My name is Arielle Swanson, and I am a first-year junior here at UF. I received my AA degree in high school and came into UF with 60 credits, however, despite what my transcripts say, I am still a freshman at heart! I love Florida Basketball and actually had a brother on the team the two years they won the national championships. I got to go to both Final Fours, which are memories I would never trade. I work part-time in the Florida Basketball office, and I am an advertising major with a minor in education. I also plan to get my masters since I have the gift of time on my side. I have been playing soccer my whole life, and I love exercise, the outdoors, great times with friends and family and the beach.
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The web is more popular than it has ever been, and the opportunities the web holds are greatly advancing for businesses. The web allows people from many different places to interact with a company one-on-one. No matter what time of the day, a customer can always access a particular company web site. A broader audience is reached and business is more efficient. The web is an essential for all businesses because it can contact many different target audiences with the least amount of hassle. The web is a convenience most people are starting to take advantage of, which is why businesses should too.
Podcasting is an innovative technology that is really taking audio files to the next level. They are easily adaptable to any mp3 player or personal computer. Beyond just the convenience they hold, they can also be very educational. Instead of listening to pointless top 20 countdowns on the radio, people can listen to things that are actually of interest to them, or they can listen to podcasts that pertain to their career. Podcasts can be customized to individual interests. A person can subscribe to a certain podcast and receive consistent updates. Plus, if the podcasts are linked to a relative theme then other listeners can also contact you and discuss similar interests. Podcasting is an innovative, convenient method of learning that incorporates technology and social networking.
Podcasting has many perks, however, the convenience of podcasting is really what is so great about this new technology. A wonderful perk about podcasting is that people are really optimizing their time during the day. The minutes that are spent riding the train, driving in the car or even waiting on items at the dry cleaners can now be used more efficiently with podcasts. The time people gain with podcasts can then be channeled toward other aspects of their lives. Whether that time be spent with family or even sitting down and eating a good meal, podcasts are really helping transform down time into effective time.
E-mail is rapidly becoming a major factor in the way business is conducted. Secure e-mail is really helping to alleviate some of the stress and pain a company goes through when e-mails are not confidential and or legitimate. With the help of secure e-mails, businesses will feel safer about sending personal information through the internet.
With the advancements in technology the possibilities are endless, which in most cases is wonderful to hear, however, with that advancement the amount of loopholes greatly increases for people to use technology in less than positive ways. Sending out an e-mail without security signatures, encryptions and private keys is basically like sending a postcard out into the internet world for all to read. Secure e-mail is one way businesses can feel more at ease about confidentiality.
Businesses receive countless e-mails each day from random addresses, so a signed e-mail can really help to add a level of professionalism and security. A signature can really help validate an e-mail. Encrypting an e-mail also helps secure professional e-mails so that no interceptions take place. If business keeps moving in a technological way, e-mails are going to have to be safe because other sending and receiving methods are outdated. A hand written letter is hard to find these days when it comes to businesses. Mistakes happen, but people can prevent a lot of them by keeping their e-mails safe. According to encryptomatic.com, many news accounts have documented instances of email messages being intercepted, sometimes with serious consequences.
Encrypted messages, digital signatures and public keys are all steps in the right direction toward securing e-mail and making sure they stay confidential. I have truly enjoyed this project because it has opened my eyes to a world of e-mail I never knew existed. From now on, I will make sure to use certificates and digital signatures with any new e-mail account I open.
The business environment has made great leaps with the help of collaborative computing. With the help of this new innovation, companies from all over the world can come together without leaving their office chairs. With collaborative computing, businesses that would not normally get to work together can do so more easily than ever. More work can be done in less time, traveling is not even a crucial factor anymore, and new ideas are being brought up with this new advancement.
I learned so much about collaborative computing by participating in this project. It is very important to start off the project with introductions, to understand every strength and weakness of the team. With that information, duties can be properly assigned to the most qualified member. The discussion board on our Sharepoint website was truly a blessing. With the Sharepoint discussion board, our team was able to brainstorm ideas, start assigning jobs and effectively manage our time in sync with deadlines. The discussion board allowed me to contact all the members of my team at once, so there was no hassle. I was able to write a post and with the helpful alert function, I was alerted anytime a new addition to the website had been added. I check my e-mail very frequently so the alerts were crucial in the success of my communication back to teammates.
Our website has wonderful features for creating any type of flyer or advertisement. With the shared documents option, every member of my team was able to download versions of the ad for the rest of the team to view. I loved our Sharepoint website because everything you need is there. There is no need to download multiple programs and try to use them all for one collaborative computing website, the features are built in. I also love our picture library. Everyone on my team decided that we would each download a certain number of photos, so that our ad would have a personal touch from each member. The website was a serious help, without it, I would not have been able to communicate with my teammates efficiently, therefore not as much work would have gotten done in the time frame that it did.
Every time I participate in a project for this class, I end up taking away something I love, and know I will use in later life. I am still using my Thunderbird e-mail account, which came in very handy when I saw that new updates had been posted to my team Sharepoint website. I was very efficient in my discussion postings because I was alerted quickly that something new had been updated. I will go away from this class with a better understanding of the technology that is available when collaboratively computing with others. I loved this project and the things that I have learned. I thought the website we used was efficient, easy to use and really helpful.
When I started this Excel project, I really thought it would be demonstrated the same way it had always been shown to me in the past, but when participating in this project I really learned numerous tools Excel offered that I never knew existed. I had a few difficulties with this project because I was working on this project with my Mac but for the most part everything was the same and I really learned some great techniques for the future.
For the first part of this project, I worked with text functions to extract data from information I uploaded from the Internet. It really opened my eyes to new ways of dealing with information. My first instinct would have been to just use text to columns, but thanks to this project I was able to learn a new and more convenient way of doing this. It really helped me to look at all the functions before I started the project through Excel help, so that I had some basic knowledge of what each of the functions meant. After I did that, I was able to assess the data and properly choose the correct function for each of the individual tasks.
For the second part of this project, we were instructed to create a pivot table using the information we used for the first part on the rental data sheet. I had some issues with this portion of the assignment, mostly because the auto formatting functions for pivot tables are different from those on pc based programs. I was still able to format my table in a way that showed I did format my pivot table, but it is a little different from others. The pivot table itself, was fairly easy to construct, it was all of the details that can sometimes get tricky. It is a great tool to use and one I hope I become better at creating one so that I can use it in the future.
The last part of this project was focused on using the goal seek function, where we had to determine the input information in correlation with formulas already given. This part of the project really saved time and is a great function to use. This project in total was a great eye opener for me to the great tools Excel offers to save time and frustration. I really hope I learn more about Excel so that it can be beneficial to me in the future.
This Access project was a bit of a roller coaster for me. In the beginning, I thought I had a pretty good idea about how to work with Access, I had used this program in a few of my other classes but never to this extent. I really enjoyed learning how to use this program, with the features it offers I know now why it helps the business world on a daily basis. I think the best and worst things about this program go hand in hand. The good part about this program is that all of the tools you can use such as relationships, queries, tables etc. all correlate together. The con is that if something is wrong with one of the tools, all of data will be messed up. This program requires accurate data, but once that is inputted, this program can be very beneficial to the work world.
As the project progressed, it was very important that all details were correct, since this project really relies on the correlation between all of the objects, tables queries etc. There were a few times during this project that I really debated throwing my computer out of my dorm room, but with the help of the lectures, instructions and of course the discussion thread I was able to get it done.
As far as how this program would be valuable in the business environment, the possibilities are truly endless. This program allows data and information to be compared and placed in a way that is the easiest to view and analyze. The formatting options are endless, making sure that each person can customize their database to their own particular work environment. When I started this project, I was a little confused as to what we were trying to show in our database project, but with the help of the tables and queries I really started to put together what the project was really about. I think Access databases help open eyes to information and present it in a different way. Instead of just typing up the information in a typical word document, it shows information in graphical ways that present information in a new light.
Over all, I thought this project was really beneficial and I now understand why so many businesses throughout the environment use this program. It takes databases to a new level and the options it provides to show information are endless. This project was probably the hardest for me to accomplish, however, well worth the struggles. I think the knowledge I have attained during this project will really follow me as I enter the business world.
