FLUENCY IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BY VERONICA SOLDANI C OMPUTATIONAL T HINKING In CSE 3: Fluency in Information Technology, we learned how to utilize a number of different computer applications to get information up and running on the internet. Using these applications to make information organized and aesthetically pleasing helps in presenting oneself as a professional, regardless of one’s career. M AKING I NFORMATION A VAILABLE TO THE W ORLD WITH HTML AND W EB P AGES Using basic HTML, I created a website that details the courses I’m currently working on and the professional goal I am working towards. I created tables and headers, inserted pictures, and added links to other related webpages. I also learned to manipulate the background color and font formatting using supplemental tags. D ESKTOP P UBLISHING WITH MS W ORD Using Microsoft Word, I created an organized document with a table of contents organizing the information by the headers I created. I learned to utilize document themes in order to present data in a cleaner and more organized manner. At the end of the documents, I inserted a summary of the information presented and a bibliography using MS Word’s bibliography tool. D ATA A NALYSIS AND V ISUALIZATION WITH MS E XCEL Many employers look for prospective employees with knowledge in Excel, for this application saves a considerable amount of time in presenting data with it’s computational commands and chart options. Using Microsoft Excel, I input data and numbers into a spreadsheet and applied computational commands so the program would do the math for me. Once all the math was done, I created a pie chart and bar graph using the graph utility. This application allowed me to visualize my future expenses and what I need to cut back on in order to maximize my savings. It also helped in managing stocks. I was able to map out the month-long performance of a small group of stocks I picked out. I added tags to show whether or not the income was rising, falling, or neutral based on the calculations made in the “percentage of profit or loss” column. I used greater than/less than commands to let the program know which symbol I wanted to represent which data set. V ISUAL P ROGRAMMING WITH A LICE In order to give us a taste of JavaScript programming without jumping right in, we used Alice to instantly see how loops, parameters, and nested loops work. In the clock lab, I used nested loops to created a clock that works in real time. After the seconds hand made a full rotation, the minute hand would move over one place. After the minute hand made a full rotation, the hour hand would move over one place. P RESENTATION OF I NFORMATION WITH MS P OWERPOINT I used PowerPoint to display the charts I made in Excel in a presentation. Giving each chart it’s own slide makes the information easy to go over when making a presentation in front of a large group. I used a theme as well to make the information easier to look at. In a presentation, PowerPoint gives the listeners a visual to pair with the speech in order to help them to better understand the material. D YNAMIC W EBPAGE P ROGRAMMING WITH J AVASCRIPT After we built a strong foundation of HTML knowledge, we used JavaScript to make our webpages interactive using If/Else statements. In the first JavaScript page I created, the user is prompted with an alert asking if they attended Sun God Festival. Based on the responses, the web page presented one of four different outcomes. I also created an interactive web order site for a fictional juice company using a combination of If/Else statements and greater than/less than commands.