Creating My Own Design

Using the Virtual Beadloom, I created my name.

Computer Buying Project

My final choice in the Computer Buying Project was a Mac.  The most important reason I chose the Mac was because of the Retina display.  I think display, especially on a laptop, is extremely important because basically everything you do on your laptop involves your screen.  The Retina display reduces glare, while maintaining its amazing color and quality, blacker blacks, and whiter whites.  A second important reason is the battery life.  A 13 inch Macbook Pro with Retina display can go up to 9 hours between charges.  The 15 inch Macbook Pro with Retina display can last up to 8 hours without being charged.  Lastly, the speed of the Macs were a large factor in my decision.  From my experience, Macbooks seem to be much faster than PCs.

Power Searching with Google: How it's Useful to Me

Throughout the Power Searching with Google unit, I learned many new tips and techniques for effective Google searching.  One of the most useful is the operator that filters the results by its source: "site:".  This will be extremely useful when I'm doing research because I'll be able to make sure the source is credible by using "site:.gov" or "site:.edu".  Another useful thing I learned is how to exclude a certain term from your results using the "-" operator.  I will be using this operator often because I tend to get results that aren't what I'm looking for.  This will allow me to exclude those from my results and focus on what I am looking for.  These two tips stick out to me as things that I will be getting a lot of use out of.  However, the entire unit was very helpful.