My name is Sara JoAnn Miller, and I am senior at the University of Florida. I will graduate in May with a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration with a minor in Mass Communications. I am currently applying to Graduate School for the fall. I was born in Jacksonville, FL, and I have one older brother, William. I spend my free time watching Gator basketball and football, hanging out with my friends and playing tug-of-war with my dog, Daisy.
My ResumeA website is a vital tool to all businesses. When I am first researching a product or a business, I turn to the Internet to get a first impression. If a company has a quality website and makes a good impression, I am much more likely to visit the store or purchase goods over the Web.
Podcasts are a new communications technology that will become an important part of all businesses. Everyday, new users are discovering this interesting and valuable tool. One group of professionals who are implementing this technology is professors in large universities, like the University of Florida. Teachers are adopting the use of podcasts as a supplement to their regular curriculum. This makes it very easy for students to listen to lecture on the go, creating more time for other activities.
Podcasts are bound to become a part of the daily life of all those who work in the business world. They are an easy and more personal way of sharing news to a mass audience, like the employees at a large corporation. Individuals will be better able to connect to their work community if they can listen to someone they know make announcements, rather than read them in an unemotional email. Podcasts move us one step closer to being a global community.
Before starting this project, I knew very little about secure email, and I certainly had never made use of the technology. I learned that using secure email is really quite simple. The technology is free, readily available, and easily employed, making this practical and useful.
So, how does secure email work? First each individual gets two encryption keys: one private and one public. You keep your private key to yourself, and you distribute the public key to your friends. When you email your friends, they can verify the authenticity of your email because they have access to your public key. When your friends send you an email, it is encrypted with your public key, and then when you receive it, your private key allows it to be decrypted. This insures authenticity of emails between any two people who have shared their encryption keys.
This technology could be extremely useful in business where sensitive information is sent via email on a regular basis, like financial institutions. Implementing secure email is also a good way to ensure customers of the authenticity of a company’s external communications, thus helping to prevent the consumer from falling prey to phising schemes. This is a low cost and easy tool that all businesses should use to increase the security of their day to day dealings.
Microsoft Sharepoint is a powerful tool in the modern business world. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of companies that employ virtual and remote workers. As companies become more global and staff members have less face to face interaction, Sharepoint offers a unique program that enables employees to easily communicate and collaborate on projects.
Prior to this assignment, my only experience with Sharepoint was viewing it as an internal corporate web log. This collaborative computing project was my first opportunity to utilize all of the tools the program has to offer. It was extremely easy to communicate with my teammates, and the picture and document galleries were functional and effective. Overall, I had a positive experience with a product that I am sure to see again, once I enter the business world.
I believe that all companies should look into using Microsoft Sharepoint. It is practical and useful software that will undoubtedly improve employee performance, and quite possibly might enhance the company’s culture by providing another avenue for employee interactions.
View my pivot table
I have used Excel on many occasions, but for this Excel project, I got the opportunity to use functions that I had never utilized. The text functions like Replace, Right/Left and Find are extremely handy when you are trying to separate data into functional columns. The pivot table wizard is also very useful and easy to use for organizing and comparing data. After this project, my new favorite Excel tool is the goal seeker; it was unbelievably easy to find the price one should charge to reach a revenue goal. I enjoyed delving deeper into the Excel toolbox.
View my database relationships
This project was the first time I had ever used Microsoft Access to create a database. I have, in the past, used preconfigured Access databases as a part of my job. I have also extensively used a more elaborate and advanced database, The Raiser’s Edge.
I believe that this insight will be valuable to my future experiences with databases. I now have a better understanding of how the database functions and builds relationships. This will help me when searching for information, creating queries and reports, and ultimately the effectiveness of how I apply this tool to my work.
Microsoft Access is often overlooked in computer courses. However, I believe that it should be included because it is an extremely valuable tool in the business world. All workers should understand not just what they are doing, but how they are accomplishing it.
