Week Two

LECTURE SUMMARY

Starting the Preparation Course in the second week, beginning with my Accessing Knowledge lecture, I found all of the information very familiar. The lecture concerned various internet browsers, Windows applications and the differences between Microsoft XP and Microsoft Vista. Helen discussed the ways of working with these applications with both XP and Vista. She also showed us the statistics of the use of various internet browsers with Internet Explorer being the most commonly used, which was no surprise. Though It wasn't until the tutorial that I realised the differences between the two operating systems because I havn't yet used Vista.

TUTORIAL ACTIVITIES

Microsoft Word

Using Microsoft Word 2007 was very fustrating to use as I have never previously used it and having to produce this having 2003 instructions. After completing this task, I have found that Microsoft Word 2007 is much more convenient and efficient to use than the previous Microsoft Word application that I use personally.
This task allowed me to learn how to double space, double line, make headings appropriately, create the contents section with a clean format and how to reference my resources.
I have created some screenshots of my end result of this task displayed below.





By epsilon890 at 2008-03-10

Microsoft Excel

Completing the Microsoft Excel task has given me the ability to learn how to create tables that hold information which can then be made into presentable pie and coloumn graphs. I found the graphs hard to change the axis labels though overall I am happy that I have learnt the skills needed to present information needed for possible assignments in the future.





READING ACTIVITIES

Graphic File Formatshttp://www.knight-web.net/tutorials/photoshop/ (Graphic File Formats) teaches you about the various types of formats of a image file. Some of these are Join Photographic Experts Group (.jpg), CompuServe (.gif), Bitmap (.bmp), The Tagges-Image File Format (.tiff), PhotoShop Document (.psp ~ .psp ~ .spp).Each format has advantages over others. An example of this is a jpeg. A jpeg format contains all the colour information of a RGB image. This enables jpegs to be best for the internet, which explains why this is the most commonly used format. While TIFF is used to transfer files between different types of computers which use different applications, for example: Mac -> Microsoft. This is where the other formats fail.There are many more advantages of these formats which are explained on the site. This source has given me a great understanding of why there are different image formats and how they are used.TIFF is used to exchange files between applications and computer platforms as it can be readby both Macintosh or IBM compatible / Windows (PC's) computers.