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

I have used many different technologies during the process of making my magazine. A lot of which, I used for the first time and others I had used before however, I learnt new things with virtually all of the pieces of equipment that I used. As often happens, technology isn't always reliable and some of the things I used caused me many problems, but I managed to work around them and get my magazine completed succesfully and by the deadline.

This is the camera I used to take the pictures for my magazine. It is a Fugifilm A100 and I was pleased with the quality of photos it took.  I learnt how to take pictures in the most professional way I could with a fairly amateur camera. And I also learnt what kind of shots worked well on my magazine.

I used PhotoShop CS5 when I created my magazine. This is the version of PhotoShop I have on my laptop at home and I became more confident using it during the process, however, I did find it quite difficult to use at first. I learnt how to cut out the photos in a fairly professional way by using either the magic wand or magnetic lasso tools. I also learnt how to arrange the different conventions on the page through the use of layers. By having each different aspect of the magazine on a different layer, I could easily arrange everything to the layout that I wanted.

This version of PhotoShop is the one I used for my magazine when I edited it a school and for the preliminary task. I found it a lot easier to use than the CS5 version, however there were some bits of it that I could do more effectively on the CS5 version. I learnt all of my basic photoshop skills by using this programme as it was the first time I had ever used it (on the preliminary task) even though my shool magazine wasn't very professional looking, I still learnt how to use the main tools.

I used Microsoft Word during my research and planning to help me present things more effctively.

I used Flickr to present some of the photo's I took. Firstly, I created an account and then learnt how to upload my photo's from my computer onto flickr. I then created an album and embeded it onto my blog.

 

I used the Internet for the majority of my research. Websites such as Google and Youtube were useful when I was deciding what genre of music to base my magazine on and what target market to have. I learnt which sort of websites were good for inspiration that I hadn't heard about before (eg. Cover Junkie).

I learnt how to use Slideshare and Scribd to present word and powerpoint documents. They allowed me to put my work onto my blog fairly easily.

I used Microsoft PowerPoint a great deal during my research and planning. I think it helps to present things neatly and effectively either as a slideshow, or by saving a slide as a Jpeg file.

This is the memory stick I used to save my work on so I could add to it at school and then continue at home. However, this was the piece of technology that caused me the most trouble. The day before the practical deadline, my memory stick broke and I couldn't retrieve the files. Then, due to my own judgement error, I hadn't backed up the files well and lost a lot of my work. I therefore had to do the DPS and contents page again the night before it was due. Luckily though, I managed to do it fairly quickly based on my memory of what the pages looked like.

This is my laptop and the piece of technology I used to do most of my work on.

I learnt how to use Blogger to present all of my work and I posted all of the work I did and inspiration I found when creating my magazine.