7.

In the class yesterday, we started using google slides to start woking on our final project presentation focusing on C.R.A.P.

About a week ago, I had a group presentation for other class and it was pretty difficult to decide what to put on the slides and what to just speak. Although, through talking about that with my classmates who also takes the same class, I realized that the class had the handouts so that the listeners will be able to easily listen to what the presenters are saying. In R&P class there are no handouts so I decided to just put a few words and a picture. I made it as simple as possible. Black bold letters and pictures. That's it. I am a little bit nervous since it looks a little too simple but I am pretty sure that it is along with the C.R.A.P so all I have to do is make my speech as simple but detailed as it could be. 

To be honest, I am enjoying this presentation work pretty much. It is fun to imagine how the presentation would be and revise the slides. I also like presentations, which are like too simple and at first we can't really assume what the presenters will talk about but through listening we are just into the speech. I think how Apple presents their new devices are quite like that. 

To make the audiences interested into the presentation, we shouldn't put too much informations on the slide. I think just a really few words that is like a hint to what we want to tell is enough and best.

I have only comment one one of the blog in my group but I will add comments to each of them when they are ready.
It felt really convenient to be able to comment on slide using google because it looked so easy to review. In that way it would be easy to revise the slides like after we do peer reviews on our papers. comments, which appear visually is really good and the more it is added in the paper, slides or whatever we want it to get checked, the easier it would be for us to make our thing better!

We only have a week and a bit left for this project and I am so excited and nervous at the same time. Good luck to all of us!

6.

EVERNOTE
Today we learnt how to use Evernote. This was really interesting and I thought it would be a huge help for the presentation I will have from now on. It was fun to add our texts, highlights, drawings, etc to the note we clipped. I even wonder why I didn't even try to use it even though I've heard of it plenty of times. Evernote will allow us to easily access to the websites that we became interested in and to review on it quickly. Also we can obviously improve our presentations by using each of the tools Evernote has.

What is C.R.A.P?
C.R.A.P stands for Contrast, Repetition, Alignments, Proximity. By focusing on these, we can make a better presentation.
Contrast: The way I made the sub titles for each topic in this blog entry is one of the way to make contrasts. It's a way to make difference in colours between the words and the background, size of the font so that there is much impact in the slides.
Repetition: I didn't really get this but I think it is about repeating the keywords and the pictures that relates to the words so that the listeners will know what we really want to tell.
Alignments: This is to organize the words and pictures to connect to each other. For example, if we are using the word forward, we should try to add it in the picture where people can feel "forward".
Proximity: This is the idea to organize the position of the words to make it easy to understand. If we just squash all the words above the sheet of the slide, the information will be a bit difficult to understand because there are no space and it is almost like notes rather than presentation.

Through listening to the explanation of these words, I thought that it is really important to consider the organization of each slide and make it simple but has enough of the basic informations we want the listeners to know.
I am now working on a presentation in other class and I am trying to make it simple but informative. However, I find it quite difficult to do so. I think I have to select more of my information I have collected.

My Final Project Theme
I am going to discuss about euthanasia in my essay and final project. I have started my research recently and i sometimes feel really devastated because it is such a serious and heavy topic. However, how we cannot easily decide whether it should be legal or not is really interesting. I hope I can complete my final project by convincing the listeners as much as possible. I also find it interesting how the general perspective toward euthanasia is different in each country.

I hope we can make the best presentation by using Evernote and C.R.A.P.

5.

I wrote about "racial profiling" for my first essay in this term.

Today's homework is to search about it on Wikipedia. The first thing I was aware of when entering university was that I should not use Wikipedia because it is not reliable. So I was so surprised to have being able to use it for my homework. How it has the rating to offer better articles to the user is amazing.

Unfortunately, racial profiling is not properly rated yet and is currently  "Rated Start class". I think this is because the topic is a modern issue and is still being discussed in its early stage. I wonder how the page will be like in the future so it might be interesting if I check it out periodically.
Next, I searched on "geographic profiling" and this too was in its "Rated Start class". So I searched on "Japanese Americans", which I used it as an example of racial profiling that was done after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This was in its "Rated B-class". I was like, finally! when I found this being at least rated.
Through doing today's homework, I thought that if we want to use Wikipedia, it is likely to use it when our topic is discussed for a pretty long time. Otherwise, the article is not still rated and would not be reliable. Hence, it wouldn't be a good source like we were told not to use Wikipedia for our papers.
(I searched almost every keywords I used in my paper but all of them were bellow B-class. I will revise this blog asap I find FA rated word. I am sad that I couldn't find almost any. Will keep trying though.)

The second homework is to write a review of using Zotero today. We learnt how to do in-text citation. To do in-text citation, all we have to do is to push "command", then "shift" and finally "A" to copy the in-text citation, which Zotero is ready for us, and "V" to paste it on our paper. This is really simple and will help us finish doing our citation as quickly as possible. When I used my own source, some how when adding in-text citation, the title of the book was also included. I wonder what was wrong with what I did... I hope I can find it out.

Six months have passed since I became a freshmen in university and I feel really necessary to just cut all the unnecessary part I am spending my time on, so that I can finish other tasks sooner with better quality. Finding out how to use these tools always cheers me up by making me realize that I have so many great tools!
Recently I am so devastated at my results for my exams, quality of my essays and the way I use my time. I MUST get used to the techs we learn in this class and also enjoy it so that I can make better out of my school life.