Evaluation Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?


In both my making and evaluation of my magazine technology has played a big part in showing who my target audience are and how i did it. For example, just a couple months ago i never knew how to use photo shop to design magazines, edit pictures and even change the colour of my background! But know i feel like a pro! There where many ways in which i found my self understanding and coming to grips with technologies such as  photo shop and In design. For example through the help of our teacher. She helped direct us through step by step instruction to be able to complete the most basic of tasks on these soft wares. These then led to us wondering and exploring photoshop and maybe doing a step further. For example if she aught us how to crop and image out, we'll go on to change the colour of the picture on a whole. This was good as we felt that we had achieved and learnt something which we never knew before.

But one of the biggest and most helpful thing that helped us get to the stage we are now on both photoshop and design was the use of the internet. For example websites that were totally dedicated to helping people like me understand photoshop and teach us skills that we never thought could be possible on a software. It showed me that almost any thing is possible with photoshop! Another helpful and handy tool was youtube. During our ameuter times youtube was like our best friend. I we had something or some sort of plan in our minds but didn't know whether it was possible or  how to do it, in just 30 seconds or so we had the step by step instructions right in fron of our eyes.  Whether the tutorial was 3 or 15 minutes they all helped and where very important to both the design, planning and contruction of the magazine. It helped my planning because there were certain things i wanted to do on my magazine. I found that almost all of them where possible on photoshop but for the rest, these were a bit to ambition. Knowing where a type of editing was possible or not helped my planning as i then knew that i could include it in my planning and understand how it could help me achieve what i wanted to achieve.

In some cases some of us where stuck during a tutorial or found that the steps where hard. These effected us because it forced us to change what we had plan. So if the technology is not clear and easy to use and follow, it is pretty much hard/impossible to produce your product. In some cases we had to settle for the product or what we had created half way during the tutorial as it looked good, and other times we had to just discard it either because it couldn't be used or it was an utter mess.

Personally i thing technology played a MASSIVE part in the lives of every student in out class. Another software/piece of tech was blogger. Blogger helped us do so many things. It allowed us to express ourselves and allowed us to show who we were and what we were capable of. Blogger also allowed us to share with others the exciting ways in which we constructed our magazine and did our research. When it came down to research and evaluation we were able to add images, videos, animations and even power point presentations. It also allowed us to show others the long and exciting journey of our AS media. For example from our preliminary task, to our research all the way to our construction and final pieces.

My Camera. Also another important piece of technology that got me to where i am not. I was able to take so many pictures with this camera and they were all high quality pictures.With out my camera i would have struggled to make my music magazine. I used it for my preliminary task, planning and music magazine (double page spread, front page and contents page). With a good quality camera and photoshop at your access then producing images are very easy.

Apple Mac. When it came to computer we had the access to top quality ones. Instead of us using normal desktop pc which don't perform to well and are sometimes unreliable, we were given apple macs which are very well known for there media uses. The computer performed very well and did not slow down or break down during the course of making our media products and writing out our evaluations. It was also a great experience for some of us who have never had access to an apple mac. It took me quite some time to understand how it worked and where things were meant to be but after a while i got the hang of it.

 Microsoft Word. This suprisngly came in handy during the construction of our magazines. I thought that since we were doing everything electonically and typing them straight onto our blogs this soft ware would not have much benefits but i was wrong. We needed it especially when it came writing our our script for our double page spread. We typed up our double page spread text in microsoft word and then gave it off to our teachers to correct, in which when she finished marking we edited the work and put it into our double page spreads.

Here are other technologies that i used: