12 Apr. 2010.
"Effects of Oil on Marine Wildlife." Global Marine Oil Pollution Gateway. United Nations
Environmental Program. Web. 13 Apr. 2010.
"Photos of Angelopes Unperturbed by Tibet Train Exposed as Fake." Tibetan Review: The Monthly Magazine on all Aspects of Tibet 43, no 3 (March 2008): 4. Academic Search Complete. EbSCOhost. Web. 12 Apr. 2010.

HTML code... Why Bother?

With sophisticated web-design software such as Expression Web or Kompozer easily accessible, it may seem like knowing HTML code is an outdated skill. However, it can actually be pretty useful. Firstly, if you're having a problem with your webpage, going to the HTML source code can make diagnosing the problem easier. Secondly, if you see an aspect of another person's website you like, you can right click anywhere on the page, choose "view source," copy the section of code pertaining to the aspect you like, make a few changes, paste it into the HTML code of your webpage, and voila, you've added that aspect to your page.

Presentations

Today's class was really interesting! Not only did I get to see seom excellently designed powerpoints and some wonderfully delivered presentations, but I also got to learn about my classmates interests.

One presentation that really stood out to me was Lucy Cevallos' presentation on Neurology. From the begining, the graphics really caught my eye. She used high-quality images that went well with her topic, and then matched her slide backgrounds and text colors to those pictures. She used these pictures to supplement what she was saying, instead of reading text off the slides that dictated her performance. Additionally, her inclusion of the youtube video about the young girl who had been given her life back after brain surgery was not only interesting, but a call to action! I liked the way she showed us only a portion of the video--that left us wanting more. However, the very best thing about her presentation was that you could tell she was passionate about her topic. She communicated to us her her enthusiasm in a way that made us want to check out the neurology field.

Another presentation I really enjoyed was Hunter Ramsy's presentation on sharks. Because he chose a narrow focus, he had time to cover it in detail. The title slide really got the audience engaged and interested in his presentation--the music he included put the audience in just the right mood, as did the dramatic entrance anamation of the shark photo. I also really liked that he put his facts in terms we could relate to. It's hard to imagine the lenght of a great white shark when given a number of feet, but when he said, "that's the lenght of two basketball goals," I found myself invisioning a terrifying beast. It really put it it perspective. His video wrapped up the presentation in a wonderful way. The best thing about this presentation was his delivery; he sounded energetic, and also used pasuses in a masterful way to create subtle suspense.

Powerpoint Tips

Powerpoint is a great tool--as long as you don't let it take the driver's seat in the presentation.

Here are some tips so that your powerpoint adds to your presentation:

1. Do not, I repeat, do not read directly off your slides. The audience can do this off their own. Use the slides only to aid you in making your point, not to make the point for you.

2. Use high quality images. Believe me, if your audience has seen many presentations, they've probably seen many of the pics in the clip art library. You want your presentation to stand out in their mind. Try visiting a site like artstor for excellent images. (Google images can be a great resource too.)

3. Have a consistent theme. If you use a million different font styles, backgrounds, etc, your audience will wind up feeling frustrated and confused.

4. Use audio and video. They can make your presentation look very professional. You can import music from your itunes library, or visit the Find Sounds database for sound effects to download.

5. KISS. "Keep it simple, stupid." It's a phrase used often by elementary school teachers, but it holds true in many situations, particularly in ours. Including pictures and perhaps a bit of text on your slides can benifit your presentation. But if you put too much text on your slides, your audience will spend their time trying to take in everything on the slides that they won't be listening to YOU.

Collage

My collage shows, in a crazy world, how the food chain could work!

Caution using Google for Research

Google isn't a good place to go for academic search, right? Wrong. Google, when used properly, can yield some pretty good results. It's important, however, to be aware of the way Google orders its search results, and to realize that sites must be carefully checked for credibility before use.
Of course, the documents in which your search terms appear most frequently appear near the top of the list. (Although it's important to not that Google does not always search the entire document, only the first 500 Kilobits of it.) However, Google also gives priority to sites that other sites have referenced (provided links to on their page). Basically, Google is assuming that if other sites reference a site, that site must be credible, or at least popular. However, a manufacturer can manipulate these results by creating thousands of blogs that all link to the company's homepage, which may or may not be what you're looking for.

Google also give priority to sites which they think are credible. For example, when "global warming hurricanes" is entered in the search box, an article from noaa.gov is the first result. However, just because a site has a domain name usually associated with credibility (.org, .gov, .edu) doesn't mean they're not biased. Sure, they may present factual information, but they may emphasize information that supports their agenda and omit information which makes readers think twice about their organization. Or, their information may be just plain untrue. For example http://www.martinlutherking.org/ looks (at first glance) like it would be a credible site. After all, it has a .org at the end! In actuality, it's a slanderous defamation against the famous man published by a white supremacy group. The really disturbing thing is that it's the fourth result when "Martin Luther King Jr" is typed into the google search box.

Once you're aware that these problems exist, however, Google is a great resource.

Pictures that Lie

Take a look at this first picture. Pretty shocking, isn't it? Now look at the two photographs at the end of this post. These are not nearly as moving. The first picture is actually a composite of the second two. This doctored image appeared in the Los Angeles Times, masquerading as an original, shortly after the U.S. led an invasion of Iraq.

A newspaper staff member first suspected the image had been altered when he noticed that the man squatting behind the soldier was pictured not once, but twice. After further inquiry, photographer Brian Walsky admitted that he had edited the images, saying that he had "tarnished the reputation" of the L.A. Times (Van Ripper; to read this article, click here). He claimed, however, that he only complied the amalgamation in order to improve the picture's "composition."

Walsky makes it appear as if the soldier is gesturing towards the civilian, as if warning or vanquishing him, when in actuality his gesture was unrelated to the man.

What is so disturbing, however, is not that he changed the meaning of the picture, for in fact, this was insignificant, as it had little effect on the story he was telling. The real issue is that Walsky destroyed the credibility of photojournalists. That the misleading image was detected only after the publication of the Times emphasized the fact that numerous other images' doctoring may have gone undetected. This was harmful indeed.

I was immediately drawn to this photograph because my Media Interp. class had looked at it briefly and I knew I wanted to learn more. Clearly, this is an important issue.

Van Ripper, Frank. "Manipulating Truth, Loosing Credibility". Washington Post. Web. 23 Feb 2010.

CLT

The AT&T Center for Learning Technology is a fabulous resource for Trinity students interested in engaging in audio/video editing, digital photography, web design-- even video conferencing. It also assists professors in producing multimedia materials used in the classroom, and maintains the electronic classrooms throught campus. It's located on the first floor of the Library, where knowledgeable staff are eager to assist students, even on nights and weekends. The CLT provides students with access to both Apple computers and PCs. It includes a digital audio lab, a private room where faculty and students can record and edit audio; a video conference center which makes and takes video calls from as far away as China and with people as famous as Hilary Clinton; an innovation studio, a training area open to both faculty/staff and students; and a media presentations lab. Housed on the computers in the CLT are programs like Photoshop, Cool Edit Pro, and Adobe Premier Pro as well as more basic applications like Microsoft Office, Safari or Internet Explorer, and CD and DVD burners. Support for TLearn and TriniTV is also based in the CLT. I encourage everyone to take advantage of this great resource.

Copyright

Copyright is viewed by many college students as the absolute bane of their existence. Not only must they be careful not to infringe on copyright in the realm of academia, but they are also annoyed at having to pay the $0.99 or $1.29 cents on Itunes when they could have downloaded the song for free through limewire or similar applications. In fact, these precautions are legitimate concerns. It is a federal felony to commit copyright infringement involving more than ten copies and a value of $2500; while the feds do not generally pursue prosecution, violators are often faced with civil litigation (suite by the copyright holder) and may be forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for downloading just a couple songs illegally.

While this may be annoying, even frightening, copyright is actually a valuable policy, even for people who never copyright anything they create. By assuring that creators will be able to control the reproduction/ distribution and profit from their own creations, copyright encourages innovation and creativity, for if creators had not guarantee that they would profit from their work, they would have little incentive to conceptualize or produce anything original. Our founding fathers were actually cognizant of this; they included a law regarding copyright in Title 17 of the constitution.

The government realizes, however, that sometimes it is necessary to make copies and share them, and they created the fair use provision. This is especially applicable to the world of academics, and applies to college and graduate students in particular. It is important to understand however, that this fair use policy is liberal, but does not cover everything used for academic work. (For example, you can’t copy an entire book and pass those copies around.) The considerations in determining if the copy is legal are: (1) nature of the work (2) intended purpose (3) amount of original work being reproduced (4) the effect that reproduction has on the revenue stream of the holder.

While I may sometimes view copyright as an annoying, I am absolutely in favor of it. I know that in any civilization, innovation is integral, and I therefore support this policy. In addition, I am glad that no on can make money on anything I create unless I authorize them to do so. (For everyone is holds an automatic copyright on anything they produce, even if they do not submit their work to the copyright office or pay a fee.) Clearly, our founding fathers were on the right track.

This work by Erin Dooley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

My Trinity Network Diagram

Visiting the high-security main data center in Halsell was a diverting way to spend a class period. An odd sensation too-- while my feet were cold, my head was hot! Actually, the room is cooled through air conditioning vents in the floor. When it comes out of the vents, the air is 55-60 degrees, but by the time it reaches the ceiling, it has been heated to about 70-80 degrees by all the machines, and can even reach 105 degrees in the corners of the room! You can see from diagram (above & left) how Trinity's internet works. It has been compared to a wagon wheel, and is actually pretty interesting. Take a look.

Top Tech Tip

On Thursday, Joe Hatch, one of Trinity's most knowledg-eable computer gurus, came to visit our class. He told us about index.dat files, which store the history of every website you've ever visited. If you've had your computer for a while, all this info piles up and slows down your computer. Additionally, index.dat files give hackers an easy place to look at all the sites you've visited, including online banking sites. Mr. Hatch advised the PC users out there to use CCleaner to delete this file, along with lots of other junk (Click here to visit the CCleaner website for a free download). For the Mac users, he recommended going to file, browser reset to speed the computer up. Since I own both a macbook and a Dell (PC, at home), I plan on using both of these tips. A big thank you to Mr. Hatch!

Scavenger Hunt

Reading my classmates blog posts was very interesting--and often surprising! I commented on Stephen, Emily, and Morgan's blogs, telling them we shared a common interest or asking a question about something in the content of their blog. Here are their blogs' URLs:

http://stargoff.blogspot.com/

http://www.emilyaroberson.blogspot.com/

http://morgansfisher.blogspot.com/

I look forward to learning more about these people in the weeks to come.

About Me

Hi, I'm Erin. Born and raised in Dallas, I'm a full-fledged Texas girl. I'm a Communications Major here at Trinity University. I hope one day to land a job in TV Broadcasting or the advertising industry. I enjoy working for Tiger TV's Newswave as reporter/weather anchor. In my spare time, I also love theater; last semester I acted in Trinity's production of First Years Putting on Theater in a show called Manslaughter, The Comedy. I was heavily involved in theater in high school, my favorite role being Claire Ganz in Neil Simon's comedy, Rumors. I'm also active in community service, volunteering frequently at Reading & Radio Resource, recording audiobooks for the visually impaired, and at the North Texas Food Bank. Cliche though it sounds, I love singing in the rain, dancing in the car, and my pets. (In addition to my cats, Sophie and Tacy, I am the proud parent of a new fish, Theodore. I thought it was a dignified name for a fish--if Theodore had clothing, he'd have a monocle and a pocket watch draped across his waistcoat.) I am experienced in Microsoft Office, particularly Powerpoint, and in research in library databases, but I am eager to learn more about Computers, especially about Photoshop.

You can e-mail me here.