How did you use media technologies in the

construction and research, planning and evaluation

stages?

By Eden Taylor

Wordpress Blogs

Research and Planning: OrganizationWordpress.com allows its users to organize their

work through categories where I am able to chose for each design stage or final piece what category I wished them to be placed in, every time I post up new ideas of information and thoughts.

As well as organizing this for the user like myself using the different blog layouts this also allows its viewers of my blog to easily gain access to specific posts or a certain category where they can look through the progression of each stage throughout the category. For example: you can see here that as a viewer of my blog I can easily and quickly type in a category and my blog will reveal every post that I have posted and connected with the correct category within a chronological order allowing myself and the viewers to see the progression and the design stages as they have appeared on my blog, progressively leading to a final piece.

Research and Planning: Organization

You can also see here on the right hand side that creating anew post also allows myself as a blog user to edit and manipulate the date in which a blog is also posted. For example when I personally work through different design stages at a time such as working on my poster design for an hour and then I may move on to another design for another hour or two on my trailer. If I were to post these design stages up automatically my blog would not show my work in order and as a collective group of work together. By editing the posts I am able to send my work back in time and order to fit in chronologically with previous posts and design stages for that particular design I am working on at the moment.

Showcasing my work: When researching into a variety of different medias such as trailers,

magazines, posters and other such useful links of the webs as well as Mediachs website Wordpress allows me to post up these different medias onto my blog through a quick, simple and easy process by firstly having its own categories of posts available to post on our blogs such as Image, Audio, video, poll and other media. Wordpress allowed me as a user to add hyperlinks, visual j.pegs, audio and videos through links that appear on the blog itself in full view from such internet sites as You Tube. As a user I was also able to upload any media documents such as saving my Microsoft publisher files as a j.peg and then was able to upload through the simple up loader process as it takes through each step and is generally quick in its process.

Any Problems?: The only problem with using Wordpress that I can initially think of

would be that occasionally the site being on the internet would be overloaded with people trying to post up their work which made the site particularly slow at times or when the site appeared under construction which lead to a huge frustration this year when wanting to upload the work as the process is occurring.

To over come this this minor problem I simply saved my work within folders under the categories that are present within Wordpress that I have create myself, I also saved them as the files that I needed in order to upload onto Wordpress and any writing I also saved into word documents until further notice from Wordpress or the site appeared to be up and ready again. This didn’t really bother me this much

Using The Internet

Research into trailers and their conventions: Initially I used the internet to research into the different styles and genres of trailers through the use of our school website http://mediachs.edublogs.org/ and then through the connections I followed the site through this years work that was easily displayed as A2 Trailers and then there was helpfully a list of different websites that we were able to easily access and gain some in-depth knowledge into some specific trailers. Mediachs has been such a help this year as it is regularly updates just like our online blogs and provides quick and easy websites full of useful information if I became stuck or unsure about anything. I also noticed that if more than one person felt a bit lost in a subject matter then the blog would be updated and response would be posted. This was very helpful to me personally where I could easily gain access to the site through the internet or through my Wordpress blog where I have used the idea of hyperlinks and made Mediachs a regular where I would be easily able to quickly access the site when needed before returning to my work.

MEDIACHS!

Research into trailers and their conventions:

I also noticed this year that a lot of the information being published onto Google has direct links into other blog users around the country where we are also able to explore through their blogs and gain some more information and adopt their information into our own work as well as the way they have presented their blogs also helps. The idea of Wordpress also allowed me to enter other pupils polls, post and also receive comments that are critical in the process as they can be helpful comments that could help to improved such as advice from other audiences that my trailer, magazine and poster maybe targeted at. Another form of advice came through creating polls that were accessible to my audience and blog viewers by a simple click of the mouse and game me instant feedback that was crucial to my progress of some decisions. I also wrote a some notes underneath as to why I wanted people to be a part of my poll.

Research and planning: Google also allowed me to directly type into the search engine anything I wished to view onto images such as the research into magazine covers and poster design. This was helpful in directly giving me a image and allowing me to save them as a j.peg onto my home drive where I can then annotate and view the design repeatedly. I also noticed that sometimes the image appears much large once clicked onto a certain design that took my interest and I was then able to go into the website that holds those specific design and sometimes taking me into the official website of some of the brand of magazines that I researched, giving me additional information and background knowledge into the designs and conventions. I also again took the time to look through Mediachs and went through different peoples blogs to look into some of their research and their design stages to also give me an insight of where I should be heading within my process stages and how far each class and person had progressed along the year. If I was stuck on how to present some of my information or what to type I found this also very useful into getting an idea of the things to write about and how much should be seen on my own blog for my viewers to see. I was able to go through other blog users polls and power points of information to gain any additional knowledge critical additional information that supports any of my own work.

Visual Audio

Research and planning:http://www.youtube.com/ this year has also been one of the most supporting sources of information that is simple to use and navigate around, easily accessible and also where I happened to acquire a personal log on of my own where I was able to post up my progression of my trailer in stages onto YouTube and then I was able to use a hyperlink onto my blog so my viewers can then also see this progression. When uploading this progression onto my own log in and uploaded videos I was able to give each one a title so I knew what part of the animation was being uploaded and presented and I was also given the idea of categorizing my animation into an education video and I allowed my videos to be public as this allowed it be seen on my blog rather than restricting it to only my YouTube friends. Again YouTube also allows its users to receive comments and sends an email notifying its user that a comment has been made on which specific video allowing me to view these comments and take in any advice given to me as well as being able to search around other peoples uploaded YouTube videos as, cleverly YouTube also gives video suggestions to its user depending on what they have previously uploaded or searched. This helped me to find a commentary video of how to create and use flash for animation which I found very interesting and helpful when only learning how to use it myself.

Research and planning: YouTube was very helpful when it came to searching for specific genres and their trailers of the films as we are able to fast forward and rewind along the clips as much as possible to suit the viewers preferences allowing me to take notes as the clip is playing. I can also view each trailer clip either in small view or wide screen full view to grasp the full effect. By viewing them in the small screen I can also see any comments made below and take on-board of the idea of the clip or suggestion made in the comments. These hyperlinks and notes of each trailer annotated are posted onto my Wordpress blog under research for each heading.

Any Problems?:The only problem that I would have to say about using YouTube would be that as I create an animated teaser trailer in Adobe Flash programme I found that when I placed my progression and stages into YouTube, the audio track seemed to be out of sync with the animation, so I therefore had to place the progression up as this out of sync version and then from my laptop at home I had to resave my animation as a different movie file where I then had to directly upload the video straight onto YouTube as a whole completed trailer without splitting any clips and reorder the audio to fit slightly before and appearing our of sync as the YouTube seemed to be slowing down the audio and my animation together and this counteracted this process.

Book References

Research and planning: I found that throughout the easily accessible internet access that this modern era seem to be hooked on, I also resorted back to the old textbooks and media references that were located within our school library and local library for any additional information that would only strengthen my supporting work and notion of an animation and also when creating a few power points based on the conventional ideas of narrative, genre, audiences, language and more and gathering some theory knowledge from some theorists that were also discovered through the textbooks that you can see here referenced on some of the power points where I have combined all my research from the web as well as the books and referenced them at the end of each PowerPoint listed below: (click on the hyperlink to view the full PowerPoint and conventions and research) http://etaylorchs.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/genre/http://etaylorchs.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/representation/http://etaylorchs.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/narrative/I also found some information into the overall ideas behind why genres exist and what different trailers are available out there and their purpose for their intend audience.http://etaylorchs.wordpress.com/2010/09/16/trailers-background-information/http://etaylorchs.wordpress.com/2010/09/16/why-do-genres-exist/I found that although the internet seemed a lot simpler and quicker in its search engine at the time but I also realised the amount of rubbish and spam that is uploaded onto Google and that any person can easily manipulated information so I felt that using the good old references of book made it easier to reference my research back the particular book and publishers and I also found that the key information is directly placed under headings and the index also simply defines each topic under subheadings along with the page references making it so much simpler to find decent and truthful information from the direct source.

Microsoft PowerPoint

Research and planning: showcasing my work

I found that personally using Microsoft PowerPoint was a such a simple and neatly presented way in showcasing much of my work this year as I found that it allows not only me to give short but informative structure on each page at a time but also allows me and my audience to flick backwards and fourth between pages of information. I found that previously some of the time I disliked the way the wordpress blogs appear in huge paragraphs full of information and as a younger generation of students I find this quite daunting and overpowering with the amount of information being ‘shoved’ at us in one go. This is also another way why I chose to showcase much of this years work on power points when trying to get across large sums of information and theory topics as it appear more appealing in the way I have the option of using each slide as a subtopic or paragraph along with images, hyperlinks and you tube clips that correspond with the information being given. PowerPoint also allows me as a user to make each of my own slide shows personal to my own style by having different fonts, effects for the slide show to appear in and also allowing me to use different background images and colour fonts to present a general direction to my audience and to initially attract them.

You can see some of my Power Points that I have used to display and showcase my work within the theory side on the previous pages within ‘Book References’

Microsoft PowerPoint

Research and planning: showcasing my work Slide hare was a very popular site used this year that allows me and other users

to upload power points onto our own personal space using a log in and password. I can then find the correct code within its setting for wordpress and use this hyperlink to paste into my wordpress blog allowing my power point to visually appear on my blog for my audience to go through slide by slide of information about a particular subject. As the site is an online web address that is online across the world, this also allows me and other users to view each others work and to give feedback within comment boxes.

Wordpress isn't only able to upload just power point presentations but is also able to let their users upload videos and slide casts. The only problem that I have encountered using slide share is the way that I have recently receive emails informing me that other users have downloaded my work and placed them on their own blogs. To overcome this I have purposefully placed my name directly on the front slide of my presentations due people passing off my work as their own.

Microsoft Publisher

Research and planning: showcasing my workMicrosoft Publisher was another particular favourite programme of

mine and throughout many other students blogs this year as I found that in particular the research and planning into film magazine covers and their posters was clearly displayed through this programme. I found this programme much easier to showcase the different conventions and techniques within each media to analyse as I could centre my visual image and create a thought process of information in boxes around the main focus as I analysed around

the different techniques of each.

Another pro about using Publisher would be that showcasing Microsoft links onto blogs seemed visually boring and the audience have to go through these links in order to get to the main source of information. I found that using Publisher and saving the document as a j.peg ad visually uploading the image onto my blog was more visually exiting for my audience and attractive. As a viewer of my blog I found the font in particular appeared to small to read everything. This is where I then discovered that you can also click onto the image and it enlarges it through the web and if more visible and easier to read the small font in this format.