CIS120

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CIS 120: Information Management and Analysis

Fall, 2008, taught by Professor Peterson.

This course will cover, in depth, the essentials of word-processing, spreadsheets, photo editing, presentation software and web page design. Applications will be presented from various fields.

Software covered: Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher) - this software must be used for the completion of all assignments. We will also use Gimp (photo editing) and Inkscape (drawing).

Policies are covered in the syllabus.

Homework Assignments

Portfolio

Fall, 2008 Portfolios

Your final grade will be on a portfolio. This portfolio will be uploaded into the wiki and graded the day after the final exam. The last day of class and the final exam time will be work days on your portfolio.


Publisher

Create a MS publisher document that demonstrates your ability to use the following:

  • built-in designs - use a newsletter design an create a 4 page newsletter
  • fonts, text styles, and colors chosen from a template
  • stories that flow through multiple boxes and have "continued on" "continued from" links
  • insert pictures into the stories using the captioned picture design gallery objects
  • resize columns to fit stories onto the page without wasted space or ragged column edges
  • a variety of graphic elements from the library of built-in objects, modified to fit your needs. Inlude framed pictures, accents, calendars, pull quotes, borders, and sidebars.
  • Crop and adjust pictures as needed
  • Use the master page to add logos or other common content to all pages

Gimp Pictures

Include three pictures of your own choosing that have been processed using Gimp. Upload the final product and briefly list the steps that you took to create the final product. Start with pictures taken from the Western photo galleries at http://www.western.edu/gallery - you can make links to the individual pictures you start with. All pictures should be corrected for exposure using Color -> Curves or Color -> Levels.

Picture 1:

  • Start with a picture of a person
  • Add an interesting border using quickmask and some sort of filter over the border.
  • Add text.

Picture 2:

  • Start with a map of some sort taken from the Internet
  • Draw a line on the map to indicate some path or place
  • Add a second picture showing something found on the map
  • Draw some sort of arrow pointing to the place on the map associated with the picture.

Picture 3:

  • Start with a picture of a person or place
  • Use some sort of filtering effect to modify your picture
  • Add another layer which has a layer mask
  • Use the layer mask to either crop the selection to an interesting shape (use a soft edge), create lettering which appears to be behind some part of the picture, or create a mask by modifying a second image.

Inkscape Pictures

Include two pictures that have been generated using Inkscape.

  • Demonstrate basic knowledge of shapes, fills, strokes, and textural elements
  • Use patterns in at least one object
  • Use tiled cloning to create groups of objects
  • Use a path to mask an image
  • Create a gradient with multiple stops
  • Demonstrate the use of paths, including at least 3 advanced path skills:
    • Placing text along a path
    • Combining paths with union, intersection, subtraction, or similar operators
    • Using path editing to add corners, shape the path, add straight components
    • Path simplification
    • Sculpting paths (moving a group of nodes while holding down ALT)
    • Path offsets
    • Paths generated from a bitmap

The two pictures should be as follows:

  • A logo for a business or group.
  • A poster for a group or event.

As with Gimp examples, explain how you accomplished your images in enough detail that someone else in the class could recreate your work.


Documentation

You will be graded on both the end results (what you did) and being able to explain yourself so that others can reproduce your work. Please attach a short description of the steps you took to generate each of these. Assume the reader knows the basic operation of the software - you don't have to explain how to do simple things but if you use built-in effects in Gimp (script-fu or filters) please name them and give the parameters you used. In Publisher, acknowledge any templates or pre-built objects.

Resources

These pages contain links to product help sites.


Previous Classes

Portfolios:

Web projects:

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