Question 6 AS
- 1. What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product? Question 6
- 2. Technologies I Have Used • Camera (Panasonic Lumix FZ62) • Tripod • Memory Card • Memory Card Reader • Mac Computer • Blogger • Slidely • Adobe Elements 11 • Printer • Prezi • Emaze • Pow Toon • Powerpoint • Word Document • Flickr • Wordle • Word Cloud • Thing Link • Gmail
- 3. Gmail • When I started the course it encouraged me to make a Gmail account since it was the only email provider that works on the 6th Form server. • It let me sign up for all of the following websites. • It let me and my teachers communicate whilst I was at home so I could improve my work.
- 4. Prezi I’ve used Prezi’s during the course in order to present my work neat and in a highly interactive way. It gave me a simple layout that made my analysis’ and research posts easy to navigate through. I used screen grabs and cut aways using the “snipping tool” to add corresponding images to the text I was referring to. I found that Prezi was one of the best software's for making presentations and even though it was a completely new website to me, I still understood how to use it all the way from the beginning of the course. I will definitely be using it again in the future.
- 5. Images and Text At the start of the course, to analyse magazines I mainly used Blogger. This was very simple so do as I only had to copy and paste images and use screen captures of the section of the magazine that I wanted to analyse in depth. As the course progressed my use of software and variety of websites increased so I didn’t have to stick to this format. In my opinion this method of analysis was quite boring and I think if I were to analyse future magazines I would use programmes like thinglink or emaze.
- 6. Word Document I’ve used Microsoft Word ever since Primary School so when I started the course I was eager to use it again. I copy and pasted images and added screengrabs. I also used Word to create surveys for my TA research which I either printed out and sent round 6th Form for people to fill out, or emailed to various people.
- 7. Apple Mac Computer I did all of my coursework on a Mac Computer due to its ease and simplicity. They are very modern and made it much easier to use Adobe Elements 11 as the mouse and keyboard have more shortcuts which sped up the construction process. I also have a Macbook Pro at home so the familiarity of the Mac’s at 6th form helped a lot too.
- 8. ThingLink I used ThingLink a lot! It was my favourite way to analyse magazine Covers because since I used still images to analyse, it made it perfect to put tags on. ThingLink is another interactive way of presenting your work and I will absolutely use it again purely because it wasn’t time consuming and it allowed me to be thorough when it came down to analysis’. One thing about using ThingLink is that I had to embed it to my blog once I had finished it which allowed anyone who could access my blog to view my ThingLinks.
- 9. Embedding Most of the websites I used during my research stage had to be embedded onto my Blogger profile. This taught me how to incoorperate the work I did on other websites onto my blog and mage it much more fun when it came to viewing all of my research and planning posts in one place (my blog).
- 10. Blogger Blogger was where all the magic happened… besides from Photoshop. All of my work made its way back to Blogger whether it was through embedding, copying and pasting or inserting images. My whole journey has been presented to you on Blogger and it is where I recorded a lot of my TA researches. I saved drafts of my posts so I could go back to them later to update and finally publish when they were ready.
- 11. Camera (Panasonic Lumix FZ62) Using this camera was a great way to experiment taking pictures using different angles and depths of fields. The positioning of my camera was very important since different angles and distances create different connotations. With help from a tripod, I took all of the photos featured in Countrypolitan on this camera and used a variety of shot types to bring it to life.
- 12. Emaze Emaze was my favourite website for creating fun effective presentations. It works a lot like PowerPoint which is one of the many reasons why I was so fond of it. I could insert images onto it and display my research in a professional way. It allowed me to make pie charts and format each page differently so its never boring watching an Emaze presentation.
- 13. Memory Card / Memory Card Reader I learned how to transfer the pictures from my photo shoots onto my computer and then onto Blogger via a memory card reader. This was an essential piece of hardware as without it I woud not have been able to import my photos onto Flickr (for feedback), Blogger (to present them) or any other website.
- 14. Slidely Slidely was also another good website to use instead of creating a mood board. Mood boards are fun to make but if you put all of those images on a Slidely instead you are able to upload music along side them creating a fun and exciting tone to the slide show. I used Slidely predominantly to show who my TA were and to create a collection of photos from my photo shoots.
- 15. Flickr Flickr was handy for getting quick, detailed feedback from the pubic and let me her what they had to say about my photographs. I used Flickr from the beginning of the course and joined the Vale Media Group so I could hear from my peers as well. Reading comments from my TA on Flickr influenced my decisions when it came to Countrypolitan and made me change the font and colours of my magazine.
- 16. Adobe Elements 11 I was completely unfamiliar with using Adobe Elements 11 at the start of the course which worried me slightly since I knew I only had a few weeks to put together my magazine. I stayed after school and spent all of my free periods getting used to the software and experimenting with different tools to ensure that Countrypolitan would be the best I could make it.
- 17. Adobe Elements 11 By the end of the construction phase, each of my pages had a lot of layers. I learned how to hide some of the layers (e.g. the lines which were used to align the columns) and add effects to some of the text (e.g. drop shadows or textures).
- 18. Adobe Elements 11 I used a bevel on the title of my contents page to give it the “leather” look which was very easy to do. Adobe Elements 11 offered a wide range of effects which were essential to make Countrypolitan look highly textured and unique. I used graphics to set the background for my DPS since I found a “scrapbook” type of background that gave my page a personal touch.
- 19. Adobe Elements 11 • Levels • Add Layer Mask • Spot Healing Tool • Paintbrush • Text Boxes • Burn/Dodge • Clone Tool • Shapes • Colour Selector • Smart Brush • Blur/Sharpen Tool