Extension cord (25 ft)
• Some techniques for success are,
Use the computer to present new material, then turn on the lights and do problems on the board.
If the computer screen is in front of a whiteboard, pull up the screen, and add notes using the screen underneath.
Interact with the audience: Ask questions about what was just covered, give a simple problem to solve
Say something ridiculous to get a response.
Borrow something for an example.
Know the software and hardware.
Keep a bit of ‘MTV’ style in mind. Videos, sounds and other moving things help.
Do a ‘dress rehearsal’ well before: small details such as fonts can ruin all the other efforts. Ask somebody to sit through a short trial run.
Turn on the lights and solve problems on the board frequently, it will wake up students going to sleep in the dark.
Set up a model for the presentation
Show up for presentations early to become familiar with equipment
When testing, test beginning to end, small things can halt the presentation
• [REF XXXXXXX] Top Ten Mistakes Made By Presenters!
No Presentation Objectives: If you don't know what your audience should do at the end of your presentation, there is no need for you to present. Knowing your objectives is the key to developing an effective presentation.
Poor Visual Aids: Visual aids are designed to reinforce to your audience the main points of your presentation. Without effective visuals, you are missing a key opportunity to communicate with your audience.
Ineffective Close: Closing your presentation is extremely important. It is when you tie up your presentation and spell out what you want your audience "to do". A weak close can kill a presentation.
Mediocre First Impression: Audiences evaluate a presenter within the first 120 seconds of your presentation. Presenters who make a bad first impression can lose credibility with their audience and as a result diminish their ability to effectively communicate the information in the presentation.
No Preparation: The best presenters prepare for every presentation. Those who prepare and practice are more successful in presenting their information and anticipating audience reaction. Practice does make perfect!
Lack of Enthusiasm: If you aren't excited about the presentation, why should your audience be? Enthusiastic presenters are the most effective ones around!
Weak Eye Contact: As a presenter, you are trying to effectively communicate with your audience to get your message across. If don't make eye contact with the members in your audience, they will not take you or your message seriously.
No Audience Involvement: The easiest way to turn off your audience is by not getting them involved in your presentation. Use audience involvement to gain their "buy-in".
Lack of Facial Expressions: Don't be a zombie. Effective speakers use facial expressions to help reinforce their messages.
Sticky Floor Syndrome: There is nothing worse than a speaker who is glued to the floor. Be natural and don't stay in one place.
• Examples of presentation problems follow
1. The demonstration: the good, the bad and the ugly: playing with your computer during the presentation
2. All the features, sound, lights, action: too many options
3. The screen saver: something to look at
4. Where’s the on button?: knowing your equipment
5. Microfilm: Making the fonts too big or small
6. Just a bad presenter: no eye contact, mumbling, etc.
7. The cut and paste: format not right for presentation
8. The reader: too much details on overheads, and presenter reads
9. The constant droner: fills all gaps in sound with ‘ah’, ‘um’,
10. The Fiddler: playing with objects and moving too much
11. The Jedi Knight: laser pointer or weapon? (aka caffeine amplifier)
12. The Derivation: one big equation
13. Flipper: spends time jumping backwards in slides
14. Where’s the file?: looking for that lost file on the hard drive
3.8.1 Computer Addresses
• Computers are often given names, because names are easy to remember.
• In truth the computers are given numbers.
• When we ask for a computer by name, your computer must find the number. It does this using a DNS (Domain Name Server). On campus we have two ‘148.61.1.10’ and ‘148.61.1.15’.
• The number has four parts. The first two digits ‘148.61’ indicate to all of the internet that the computer is at ‘gvsu.edu’, or on campus here (we actually pay a yearly fee of about $50 to register this internationally). The third number indicates what LAN the computer is located on (Basically each hub has its own number). Finally the last digit is specific to a machine.
3.8.2 Network Types
• The network connection type has an impact on the effectiveness and cost of the connection.
• These networks are fast, but require a permanent connection
• For the campus network the peak data transfer rate is about (4 GB/hour)
• These types of networks include,
• The merit dial-up network is a good example. It is an extension of the internet that you can reach by phone.
• The phone based connection is slower (about 5 MB/hour peak)
ISDN: an faster, more expensive connection, geared to permanent connections
• You need a modem in your computer, and you must dial up to another computer that has a modem and is connected to the Internet. The slower of the two modems determines the speed of the connection. Typical modem speeds are,
28.8/33.3 kbps: moderate speed, inexpensive
14.4 kbps: a bit slow for internet access
3.8.3 Network Protocols
• What are protocols: sequences that computers must follow when sending and receiving information. These agreed methods make sure that information is sent and received correctly.
• Why do we need protocols: Without some agreement about what information is arriving over the network, it would just seem like garbage. This would be like somebody suddenly sending stock market numbers by morse code without telling us what it is.
• This is a method for retrieving or sending files to remote computers.
Problem 3.1 In Netscape ask for the location ‘ftp://sunsite.unc.edu’ This will connect you via ftp the same way as with the windows and the dos software.
• This is the protocol used for talking to a web server.
• Allows us to share files stored on a server.
Problem 3.2 Look at the ‘my computer’ icon. The drives from ‘F’ and up are shared by network, and files are brought to the computer as you request them.
3.8.4 Data Formats
• The format of the data is important so that other programs may interpret it correctly.
• This is a format that is invisible to the user on the web. It allows documents to be formatted to fit the local screen.
Problem 3.3 hile looking at a home page in Netscape select ‘View: Page Source’. You will see a window that includes the actual HTML file: This file was interpreted by Netscape to make the page you saw previously. Look through the file to see if you can find any text that was on the original page.
• Editors are available that allow users to update HTML documents the same way they use word processors.
Problem 3.4 Find a home page in Netscape. Use the ‘File: Edit Page’ button to start the editor. Notice the buttons along the top for font sizes, colors, etc. Play with page and add your own name.
Problem 3.5 Type in two new line of text. Name these lines ‘sunsite’ and ‘other’. highlight ‘sunsite’ first, and select the small chain link at the top of the page. type in the link ‘http://sunsite.unc.edu’. Accept this and then highlight the ‘other’ line. Enter a new link again using ‘other.html’. (don’t close the edit window, we will use it again shortly)
• Once a web page has been modified it is necessary to put it back on the web server.
• When publishing a page with a browser ‘FTP’ will be used.
• The web page called ‘index.html’ is the first one to be returned. If you are publishing a main page your main page should be called ‘index.html’.
Problem 3.6 Using the web page that you modified before, publish the results to your home page. You can do this using the ‘publish’ option. You will have to provide a site name ‘http://www2.gvsu.edu/~YOURNAME’, a user name, and a password, and call the file ‘index.html’. Use Netscape to view your updated home page. Note: You may have to hit reload, as Netscape will keep old copies, and does not automatically reload web pages if it has a recent copy is stored.
Problem 3.7 Edit the file again and add a link to ‘other.html’. You can do this by highlighting text, and then clicking on the ‘link’ icon.
• Keep in mind that the website is just another computer. You have directories and files there too. To create a web site that has multiple files we need to create other files or directory names.
Problem 3.8 Create a new web page, and add something to it. Publish this page as before, except call it ‘other.html’. Call up the browser, and load in the ‘index.html’ page that you created. Click on the links and see what happens.
• Note that some web servers do not observe upper/lower case and cut the ‘html’ extension to ‘htm’. Microsoft based computers are notorious for this, and this will be the most common source of trouble.
Problem 3.9 (Basic): Use the Windows ftp program to access your remote account that your web page is set up in. Look at the files and file names. Transfer the files on the web site back to your local computer.
Problem 3.10 (Advanced): You can open these files in Netscape, edit them, save them back to the disk, and then publish them using the ftp program.
• In HTML documents we need to refer to resources. To do this we use a label to identify the type of resource, followed by a location.
• Universal Resource Locators (URLs)
Problem 3.11 In Firefox/Chrome/etc. type in ‘mailto:YOUR_NAME@river.it.gvsu.edu’. After you are done try ‘news:gvsu’.
• Below is a list of hints for publishing web pages
Windows will not allow multiple applications to open the same file at the same time. If you seem to be having trouble opening a file, make sure it is not open in another application.
As you add other files to your homepage, put them in the ‘temp’ directory. This will make all of the procedures simpler.
Try to make your web pages small, and link them together. This will decrease download time and make browsers happier.
Avoid using excessive images. Anything over 10K will make it very slow downloading over modem. Anything over 100K makes modem downloading painfully slow.
When putting images on the web page use ‘jpg’ for photographic images, and ‘gif’ for line images. ‘jpg’ images can be compressed more than ‘gif’, but lines will become blurred.
To link to other files or web pages there will be a ‘link’ command. If you want to add a file that is in your ‘temp’ directory, just put the name of the file in the ‘URL’ field.
Watch upper/lower case. This is a major cause of web page problems.
• There are a variety of editors that will allow us to edit single web pages or entire sites.
Problem 3.12 Start Microsoft Word and create a new document. Save this document as HTML on the hard drive. Use notepad to open the file and see how it relates to the original file.
• A format proposed by Adobe. This is not a ‘standard’, but is very widely accepted.
• When documents are presented in pdf format their original layout is preserved (HTML will actually change the look/layout of a document), but the files become hard/impossible to work with.
• A special plug-in is required to view these files.
Problem 3.13 Point Netscape to ‘http://claymore.engineer.gvsu.edu/~sahlis/214’ and look under handouts for a PDF file.
• We can make a file smaller by compressing it (unless it is already compressed, then it gets larger)
• File compression can make files harder to use in Web documents, but the smaller size makes them faster to download. A good rule of thumb is that when the file is MB is size, compression will have a large impact.
• Many file formats have compression built in, including,
programs: installation programs are normally compressed
• Typical compression formats include,
zip: zip, medium range compression
Stuffit: A Mac compression format
• Some files, such as text, will become 1/10 of their original size.
• This is a programming language that is supported on most Internet based computers.
• These programs will run on any computer: there is no need for a Mac, PC and Unix version.
• Most users don’t need to program in Java, but the results can be used in your web pages
Problem 3.14 Go to ‘www.javasoft.com’ and look at some sample java programs.
• Simple programs can be written as part of an HTML file that will add abilities to the HTML page.
• This is a programming method proposed by Microsoft to reduce the success of Java: It has been part of the antitrust suit against Microsoft by the Justice Department.
• It will only work on IBM PC computers running the ‘Internet Explorer’ browser from Microsoft.
• One major advantage of ActiveX is that it allows users to take advantage of programs written for Windows machines.
• Note: Unless there is no choice avoid this technique. If similar capabilities are needed, use Java instead.
GIF: well suited to limited color images: no loss in compression. Use these for line images, technical drawings, etc
JPG: well suited to photographs: image can be highly compressed with minimal distortion. Use these for photographs.
• Digital cameras will permit image capture and storage: images in JPG format are best.
• Scanners will capture images, but this is a poor alternative as the image sizes are larger and image quality is poorer
Photographs tend to become grainy when scanned.
• Screen captures are also possible, but do these with a lower color resolution on the screen (256 color mode).
• These are not video, but moving drawings/cartoons.
• Animations are limited, but are best done with animated gif files.
special plug-ins such as shockwave
Problem 3.15 Find an animation on a student page at ‘claymore.engineer.gvsu.edu/students.html’.
• Streaming built into Netscape for real-time video.
Problem 3.16 Point Netscape to ‘www.aml.gvsu.edu’. Select and watch the video stream.
• We can also get special plug-ins that will allow us to see video files,
MPEG very popular, good compression, and fault tolerant.
AVI popular on PC platforms, but limited drivers elsewhere.
• Real-time video conferencing is possible, but not yet practical.
Problem 3.17 Start the Netscape Conference software.
• Sound files are poorly supported, and most require special plugins,
Problem 3.18 Go to www.mtv.com and try to play a sound file.
• We can connect any type of non-standard computer file to our pages, such as a Microsoft Excel file ‘.xls’.
1. Put the file in our web directory
2. Link it to one or more HTML pages
3. Have the system administrator add this as a MIME type to the system.
4. When you click on the link to the file in Netscape it will ask you to choose an application. For an excel file you would want to choose ‘\program files\office97\excel’. This will automatically start when you choose the file next time. If you did not do step 3, or did not choose an application you would be asked to save the file.
• This is an excellent way to extend the capabilities of a web browser.
Problem 3.19 Create a Word or Powerpoint file, and put it in your web directory using FTP. Add a link to it in your home page, and test to see if the link works.
• As you have already seen, the browser (ie, Netscape) helps pull these resources together.
• When we want to do things that are not part of the standard browser, we can use plug-ins.
• Plug-ins are small programs that can be used by Browsers to deal with different Protocols and Formats.
Problem 3.20 Go to the Netscape home page, and call up the plug-in directory. Look for a plug-in you would be able to use. You may also want to try (www.autodesk.com) to find a DWF viewer plug-in.