Weeks 10- Clear: Access Skills Track

Welcome to my Week 10 blog!

For this week of class, we focused on different skills that are commonly used in Microsoft Access. Access if a very useful tool for the business world, almost more useful than Excel in some ways. I have used Access in other classes before in college, but it has never been as easy to use for me as Excel is. In those other classes, the lessons have been mainly following a textbook step by step, which is not an easy way to learn the program. In our lectures, watching Professor Olson work his was through the different steps was much more helpful.

This video from WWW.GCFLEARNFREE.COM is an overview of the meaning of Access, and a very good definition of databases. There are also many different tutorials on YouTube that can be very useful for Access.

Another thing that I like about Access is the different functions such as Queries, and the way that you can switch back and forth very quickly between the forms. Little things like this make it much easier for the users. Another function that I did not know was possible until browsing through different websites about Access was the ability to add bar-codes to your tables.

This photo from Barcodsewiz.com shows a table with different bar-codes for some products. This could be very useful for small businesses that do not have codes on all of their products.

In conclusion, Access is a very important tool for many businesses, large and small. I hope to learn much more about this application and how to become very proficient with it!

Thank you, Austin

Week 9: Clear- Moore's Law

Welcome to my week 9 blog!

 I found this weeks assignment to be very interesting. I have had previous classes that have discussed Moore's Law, and have always found it to be very interesting how factual it actually is. Since Gordon Moore introduced his theory in 1965, it has always seemed to be very true when it comes to the amount of computer speed and pricing that we have seen today.

From Channelintel, this is a comical example of Moore's Law from the Mythbusters.

I personally have a 4GB, 500GB of memory laptop, which is a strong jump from my parents 256MB, 250GB of memory desktop that was extremely high tech when we purchased it.

 

This graph from Geek.com shows a timeline of how Moore's Law progresses from the early days into the 19th century. The theory seems to be outrageous when you think about it, but it actually has surprisingly come true. This technology has even advanced into cell phones, which were not even though of in the times of Gordon Moore. 

Thank you, Austin Richard

Excel Project

Welcome to my blog post for the Excel Project!

I really enjoyed this project using Excel. From talking to people that work in the business world, Excel is a key tool that is used in many different applications. The main tool that I wanted to focus on were the pivot tables. In previous computer classes I have taken, these have been lightly discussed. I feel that these should have been covered extensively considering the usefulness of them. After using them more, and practicing, I now feel much more confident, and understand how they are used with Excel.

Another part of the project that I enjoyed is getting farmiliar with the different shortcuts there are in Excel. I feel like there is not enough coursees for this program in higher education. This program is used in almost all businesses today, and being proficient in all aspects is very important when marketing yourself for a job in the business world. Just small things like being able to jump to the beggining or end of a spreadsheet can be very useful. Staying fresh with little things like this can help more in the work enviroment than most other classes that are required in school today in my opinion.

One more aspect of the project that i felt was very useful was not having a step by step book to follow to figure out how to do different steps. When you have a book like that, it does not help you remember how to use the functions and other tools, it just shows you how to follow different steps. It is nice to have a book to reference if you need it, but being able to use Excel by memory forces you to learn the actual steps you need.

In conclusion, this project was very useful for me, and helped me refresh my skills using Excel. Hopefully everything was done correctly, and I learned the right way to use Excel! Thank you, Austin.