Thursday Presentations

For our presentations tomorrow, does anyone know where to find examples of portfolios that we would like to use as models. A few weeks ago we looked at another college's portfolios but I cannot find the site. Also, can we use any site as an example or must we use a portfolio? Thanks!

Keep it Captivating

After reviewing the suggested blogs, I took some pieces of information and combined them to hopefully make my presentation better.

The blog by Kathy Sierra pointed out the importance of properly using slides in a presentation. She encouraged the use of numerous slides in a presentation that were changing to keep the audience engaged. It is important to use slides as an addition to your presentation and not just something to look at. These slides should not just be a bunch of words that you are reading from, but a combination of stimulating images and large, brief text. People learn in different ways, so providing visuals that agree with what you are talking about help those who are more receptive to that type of learning. It also provides clarity to subjects, both difficult and simple.

I liked the thought of being entertaining and upbeat. This is very important to keep the listeners engaged in your topic so they can provide you with feedback throughout the presentation. I watched the Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk and saw a true example incorporating these ideas. I didn’t even know what he was going to talk about during the speech, but he caught my attention right away and kept it. I laughed by myself when watching his speech. I realize this is not something that everyone has the talent to do, but as Kathy mentioned, if you are not funny yourself, find something else that is. A funny slide or captivating comment can pull your audience back in before you loose them completely.

The last point Kathy made that I hope to use in my presentation is being passionate about the presentation while being caring to the audience. The difficult part of a presentation is to keep the audience in mind at all times. Sometimes we can get so caught up in what we know and showing all that we know, we loose track of our listeners. By being passionate about the topic we can show the audience that we care about it and how important it is, but you have to do it in a respectful way for the audience. Bombarding them with information will be devastating to a presentation, so incorportanting stories or other aspects into the speech to keep it moving will be much more acceptable to the audience. As Kathy said, changing the pace is important, so breaking the big pieces apart with stories or humor will keep their attention and help make the presentation run smoothly.

Presentation Tips

Communication skills are of immeasurable importance in any sort of professional environment. There are a number of tips from the “Creating Passionate Users” blogposts and the Garrreynolds.com website that I thought were of particular importance.

As a student I have witnessed a number of presentations by other students, teachers, coworkers and the most important aspect of a good delivery in my opinion is incorporating humor and energy into the presentation. As Kathy Sierra puts it, “Be energetic. Be enthusiastic. Dare I say... be passionate. 
You don't have to behave as someone you're not, but if you CARE about the topic and the audience (and if you don't, why are you there?), make sure that it shows. Energy and enthusiasm is infectious.” If a presenter is not enthusiastic about his/her topic then there is no way to generate interest or enthusiasm towards the topic in the audience and the presentation was not useful. If you, as a presenter, took the time to organize and prepare a presentation about a specific topic, you must have some sort of enthusiasm about it, so make sure that shows through. I think humor is also essential to a successful presentation because it keeps the audience engaged and also shows your audience your enthusiasm in an indirect way. For example, avid golfers appreciate golf jokes while scientists appreciate science jokes, because they are interested in the subject matter and can appreciate a joke regarding the subject. The same goes for a presentation. If the presenter can incorporate humor into the presentation it not only maintains audience attention but also indirectly shows the audience that the presenter really does care about the topic.

Garrreynolds.com gave some helpful hints regarding preparing for a presentation that I would like to use to prepare my own presentation. On this website the author suggests keeping it simple and asking yourself (the presenter) what three things you want your audience to remember after listening to your presentation? Be it three words or phrases you want the audience to retain after you finish speaking. This is an excellent planning strategy because it forces the presenter to boil the presentation down to only a few words and makes the purpose of the presentation extremely clear. The Garrreynolds.com website also gave some good presentation tips that I would like to keep in mind when making my presentation; one of them being: Have a visual theme but don’t use PowerPoint templates. Although it might be tempting to use a PowerPoint template in a presentation, most likely the audience has seen that template before. The author suggests being original and creating something that your audience will not recognize. In my opinion, this could help the members of the audience remember your presentation better.

How to WOW them.

After reading the two articles I was taken back by all the good ideas I was given. Each article had personal stories of what dose and dose not work when you are given a presentation. I was able to find three main points that the articles brought up.

1. You must really work to entertain your audience. Most of the time the people you are talking to would rather be doing something else more important to them. Using color slides, humor, and your voice will really help keep them entertain in your presentation.

2. Be Prepared. It is important that you are well prepared for your presentation. Know exactly what is on each slide so you never have to look back and also know what you want to talk about next. Practice your presentation in front of others to get a feel for how long it will take and what you need to work on.

3. Find a way to connect with your audience. Before going into your presentation, learn about the type of people who are going to be in the audience. Prepare your presentation around these people. Some good questions to ask are…How old are they? What do they do?

Three Important Things for a Presentation

Through both of these sites, I pulled out three of the most important steps I think are important while giving a presentation. I know with my major and career, it is likely that I will have to do a lot of presentations. And it is said that presentations are one of the greatest fears of people. So, if you know great steps it will prepare you more and you will not be as intimidated by the thought of presentations.
Steps:

1. The slides go with the words-dont just use them as a background. But, on the same track the slides are not the words (dont just read off the slides for the whole presentation-the audience can do tha on their own). Use the slides as visuals for the audience, I know that I grasp more information when I have some words in front of me; rather than only talk.

2. Be energetic while giving a presentation- I think this greatly helps a presentation succeed. The audience will not want to listen and will start to do other things while you are giving your presentation if it does not interest them. There is no reason to give the speech if no one is going to listen. You are wasting the audience's time as well as yours.

3. Make your story, make a connection with the audience (but dont make your presentation too pitchy). If you do the audience will tune you out as well. You can also show examples of what your presentation was about. This will help a lot when it comes to work presentations.

These are great tips that will help with my presentation skills.

3 things I learned about presentations

I really liked the second website that was given to us because I felt as though it gave me some great insight on presentations. I read the blog about Tom Peter's tips for presentations and loved it. I felt like his outlook on giving presentations made the whole idea seem a lot less scary.

The first tip that I really liked was to only include one point per slide. He goes into detail by saying that overcrowding a slide is confusing for the audience and more technical issues can be prepared in handouts. Even though putting one point per slide can get tedious I believe that it is crucial to keep the attention of the audience. If an individual gets confused they are likely to lose focus.

The second tip that stood out to me was to appeal to the emotional aspect of the audience. He states that even though only half of the brain reasons with emotion (the other half is technical) it is important to appeal emotionally to the audience, because as humans, individuals naturally connect more with the presenter if there is emotion involved. Tom Peter's says that even if a presentation is clearly technical, adding just a little bit of emotion will catch the audience's attention.

The third tip that I really liked was passion. Tom says that in order to captivate the audience, we as the presenters must be passionate about our topic. If the presenter is passionate about the topic, more credibility will be given, and the audience will credit the presentaion as a whole more. He advises that to make a project passionate one must mimick the presentation as one big story, with suprise facts to catch the audience off guard.

In all I learned that even though many presentations can be very technical they can presented in an appealing and attention grabbing way. I get anxiety about giving presentaions and this blog made the idea seem less scary and more interesting.

Three Important Things for Presentations

The first thing that I thought was important when it comes to presentations is “be entertaining.” I think that this is one of the most important aspects of giving a presentation. As we all know, there is nothing more boring than a presentation that lacks in humor or emotion, or interesting facts. Most of us have probably had a really bad teacher that was not entertaining at all. Another reason I think that being entertaining is important, is because if you are passionate about what you are talking about, then you will come off as more entertaining. In addition, the audience will take in more information of what you are saying if you can find a way for them to stay tuned in.

The second important thing I read about and thought was really interesting, is the blog post about “Creativity, presentations, and design thinking.” It states how the creativity in a presentation is extremely important and plays a vital role when giving a presentation. I think too many people do not use all of their abilities when doing different tasks, and find themselves working within a cookie cutter mold. If you think back to the presentations or lectures that you remember, I’m sure there was something about it that was creative.

The third important thing I read, was in the blog post about Bill Clinton, titled “Bill Clinton, and The Art of Speaking in a Human Voice.” What I got from this post, that I think would be helpful in all presentations, is that there should be some type of emotion in your voice when speaking to an audience. No one likes a person that reads their notes when speaking, or speaks in a monotone voice the entire time. What this blog points out, is that humans have the need to empathize with one another, and by using emotion to capture their attention, they can easily relate and be ready receive more information.

Three things about presentation

I taken communication classes before and this information wasn't entirely new to me. But it did show lots of similarities to the classes stressing the importance of learing these ideas. The three things that were most important to me were:
1. Preperation, doing extensive research in getting ready to do a presentation. The morre you know and prepare the more confident you sound and the more people will listen to what you have to say.
2. Knowing your audience. It is very important to know who you are presenting to, especially if the audience is not as experienced in the topic you are presenting on. Its always good to make sure your audience can understand everything that you are saying.
3. Varing tone and pace. If these are used correctly they can be a very important tool in communicating very important parts of your presentation. It can also keep the audience from falling asleep or zoning out.

Presentation Tips

What I found most interesting between these articles was the amount of time spent per hour of a presentation. I cannot imagine spending 100 hours per 1 hour of a presentation. At the same time, I do find it almost necessary to spend 40 hours or so, just from what little experience I've had. I completely agree with the need to care about your audience and add humor, as well. I think most of all, this first article implied energy. That's a given when you're trying to present.

I was especially interested in the second article and its topic of Word of Mouth Marketing. I think the concept of giving people something to talk about, and only sharing a story as opposed to pitching a sale is very interesting.

If I had to narrow down three things that I'd like to take away from these for my presentation, I'd have to say:

1.) "be interesting, or be invisible". It's so difficult to put yourself out there. I'm always trying to tell myself that if I mumble in front of a crowd, they're still going to hear me, so I might as well speak loud and confidently.

2.) vary the pacing. This is something that I think will come with more practice, experience, and exposure. More often than not, it's easier to speed through a presentation and talk at 1,000 words a minute. Adding a slow effect in emphasize key phrases and really just trying to play around and have fun with the speed of your presentation is something I'd like to try and do.

3.) use insider references. This mostly just comes from knowing your audience and including some humor, but I think the article makes a good point in saying that it's important to use humor that the audience can directly connect with. This creates more of a bond or appreciation between speaker and audience.

Three Things I Learned

I thought both of the articles were fairly interesting. Here's three things that I'd like to incorperate into my presentations.

"The slides go with the words--they aren't just there as backdrops."

It seems all too often when I see presentations with PowerPoint, it's almost pointless to even USE the PowerPoint presentation to present, because the slides either have very little to do with the presentation or have a bunch of meaningless facts that no one cares about and no one is going to read through. AND if they do read through it, their brain is trying to compile that information instead of listening to YOU!

"Use humor. Somehow. [Note from me: I'm not funny, not at all. So I have to do this with slides. Damian is funny, and his slides are hilarious]"

It's good to hear this from someone else. I love using humor in presentations. I love sarcastic remarks here and there, random moments of well... randomness, and other things that will keep the viewers on the edge of their seats, or at least not comatose in a puddle of drool sleeping. Some people find it "unprofessional" and stick to boring slides with boring information over, and over, and over, and... zzzzzzzz...

"Care about the audience. Care about their time. Care about their attention. Care about what they probably paid in time and money to be there. Care because... that's the kind of person you are ; )"

Is there anything worse than sitting in a presentation with someone who thinks they know just a little too much? Instead of trying to teach YOU they act like they are simply there to show off, or that they just don't care and read in a monotonous tone. There is nothing I hate worse than this. NOTHING. There is also nothing that will lose an audience quicker than Joe Schmoe reading off a set of cards in a drab voice while not maintaining eye contact, etc. I suppose this one sums it all up nicely. Act like you care about your audience and make sure you do so when you present!!

3 Thing I Learned About Presentations

It was very hard for me to pick just three things to talk about after reading the blog post and the hints on the website. I feel like I am terrible at doing presentations and never feel comfortable speaking in front of a large number of people. The blog gave me several little hints on how to make the powerpoint slides more useful and how to use them better in relation to the audience. My biggest problem is that I seem to go into a trance and begin reading straight from the slides, and now I know plently of ways to use the slide to aid my presentation while not reading straight from them. Here are the three things that helped me most about presentations:

1. I never how helpful it is to actually make your slides as simply as possible. In the Gary Reynolds website I found that his slide tips really allowed me to realize I was one of the people that created the type of "eye chart" slide rather that a visual aid. I feel like that will help me alot with creating my slides for this presentation.

2. I also didn't realize that using cheezy art slides rather than good 3d art was looked down upon. I would usually look through clip art for something to help me out with my slide, now I know I should probably look online for something that looks much more realistic and better.

3. I never knew how much time one could spend preparing for a presentation, it said in the blog a minimum of 20 hours per hour of presentation, to work on the slides and talk. If I consider this ratio relative to my presentation I should probably start practicing now!

Three things that I learned about presentations

I learned some fairly interesting things about presenting speeches with the material we were given to read. The first thing that I learned was to make sure to prepare alot for your speech if you really want to become successful. I think that getting the proper amount of time to prepare a speech can really make a huge difference in how it really goes.
I also learned really try to portray the passion you have for whatever you are talking about. I think that slowing and speeding up your rate of speech, having some well placed humor, and several varations in your voice can really captivate the audience into enjoying your speech more than if you are just boring and monotone.
The third thing that I learned was to prepare yourself for people to disagree with some of the comments that you might make in your speech. Alot of times I think people are passionate about their own ideas and beliefs about certain matters, so by having your arguments backed up will allow you to be alot more calm if someone is looking for a verbal arguement.

3 things I learned about presentations

I thought these websites were very helpful. I am a terrible speaker and always get so nervous when I have to give a presentation, as everyone will find out in a few weeks, but this site gives you some good information on how to give a good presentation.
1. Don't take yourself too seriously.
Even though I think this is sort of just a way of handicapping yourself so you don't have to admit to having a bad or boring presentation, my presentation will probably be awful so this is sort of a disclaimer that will hopefully allow me to relax and have a better presentation.
2. Make yourself an expert. By dedication and preparation you can prepare yourself and your presentation to be the best it can possibly be.
3. Speak in a human voice.
Humans are emotional beings and respond to emotions. Don't have a monotone voice when doing your presentation, but rather be excited about what you have to say. Hopefully, by doing this you will be able to make your audience excited about it as well.

3 important things about presentations

After reading the blogs and chapter, I found many helpful things when preparing for a presentation.

1. Make sure your audience understands what you are going to present to them. The chapter discusses the structure in a very simplistic but help way and breaks the presentation into 3 parts. a) Intro: Tell them what you're going to tell them b) Tell Them c) Tell them what you just told them. Following this will ensure your point is made.

2. Keeping your composure is essential. Keep a consistent tempo throughout the presentation. Do not get moving too fast, otherwise the audience may get lost and not be able to follow along.

3. Be energetic and excited to be speaking to your audience. If you are not excited about your subject, why would the audience be? Be sure not to be over zealous and scare the audience though. Enthusiasm and control can work well together.

3 Things I Learned About Presentations

I thought this blog was very helpful. It was helpful because it makes you feel like you are not alone when giving a presentation. A lot of times, I feel that people make giving presentations into a much bigger deal than it really is. If you know what you need to say then your presentation should not be overwhelming at all. A presentation, to me, should be just like a conversation. It should simply be you telling your audience what you need them to know. These are the three points I learned from this blog entry:

1. Don't use templates from Power Point. This really told me a lot because I always do this. It is kind of like taking the easy way out when using one of these. While they look professional, someone else may have used the exact same template.

2. Taking 10 hours to come up with a 1 hour presentation. This astonished me. I never knew you should take so much time in preparing for a presentation

3. Color schemes are essential. I always thought the color scheme simply reflected your personality or your presentation topic. This went into much more detail than I ever would have thought about.

3 Important Things about Presentation Blogs

I think that all of these articles and blogs were very helpful and informative. It is very important to know about these things, and it is something that comes with practice. So if you know what to do to begin with, it makes things a lot easier. They made many important points. Here were my favorite ones:
1. Presentation Zen talks about how to make yourself and your product marketable. Not only do you need to give an interesting presentation to keep the attention of your readers, but you need to get to as many places as possible in your community. Spreading the word can only help. Coming prepared is also key. You cannot expect the audience to do the talking for you.
2. The next thing that I really liked was "keeping your cool under fire". I think this is very important because there are always going to be people that do not agree with you, your product, or what you have to say about it. As long as you take the right approach and have the right attitude, you will be confident and not defensive.
3. The third important aspect in Presentation How tos blog was "do not take yourself too seriously. I think this is very important because there is a difference in being serious and too serious. If you are too serious your presentation is going to be less effective and your audience is going to be in a way uncomfortable. You do not have to be too serious to be effective.

Overall I think that this was interesting and helpful at the same time. I hope to effectivly use these tips during my presentation.

3 Important Things about Presentation Blogs

I think that all of these articles and blogs were very helpful and informative. It is very important to know about these things, and it is something that comes with practice. So if you know what to do to begin with, it makes things a lot easier. They made many important points. Here were my favorite ones:
1. Presentation Zen talks about how to make yourself and your product marketable. Not only do you need to give an interesting presentation to keep the attention of your readers, but you need to get to as many places as possible in your community. Spreading the word can only help. Coming prepared is also key. You cannot expect the audience to do the talking for you.
2. The next thing that I really liked was "keeping your cool under fire". I think this is very important because there are always going to be people that do not agree with you, your product, or what you have to say about it. As long as you take the right approach and have the right attitude, you will be confident and not defensive.
3. The third important aspect was "do not take yourself too seriously

3 Important Aspects of Presentation Blogs

I really enjoyed the Presentation How To’s blog. It’s hard to give presentation; successful and non-boring ones at that! Presentation Zen was helpful as well. I am going to try and use these three important bits of advice for my presentation

1. Presentation Zen gives a great quote about making a person marketable. Considering I am a marketing major, and will be graduating in May, I take this quote to heart. There is so much truth behind it.
"Giving people a reason to talk about your stuff *and* making it easier for that conversation to take place."
If you want to give a great presentation you need to make it memorable. Tapping in to a persons memory bank can bring them talking to others about your presentation. Even if they do not talk to others they sit and think about it themselves making their own conclusions.

2. Presentation How To’s blog gives me my next to important things to remember while giving a presentation which I will try to incorporate in my presentation.
Don’t take yourself too seriously.
Although it is important to be a bit serious, I think it is important to lighten up to make your audience comfortable. Your audience is the most important aspect of your presentation. You are trying to show them what you are made of by showing your creativity through computer presentation as well as spoken word. Making your audience feel comfortable by being yourself will win them over. Not to mention make you feel more comfortable and relaxing aiding in giving a better presentation.

3. The next important aspect I will use is:
* Be energetic. Be enthusiastic. Dare I say... be passionate. *
Who wants to sit through a boring, monotone presentation with someone who doesn’t care about what they are talking about? No one…at least no one I know. Be fun! Be energetic! I don’t think this needs any explaining. Don’t be boring and care about what you are presenting about.

3 Things Learned from Presentations Blogs

After reading many blog posts from the 2 websites, I have learned the following three things about making a good presentation.
1. According to the Presentation Zen post, "Creativity, Presentations, and Design Thinking," I am reminded to be creative in your presentation. You can be creative in the way the information is presented or the visuals you create. It is common for business students to believe that they are not creative, which is not true.
2. According to the Creating Passionate Users post "Add graphics to your blog, book, or presentation" it is important to use graphics in a presentation to quickly inform your audience. Clear graphics allow the audience to visually understand the information you are presenting. Type of graphics can include: charts, diagrams, graphs, comparisons, metaphors, or photographs.
3. Lastly, the post "Two Words of Passion," talk about the importance of a professional vs. passionate design. The type of design depends on the type of image you are trying to convey. For example, a corporate presentation should be professional, dignified, and rather standard. On the other hand, a presentation for a revolutionary start-up company can be more daring and fun. For my presentation of my portfolio, I will use a professional style since is a class presentation.

Gliffy

I liked using Gliffy. It was very easy to use and get into. It did not take long to get the program running which I feel is important. I also like how you dont have to download anything. With one of the last programs we had to download the software and that took a lot of time. I also like how you can save and use the same map again. I also like how the shapes and arrows were already done and all I had to do was drag them to the page. You could also adjust the size of the shapes. And the arrows were easy to move around. I do not have time to play around with the software to see all that it had to offer. But, just with my short usage I really enjoyed it.

Gliffytastic

Gliffy was so easy to use and very professional. I liked how everything was so easy to find. All the shapes were right there in front of you and it was easy to find the tools to be able to connect your shapes. I was a little annoying that you couldn't see the whole page at the same time and thus, the boxes had to be a little smaller and your writing went outside the boxes somtimes, but other than that I though Gliffy was amazing.

Gliffy

I thought the gliffy software had a lot of interesting things on it. It reminded my of an architectual drafting sofware I used in high school. There were lots of icons that I could use to put in my map. However, I thought that the software was a little confusing. I There really wasn't a help menu or instruction on how to use the different icons. I also thought it was kind of a generic software in that it can be used for lots of different things but doesn't really go into depth in one specific are. It would have been better if there was a sofware or template for making the map only. The other icons confused me a little bit.

Gliffy

When first read the assignment and learned that I would receive extra credit if I used the Gliffy program to create my levels chart I was excited at the opportunity. However, when I tried to use the program I became very confused. Using computer programs are difficult for me in general, and I try to avoid them as much as possible if I can do something by hand in stead. I think for this particular assignment it is a lot easier to just write out the layout on paper. Besides, if you want to go back and change something real quick, all you need is an eraser and your done. All in all, I did not like using the Gliffy program. It was too difficult and I ended up just giving up on it, because it was taking to much time.

The fun of Gliffy

Gliffy was kind of fun to use for this project. It had a lot of cool tools that I know I could of used on so many other projects I have done in the past. It did not take me long to learn how to use the Gliffy program and it made making the boxes very easy. I did not like how I had to drag each shape over to the document and could not just selected a shape and then place it where I wanted it. I think Gliffy is a good program because you do not have to download it on your computer. This made starting Gliffy very easy and fast to use. Also, it is nice that you have your own account, that way you can be working on any computer and save your work.

Gliffy

I just wanted to say that I tried to use gliffy, and overall it was way too confusing and I ended up just doing it by hand. I do understand why a program like that would not have a "how to" section or a manual or something. All it gives you are the different layouts and shapes and it does not even explain how to use those either. I feel like it would have been a waste of time for me to sit there for a couple hours and try to figure out what I was doing, when I could really make my map look nice by hand.

Web Map using Gliffy

Overall, Gliffy is a user friendly tool for creating a wide range of diagrams. In my opinion Gliffy is easier to use compared to the Visio program I downloaded at the beginning of the semester to create my special project map. Creating an account was really simple but I had some trouble finding a way to connect the different pieces of my map. What I really needed was a copy and paste sort of thing so that I didn't have to keep redrawing every line. In all reality there is probably a command in Gliffy that will allow users to do this, I just couldn't figure it out. As I was trying to figure out how to use the program I was surprised to find the option of creating floor plans. Gliffy has all the special symbols and characters needed to create a technical floor plan. I had never used a program with those options in it until now.

The Gliffy

I was really pretty confused about our assignment in general...but eventually I figured out what I was supposed to be doing. I have to admit, the Gliffy tool seems pretty cool at first, until you try to actually work it. Maybe it is just the fact that I have never worked with anything like this before, but I couldn't find instructions or a help box anywhere. I felt like it was left up to me to interpret all of the weird symbols. I guess it is a good thing to gain experience with tools like the Gliffy even if it means a little frustration. I do believe that simply drawing a chart or map on a piece of paper would be much simpler, although it would be much less professional. The gliffy provides a professional, clean approach to organizing thoughts.

Using Gliffy.com to create my levels chart

I liked using the Gliffy program to create my levels chart. Although there weren’t any directions it seemed to navigate like the program I used on an earlier assignment. I used simple and concise lines and boxes which I feel make my level chart look good. One thing I found difficult was on how to publish the chart online. There was a blogger option, but it didn’t let me tell it what blog to post it on. The directions weren’t very clear. I played around with it trying different things, but nothing worked. I really liked the other features that it offered such as user interface and floorplans. I thought the floorplans was awesome. I played around with it because it was so neat. I’ll be telling some of my family that is in to design and construction about this neat and fun program!

Using Gliffy

So when I first tried to use Gliffy I found that you had to have a computer that has Flashplayer for it to be required. I know that this proved a problem until I found one in the computer lab that was set up so I could use it. Next I found that the registration process for Gliffy was relatively painless, I hate it when I have to check my e-mail for what it seems like 12 times just so I can log into my account. I then proceeded to go to a new blank document and jumped right into it. I soon discovered that every icon located on the side of the screen could be pulled onto the blank screen and adjusted to whatever size you needed, I found this extremely easy. Next when creating the arrows it was just the same as the shapes that my main points went into, if I was trying to limit space I could shrink them down or even slant them to go to a part of the document I wasn't utilizing. Overall Gliffy was a very handy tool and I know that in the future I am definitely going to recommend it to others.

Using Gliffy.com

I did not like using Gliffy to make my Levels Chart. I found this program very confusing. I thought it was weird how it did not give any instructions. You could not really tell which button did what. I was really confused the entire time I was using the program. My final outcome was sloppier than if I would have done the project by hand. I thought the lines were hard to draw, and I could not figure out how to make the squares different from each other. I did not find any button that controlled the size of anything. I just felt like the program only did certain things, and it was not very customizable.

Supplemental Website Banner Instructions

Here are the supplemental instructions that you all worked on and I pulled together into one document. Please leave any feedback or suggestions for improvements in the comments.