What have you learnt about technologies from

the process of constructing this

product?

BloggerI found that using www.blogspot.com was an easy way of adding and updating my work all of the time so that the teachers and myself had a clear understanding and view of all my work. Blogger enables you to have your work all organized into different posts with a title so you can easily find what you’re looking for.

Also on Blogger you can easily move around and edit posts in a simple way, so if things were not in the right order it would be easy to move them into the correct and most understandable place.

If I had made a video it was easy for my to put it on you-tube and then embedded it into blogger so that it was organized with the rest of my work and so more than just myself could see it. Also when I made a PowerPoint, I put it through slide share and then embedded that into my blog. You can also put photos and sounds into your blog easily.

Here I am using Blogger on the Macs.

PhotoshopPhotoshop is a professional piece of software which is on the Mac computers, it aloud me to make my magazine easily, and most importantly, fast.

It was easy for me to add images, which firstly had to be converted to JPEG’s and then added into Photoshop, and it was also easy to add text in when making my product. There were tools on Photoshop which enabled me to change the color of images I added into my product, this made them look more effective and fit with the magazine’s theme more.

I found using Photoshop easy to move images and text around so they were in the appropriate and best looking places, being able to do this meant I could try things in different places to see where they looked the most effective and fit around the theme of the product.

In DesignI hadn’t used InDesign before I started to have Media lessons, it was something which I had never even heard of because I had never had to use it to do anything at home or in primary or secondary school.

When it came to using InDesign for the first time I found it quite hard because there was a lot of different stuff on the page and I found it all confusing, once I had received help from teachers and students on how to use it and the stuff I did and didn’t need to use/click on, I found it a lot easier and clear to use.

InDesign helped me to put all of the magazine in one place, the front cover, contents and double page spread, having everything together made it easier to the magazine on a whole.

I made the contents page and double page spread on InDesign because this was the best piece of software to use because it had everything I needed to make these two pages.

iMacAt first I found that using the Mac computers were harder than using normal computers because everything is in different places and all of the software is new and looks more up to date, but after a few days I found out how to use them properly and to their full extent.

When using the Macs it allowed me to do a number of things, for example I could use Photoshop and InDesign to make my magazine. I think that once I was able to use the Mac’s more faster and easily, it made all of my work go faster and easier too because of all of the great software on them.

Now I think that I like the Apple Mac’s more than the normal Windows Computers and if I was ever to do any big work again I would be more than happy to use the Macs to do the work.

This is me using the Macs on Blogger.

YouTubeBefore making my magazine I had already worked with YouTube in my own time, it was a great way of watching movie trailers, music videos and also just random videos. But when it came to having to use YouTube in my Media lesson I learned even more stuff about YouTube and how you can use it in different ways.

One of the things that I learnt was how to upload videos onto YouTube, once I had uploaded the video on YouTube I could get the embed link and paste it into my blog which would then put the video into my blog and allow people viewing my blog to watch the video instantly from the post it’s in.

Once the video was uploaded onto YouTube, I also learnt that you can edit things about your video, for example you can edit the information which goes under your video so audiences know what your video is going to be about.

I found finding the new information out about the video formats and YouTube very useful because it allowed me to upload videos fast and efficiently and most importantly correctly which meant that everything would be fine and in working order.

Internet (Safari)At home, I have had Safari installed for a couple of years now on my Windows computer, so when it came to having to use it at College in my Media lessons there were no problems and I found it really easy.

Safari allowed me to go online and find images of other magazines to compare my product to, it also allowed me to download and save these images and then add them into my blog post where necessary.

I was able to go on to different magazine websites and also websites which had the target audiences for magazines, this was good because it meant I would be able to make my magazine appeal to the right audience easily and quickly because I would know what type of things to include.

Overall, in my opinion, I think it is the best piece of internet software to use for doing stuff like this because I was already used to using it.

PreziThe website www.prezi.com was an easy way to show my work, showing my work on prezi was a different way to other ways of presenting my work, it aloud me to present it all on one page and you could easily move around and zoom in and out of the page.

On prezi you can choose to present your work in a presentation so it was easy to follow, you did this by inserting a path which the presentation would follow and it would give you a clearer and bigger view of the part the presentation had zoomed in on.

It was easy to add images and text into the prezi and move them around the presentation to make everything look clear and understandable.

The same as embedding YouTube videos into blogger, once I had finished my prezi I was able to embed that into the correct post in my blog using my own knowledge from embedding the other things.

Slideshare

Once I had made a presentation in PowerPoint, www.slideshare.com allowed me to convert the PowerPoint presentation so that it would embed into my blog posts more easily.

It was easy to start using slide share because all you had to do was sign up and make an account and then you could start straight away converting your PowerPoint presentations.

I think that using slide share to convert PowerPoint presentations and then embedding them into the blog was quite easy because it was the same as embedding a YouTube video into my blog.

CameraWhen taking the photographs which would be inserted in my magazine it was important to use the correct products to take the photographs to enable the best quality.

I found that using the flash on the camera made the photo’s more effective and stand out more to the viewers, and this is what I wanted to achieve because it would catch their eye more.

I found it easy to use the camera’s as I have used camera’s before and the one I used for taking the photographs was basically the same as using my own.

I took all of the photos against a white backdrop which enabled the models to stand out more and so also there wasn’t anything to distract the viewers from each of the models.

Microsoft WordMicrosoft Word was the easiest thing to use along with PowerPoint and Safari because it is something which I have used for years, going right back to my primary and my secondary schools.

Microsoft word allowed me to do a number of things when it came to using it for Media, one of the things it allowed me to do was write the article on it for the double page spread in my magazine, once I had written it on here I could then copy and paste it into my double page spread on InDesign.

That was the only thing I used Microsoft Word for, the reason I used it for writing the Article is because on Word I knew how to edit the fonts etc., on InDesign I wasn’t sure how to do any of that stuff at first.

Microsoft PowerPointThis piece of software, Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the easiest pieces of software to use because I am so use to using it. I have used PowerPoint for years now because of primary and secondary school, it is great because it allows you to make presentations fast and you can make them look however you want.

PowerPoint has allowed me to respond to this question, Evaluation Question 6, it has made it easy for me to respond to this question because for starters it is not a hard piece of software to use despite all of the different tabs etc. at the top.

Because I used PowerPoint on a Mac it meant there were some differences, but they were good things, for instance it was easier to find and open PowerPoint because it was on the shelf at the bottom of the screen constantly, also the software on a whole looks a lot more newer and updated on the Macs whereas it looks older on the Windows Computers.

ScannerBefore having Media lessons, I had never used a scanner before because I had never had to, but once I started to develop my product I had to use it quite a lot.

The first time that I needed to use the scanner I was un sure of how to use it because I had never used it before, but once I had been helped and shown how to use it I found it quite easy and all you really had to was plug it in and press the ‘scan’ button, I think this is the best way to do it or else there is only taking photos of your work on a phone or camera and uploading them which would take longer.

Having the scanner enabled me to be able to scan in all of the flat plans which I drew out and coloured in for a rough look at what my magazine might look like, once I had scanned them in it was easy to copy the scans into the correct posts in my blog.

I also used the scanner for scanning in feedback sheets to the blog from my teacher and students about the draft products I had made.

ConclusionIn conclusion with all of the technologies I have used, I think that once I had been shown how to use some of the pieces of software and products that I had never used before, for example the scanner and InDesign, I was eventually able to use them to their full extent and I was able to work fast and easy with them. There were products and pieces of software that were easier than others to use, for example Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, because I had used those things a lot in the past at my old schools and also at home etc. for doing other pieces of homework. I think that all of the websites online I used to help me do things for my tasks, for example blogger, prezi and slide share, were really good and useful things because it was a different way of making and doing work, also they were things on the internet that you worked on so it was different from working from something on the desktop. With all of these new pieces of software that I had access to use it enabled me to make my magazine final product look the best and most professional that I could make it because of the different types of things you could do on each software. Photoshop is a professional piece of software that is used in the real industry to create magazines, so using this software for my magazine was going to guarantee it would make it look the most professional. Blogger was a really good thing to have because it stored all of the different tasks I did in one place with a title so myself and the teachers could easily find what you’re looking for. I do think that there may have been a few small things which I could have done to make my magazine look even better, but by the feedback I received from the students and teachers I think it was best left as it is in the final products.