Powerpoint Advice

I felt like the articles on Powerpoint were extremely useful. Over the past four years I've made more than a dozen presentations and had to watch twice as many, whether it was in a classroom, work, or a conference I've have witnessed some very useful and well planed presentations but for the most part it has been painful to listen to someone read out loud their information. It seems that it would be easy to make a clear and simple presentation with powerpoint since it is very easy and straight forward to use, but people often feel the need to include all of their information on the slides. Here are some tips that that I learned from Guy Kawasaki, a venture capitalist that listens to business proposals all day and shares his insight of what works and doesn't work when trying to sell something.

a presentation should be:
1 clear
2 concise
3 precise
4 coherent
5 captivating

If you wanna check out G. kawasaki and his his advice on how to pitch a business idea using powerpoint follow the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJtK7D90XgQ

Doctored Photographs

I chose picture #7, in this photograph a british soldier seems to be looking after Iraqi refugees and asking them to take cover.

This image first appeared in April 2003 on the front page of the Los Angeles Times shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq

A soldier was cropped and pasted in a photograph of a refugee camp.

The way I see it, this photograph was manipulated for two reasons, the first reason is that they did not have a good picture of the ally troops doing something humanitarian during the invasion. The second reason is that the photograph portrays the invading countries as the good guys and it serves as excellent PR if you are promoting the war.

The manipulation was harmful because it deceives the public of what the army is really doing in the invaded country. It is dishonest and it defends the argument that going to war was a good choice, which proves that someone is covering the truth from the public.

CLT

The Center for Learning and Technology is great place to work on special projects that require tools that are not available on regular computers on campus. The first time I went down to the CLT was my freshman year and I was working as a TA for the modern languages and literature department. One of the tasks for my job was to scan some pictures from several art books and required a scanner that was larger than the average scanner one would use at home. The people at the CLT were very helpful and gave me tips on how to do my job better and faster, they also taught me how to use a program to make slideshows that was more complex than powerpoint. The CLT is also a very useful place to make and edit digital videos, they have high end computers with large monitors and just about the latest softwares for anything you may require when designing a digital art or making a video. 

The other occasions in which I have found myself at the CLT were when I was require to watch italian Films for my italian class. they have two or three rooms which are completely equipped for watching videos in any format, well almost any format I don't remember them having blue-ray but I'm sure that by now they probably have it available.

Essays for Sale

Now it seems that there is a cheaper way for students to submit a good essay in their college application. A company called Ivy essays sells essays written by students that have been accepted to top universities. It is not a secret that the students accepted to the best universities are usually privilege and when it comes down to preparing for college they have access to the best tutors and teachers. The bill for tutoring services can get pretty expensive very quickly and a well written essay is in many occasions the factors that determines which students are best prepared for the best universities. This company is providing a service for those students that cannot afford the proper preparation for the application process, in a way it seems that they should also have the same chances to get in to college as the more privilege students do, but at the same time there is the integrity issue that defeats the purpose of trying to help when all it is doing is causing a false sense of approval and undeserved success.

"Now the application essay too, has been corrupted by the almighty dollar. Two years ago 28 year old entrepreneur Daniel kaufman launched Ivyessays. the firm sells packages of model college essays that have been written by students who have been accepted to 33 elite undergraduate institutions." (The JBHE Foundation)