Social Media project

     Here is the link to the McDonald's wiki site: https://ism3004.wikispaces.com/McDonald%27s

       Probably the most interesting thing about the project was setting up a Google Alert for McDonald's. By going to google.com/alerts, you can ask google to send you news related to a particular subject by email. As someone who aspires to be a sports journalist I can use Google Alert to give me the most up to date news regarding my favorite teams. It can also be used for long-term research projects, just enter your subject then have the results sent to your email that way you don't have to do multiple searches through the search engine.
      Another thing I learned from this project was how to work in groups through internet only means. I have worked on countless group projects in a physical classroom, but this is the first time I have not been able to work physically with group member. The only issue I had with the group part of the project, was that once Michael decided to use McDonald's for out company he already posted almost the entire project. There was no discussion amongst the group over who would do which part in fact we fought there were only four people in our group until Friday when our last group member finally introduced himself.
       Probably the biggest take away from this project is the overall impact social media has had on businesses and corporations. The fact that McDonald's has eight to nine people whose sole responsibility is to manage the twitter feed, is an example of how every corporation is starting to recognize the importance of social media and more importantly how to use social media to their advantage. Companies that choose to ignore social media will quickly be left in the dust and will have a difficult time generating customer service in a timely fashion. Based on this project, I would consider Twitter to be the most important social media tool.

Database project

   One of the things I learned in the project was how to construct a professional and sophisticated looking database. The first thing I learned was creating a form that displayed the information about the current members of my gym. As a sports journalist this can be helpful if I wanted a database that determines the statistics for current Orlando Magic players, I would want to make sure that information contained only contains information on those current player who were signed before a certain date. The report layout is really useful for a boss or potential client in that it gives them the information that is of interest to them in a clear and concise format without having them look at a glorified spreadsheet which can be hard to read.
    One of the things that could have been an interesting addition to the database is a form that determines who left before October 1, 2010. I also think that report could have been formulated to determine of the members who left how many were had Family membership and how many had an Individual membership. Even though the directions did not specify this, I did decide to include a drop-down box for both gender and membership type so that the database would look more professional and also easier to use. It also eliminates any chance of misspelling a word and having the records in the database be off.

Excel Project

The excel project forced us to analyze and manipulate data in a way that can be useful in the business environment. The set of data that we were given was extremely useful, because it is the kind of data that could be as a sports journalist, which is my chosen profession. By using the simple max heart rate formula, I can see if the athlete's death was due to him over exerting himself on the field.
   The most fascinating function of excel is the logical test function, which helped me recognize whether the subject's highest heart rate was able to meet or exceed the target heart rate. Before this project, I had never heard of that particular function and it was very complex in comparison to the rest of the tasks that we were assigned. However, once I set the parameters for the logical test, it was immensely satisfying to simply look for "yes" or "no" as opposed to looking at numbers on the spreadsheet and possibly getting it wrong. I also like once you input a formula in a cell that you can drag the formula down through the rest of the rows as opposed to having to input the formula manually into every cell.
     The pivot tables were interesting to play with, in particular the Average Increase pivot table. Due to the fact that we had to group the ages, it was hard to find at first, but once found it made the data much easier to understand for the owner of the fitness center. This project was much more detailed oriented compared to the presentation project, in that you really had to follow the direction or your data would end up being skewed significantly. It was amazing seeing the when the Percent Increase column changed from a decimal to a percentage what a difference in made in the data.

Presentation Project

Here is the link to my presentation: http://www.screencast.com/t/vlpXXo1S8W2F

          I definitely think there was a logical flow to my presentation. I started my presentation by using stats on obesity then proceeded started with what The YMCA is as a whole, followed by what a single YMCA programs does, then finishing the presentation by address potential concerns people may have by the YMCA.  If I would have had more time I would like to have dealt with the membership costs of joining the YMCA.  I think I did a good job of answering any questions that an audience member might have, but one thing that I would have address was the amount of time is required to volunteer at the YMCA.  The start of my presentation did a good job of grabbing the audience’s attention by introducing the problems with childhood obesity.

            I set up my presentation to answer questions that I would have asked if I was in the audience.  I believe that my presentation was concise and that it’s clear that I want the audience to support the YMCA either financially or by volunteering. Every claim that I made is backed up by research on the YMCA and is documented is my source page. From what I could make of my presentation I did not make any unbelievable claims, I might have misspoken once but that was about it. There is no clutter as far as my slides are concerned; I tried to make the slides look good, but not complicated. I decided to incorporate the photos into the background of the slides and use a white font to make sure the words are clear. I tried to say it then show it and I absolutely did not read from the slides.

            For my peer reviews I did Justin Contreras' presentation on how we depend too much on technology. He did a good job of using video to back up his point on our reliance on technology. If I could have used a video without violating copyright I would have, but I could not get a video without doing so. He did a really great job of telling me his point rather than me reading his point on the slides.