HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

Blogger• Before I started to create my newspaper I set up a new

blog using blogger for me to upload my coursework onto it. This allowed me to easily upload images, word documents and presentations through using slide share and then posting html codes onto the blog. It also allows you to upload voice clips which were useful for my radio advert ancillary task. I found editing my posts useful as I was able to change my documents once I had uploaded them through pressing overview. One limitation of my blog was the ideas generation map which was too big for the page meaning I have to scroll across. As this was the only limitation I believe using blogger was a useful and convenient way to present my coursework.

Slideshare• Slideshare was another key website throughout my

coursework as I was able to easily upload my documents and presentations onto my blog. I was easily able to embed the documents onto my blog through a html code so that all my coursework was available digitally.

iPhone camera• To take the majority of my photographs I used an

iPhone which was useful as it is very portable and easy to use. However, as I do not possess a mobile which is able to take high quality photographs this was a limitation for my work as I had to use other people’s iPhones instead. This was another inconvenience for me as I do not have a USB and was not able to take the iPhones I used with me to college therefore I had to email the photographs to myself through Hotmail which was very time consuming as I could only do this one at a time via mobile.

Nikon camera• This also prevented me from taking an excessive amount

of photographs so the amount of images I had for my newspaper was limited. Another option was to take a Nikon camera from college which are very good quality, however as they were often booked out it was difficult to get access to them.

Photoshop• The software I found most useful when creating my

newspaper was Photoshop as this is where I created my ancillary task on and main product. As I have used Photoshop previously I found it simple to use which was helpful. I used Photoshop to edit my photos being able to change the contrast and saturation in order to make the photos bright. I also used Photoshop to create the mastheads using the variety of fonts available on the programme to make them look as professional as possible. Another useful aspect of Photoshop was the lock guides which helped me to align my texts and images to make the layout very concise as real newspapers are. However, I found the amount of layers I had to use on Photoshop a limitation as I found it confusing changing the newspaper because it was difficult to find the right layer I was looking for.

Facebook

• I used Facebook, the social networking site to get people to complete my survey as this was an easy way to send people the link. I also shared the link on twitter which created numerous responses for my market research in a short period of time. I also used Facebook to create a focus group for my evaluation, posting the final images of my main product and asking people to voice their opinion on them. This was useful as it was very simple to use as I am very familiar with the website and I knew this would be a website I could quickly get responses from.