Evaluation: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

For my media coursework i learnt a lot of new skills. For example, learning how to use this blog! Blogging is something i've never done before, so this in itself was a challenge.

As shown in my blog, i've also used a lot of print screens, something which i learnt during the process and have used it to show examples of my work along the way.

I used photo editing software such as photoshop and picasa to edit and adjust photos to make them clearer



I also experimented with my photography and tried a more artistic approach for some photos:



This worked well and audience feedback suggested that it could represent lonliness etc, something that i was aiming for because it is my main image for my front page of my newspaper.

For my As media coursework i used microsoft word, my final music magazine therefore looked very amateur, i wanted to make my newspaper this year look better quality and therefore used microsoft publisher and learnt how to add guidelines to make it look like a proper newspaper with colums etc.

Here is an example of how my technical ability has improved from last year:



One thing that proved vital in my research stages was the internet, it meant that i could look at local newspapers from around the country online and get a wider view of what local newspapers are like.

Here are some of the websites i looked at:
http://www.hampshirechronicle.co.uk/
http://www.surreyherald.co.uk/
http://www.somersetcountygazette.co.uk/
http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/

I also looked at the websites for the two isle of wight newspapers:
http://www.iwcp.co.uk/
http://iwgazette.biz/

Another element to my coursework was my radio advert. I've never recorded anything before so this was a challenge too. i tried various methods but decided on using my microphone on my laptop. I also used a website called www.freeplaymusic.com which has lots of uncopyrighted music on. I downloaded this and added it to my advert which i then burnt onto a disc.




When researching radio adverts, i of course, listened to the radio, however i found www.youtube.com useful as it meant i could listen to adverts over and over again so that i could analyse them properly.



For my radio advert, i needed to put it into a video format in order for it to work properly on my blog. I therefore used windows live movie maker to make a video. I added an image of a title page and clicked 'add music' to add my video on.



I then had to create a youtube account and load it onto youtube




Finally, the use of blogs has worked well. A lot of my peers also have blogs so it is a quick and easy way of accessing eachothers work from our own homes. It has proved very useful as they can just look at my blog instead of me carrying around surveys for people to fill out.