Evaluation Question 6

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM

THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

- JOSH WEBB

THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF TECHNOLOGIES THAT I HAVE USED IN THE PAST MONTHS FOR MY MEDIA PRODUCT. SOME OF THESE, SUCH AS ADOBE PHOTOSHOP AND MICROSOFT POWERPOINT HAVE PROVEN TO BE ESSENTIAL IN THE CREATION OF MY PRODUCT AND BLOG.

BLOGGERThroughout my process of creating my media product I have been recording it all on Blogger.com. This has allowed me to show all of my research and planning in a way that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. I had never used blogger before creating my magazine, however luckily it wasn’t difficult to master as it comes included with very simple navigation and creation tools, so I was able to create my blog with ease. Blogger also incorporates the use of HTML, which I had very little practise with in the past, however this also turned out to be simple to use when I needed to use it. Mainly to embed items or edit the size of things. This was simple enough to use and get used to. With blogger I was able to save all of my work to edit in the future and schedule to post when I was ready to. This meant that nothing would go up onto my blog unfinished leaving it look professionally made. I have never used technology to showcase my work and this has proven to me how convenient it is to store my work online, with hard back-ups of course, just incase. I was also able to suitable organise my posts into different sections so similar posts could be grouped together and make it a lot easier to find the posts I wanted to.

Labels Tab to quickly navigate

Example of blog posts ->

ADOBE PHOTOSHOPOne of the most important pieces of software I have used to create my Media Product, was Adobe Photoshop. This quickly became a very vital part of my working process as it made sure I was able to create and edit my magazines. I did have prior knowledge of using this software before creating my magazine which helps a lot, as if I didn’t it could have taken a long while for me to learn how to use it. Photoshop made it possible to create my product and I wouldn’t have been able to make the magazine without it. Although I already knew the basics of using Photoshop, this experience has really made me a lot more proficient with it. I can now use Photoshop with ease to create anything that I could possible want to. The tools included such as lasso, shapes, gradient, eraser and many more made it a much easier job to make this product. By using these tools, I was also able to perfect new techniques that also made it much easier to complete the magazine and adjust and edit the images to my liking. Photoshop made my products look professional and seem like they were expertly created. Without Photoshop or the knowledge to use it, the task of creating a magazine would have proven painfully difficult.

CAMERA

The camera I used to take my images is called the ‘Canon EOS 600D’ which is a very expensive professional camera. They are often used by professional photographers so it proved to be a learning curve to use it for someone like me who’s only camera experience is with a smartphone. Despite this I was able to quickly learn how to use the camera well, with the exception of my first photoshoot where I ended up focusing in the wrong place which ended up with me having very blurry images. However in the end I was able take some very nice photographs with little to no camera experience in my past, so I think it all worked out well with the cameras.

APPLE MACSPrior to this course I had never used an Apple PC in my life so in the beginning it took me a short while to initially get used to them and learn the differences between them an Windows PCs, which is what I was used to. It turned out that when paired with Adobe Photoshop, I was able to seamlessly create professional looking images with the iMacs. I was also able to use the iMacs to easily edit videos with, which also turned out very professional-like. In the end I was quickly able to get used to Apple computers, even though I thought it would be difficult to switch between Windows and OSX everyday, which it was but I slowly got used to it. I also found it difficult to adjust to the large screen and tiny keyboards which just made it difficult to use, however I really enjoyed the ease of use with the 4-way scroll on the Apple mice, as they made scrolling through page much easier.

OTHER WEBSITES• PreziPrezi is an online presentation creator, which makes it easy to create professional looking presentations without having to know how to use it. I was able to use this to display some of my evaluation questions and it also provided me with the code to embed the presentations onto my blog.• PowtoonPowtoon is another presentation software that can be found online, however this one is a lot more difficult to use, but with its wide range of functions you can create some great presentations with it.• SlideshareSlideshare is a site where you can upload your premade presentation onto the internet to share to other places. I will be using it to upload this slideshow and then embed it into my blog site.

All of these have their separate features and make different things possible online and allow them to be embedded in different location. E.g on Blogger.