Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? by chelseabelleini on emaze

Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Technologies I have used

Adobe fireworks

Blogger

Prezi

Dafont

Survey monkey

Thinglink

Gmail

Flickr

Adobe Fireworks

I have come very far when using this software as it is always something I have found very hard to use. Their are many features to it so at times the only way to tackle not knowing what to do was by searching my query online and hoping something would come up online, if not then I turned to my different teachers. Fireworks has been the area where I have created my magazine I have learnt a range of things that I would never have known when I started out such as using the magic wand tool. This has enabled me to erase any white areas around text for example in my masthead. I would not have been able to achieve the quality I did without this tool. It has also offered me tools such as a way to circle text around a shape which was a huge aspect of my double page spread and is something that I would not have been able to have on this page if I did not have fireworks to use. It has also been great to use when finding fonts as they are very easy to access and also maintaining a theme throughout my magazine was made easy as I was able to add font colours to my custom colours for future use on all three pages. This is the same for font styles as your most common fonts get saved to a recent font section. Creating shapes which seems pretty straight forward is also something i have learnt to do, it is not something I would have known to do earlier on in my preliminary task.

Blogger

A type of technology I have learnt to use almost on a daily basis is blogger.com. This is the website we have used each lesson where we will post our work ultimatley to be sent of to be examined. This has been a very good way of keeping myself organised and this way their are no messy sheets or lost pages to my coursework because it is all here on my blog. I have also learnt that I can receive blog feedback from my teachers and also any homework that I receive from my teachers gets posted onto their blog which is a very good way keeping organised. I have learnt how to blog professionally, by inserting links html, text and images etc.

Prezi

Prezi is a website which is a presentation software. You can sign up create your very own account and it allows you to create your own presentations on anything you like. I had no idea how to use it when I first started use it however I find it the presentation software I am most comfortable with. I have learnt how to edit the path of my presentations and I have also learnt that their are so many themes to choose from. This is good because it has allowed me to present all my work in a very professional and clear way. I used prezi to present my egnre research I found that this was excellant for this as it clearlt divides the different sections and looks very organised. Also I am someone who takes pride in my work and I do like the finished product to look quite pretty so therefore this has definitley appealed to me.

This is an example of just one of the many layouts that I learnt to use.

Dafont

This is a website which prsents thousands of fonts to you. If you type in the search bar what it is you want to say your text will appear in thousands of different fonts and styles. I have learnt to use this website for my front cover, contents page and double page spread. But mainly for my masthead norcturnal. You can download or printscreen the different fonts and then you simply apply them to your magazine. This has been very good for me to use many other fonts are not very distinctive and do not stand out however I was able to find the perfect font for my magazine in order for my magazine to follow conventions of a house music magazine. I searched the section 'groovy' which brought up hundreds of different font designs many I looked at and experimented with when choosing my font for my masthead.

Survey Monkey

Survey monkey is a website which allows you to create onlien surveys which can be embedded in blogs, emails etc. I have learnt how to create my own survey and I used this website to create a questionnaire in order to gather an understanding from my target market what the sort of things they would like to see on the front cover of a magazine, how much they would pay for one and important things I would need to consider such as how popular my chosen genre of music is. It is a very good way of presenting a survey in a professional way and once you get teh hand of this type of software it becomes very straightforward. My survey had become more easy for my target audience to answer also as they could just click on teh link I had embedded into my blog and they could answer it and I would be alerted to say I had had a response,

Thinglink

Thinglink is a website I have also learnt to use where you create your very own account. It is a way of presenting ideas much like the others I have used, however again it is very unique and very organised. I learnt to use thinglink when analysing front covers/contents pages and double page spreads in my research. It is a good way of interacting and when i was lookign to gain feedback on my work my teachers were able to do this quicker as it is such an organised way of presenitng ideas. It works by adding an image and you simple add tags to different areas of the page in my case the different areas that you wish to analyse and small circles come up. When you hover your mouse over the image the small cirlces appear which you click on to see what has been written it is clear and organised. And much like with prezi I like to take pride in my work so finding ways to present my work, that make it appear very professional is good for me.

Gmail

I have created an online email account for my media coursework as well which has allowed me to keep in contact with my teachers so that I can the latest information on deadlines, it has helped me to be organised as well as I use this email as a seperate email for my media coursework which means all emails related to my media coursework are in one place. I have also learnt how to upload images this way, videos and even voice clips. It may seem like a very small skill to learn however creating this account has also helped me to learn how to email properly and all teh dofferent things that can be acsessed by using an email address. I access blogger.com through my gmail acount which is google mail, this is only one of the resocurces available from gmail.

Flickr

Flickr is a website where you can share images and videos with the world basically. I have created a flickr account, which is where i have upladed some images and embedded this link or slideshow of images onto my blog. It is a more professional way of presented images and the quality is actually much better using this software. I have learnt how to uplad images onto my flickr account and how to embed links of my images into my blog. For example the images I took when learning how to take good quality images and when learning about different camera shots i had upladed these images to my flickr account so that they were all in one area. I also upladed all my production images for my house music magazine to flickr, and embedded the slideshow of my images to my blog. These are all things I have learnt to do in the process of producing my coursework.

Digital Camera

A technology that I got quite comfortable with using was a digital camera. I took my production images on a digital camera, I also took images for my preliminary task on a digital camera and they turned out pretty well. I also took images on their to represent different shot types. I have learnt how to focus the camer on certain things, so therefore if I wanted to make my image look very professional I could have my subject against a complicated background where they are in focus and the background is semi blurred. I have also learnt how to get the rule of thirds grid up on a digital camera which is good when I want to focus on smaller details, it was good for me when determing whether I had achieved the correct level of quality inmy images. I also learnt how to take images from different shots, I have used a close up, a long shot and a mid shot in my magazine so I have shown how I have progressed in my production work.

Iphone

I have learnt how to use my Iphone in order to benefit my production work. I have been able to access certain softwares that I have learnt to use in this process such as Blogger and Flickr and Gmail. I have been able to post images straight from my phone to flickr, this saves as it means I do not have to spend time logging onto computors etc. Flickr is not connected to my images as an option when wantign to share the image. My Iphone has also been a source of technology that has enabled me to access my blog through my phone - to look at homework, my blog, past research etc. I have also been able to post onto my blog from home through my phone for example any sketches or hand drawn mock ups that I would take a picture a picture of I would post using my Iphone camera and internet. I also now have my gmail account connected to my google chrome app on my phone. This enables me to access any images, emails, help etc that I need from any teachers and it enables me to be more organised as it is on my phone as well as being on my laptop and computor at school.