evaluation: technology

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

I used much technology to create my final magazine at all stages during its production- research, planning, production and evaluation. I was familiarised with programs and software I had never used before, one of these programs was Adobe Photoshop.

 Whilst using Adobe Photoshop I quickly got the hang of using it. Specific things I have learnt to do are: layer manipulation, cropping, font modification etc. This is very effective software for creating high quality pieces of work.

 

I used a website called surveymonkey.com in my research to find out about colour schemes people associate with rock/metal magazine and how much people value interviews in magazines etc. This was also new software to me and helped a great deal as I was able to gain a large amount of helpful information very easily.

Before doing this coursework, I had only a vague concept of what a blog was or what it could be used for. During this process of making the magazine however, I have got to grips with blogging and am now competent on the subject. Blogging is fast becoming industry standard for media products so that a record can be kept of the progress of a magazine for example. So it is a valuable skill to have learnt.

Photography studio:

In the photography studio I used lighting to achieve the best possible photos. I also had to consider backdrops and poses etc. I feel that more props in my pictures would have been beneficial. I also would have benefitted from a practise session in the studio to get used to it before hand. Overall I really enjoyed using the studio as it was a new experience for me. 

Technology now plays a large part in everyday life and technology’s ability to aid human achievement is growing with every year. I feel that I could have made a magazine without using any technology at all but I feel it makes everything much easier and quicker.

I could have done without using survey monkey.com as the answers I got to my questions were what I thought they were going to be. I feel the Photoshop software was perhaps the most important piece of technology for me besides the hardware of the camera or the computer itself as it is surprisingly easy on Photoshop to achieve professional looking material.

Here is a list of the hardware and software i used in my project:

Hardware:  

Camera – production
Computer- production, planning, research and evaluation

Memory stick- production

Studio lights- production

Software:

Publisher, word, Photoshop cs3, blogger.com, dafont.com, facebook.com, surveymonkey.com, PowerPoint, blackboard academic suite.

Positive points of using technologies such as blackboard, and virtual environments, are that you can access and work on your documents from any computer, making it so you don’t have to carry hard copies of things around with you.

Other positives include ease of use, no artistic skill needed to use a computer; also mistakes can be tweaked and adjusted so they can be corrected easily as opposed to pen and paper.

Negative points of using technology are that files can corrupt and this happened to more than one of my files during the production process. Also, you do need to be at a computer to be able to do work whereas a hard copy can be laid out on any table and can be progressed upon.