Evaluation Question 6

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

Looking back at creating my music magazine named "Volume" I had to use many different uses of equipment and technologies in order to end up with the finished product.

Below shows a few pieces of technology in which I have used throughout the unit of creating a music magazine:

The Camera The camera I used for the main task was a "Olympus X-940" which is shown in the slide show. Researching on the cameras qualities I found:

• 14 mega pixel
• 4 optical zoom
• 4 digital zoom
• USB
• face detection

Looking at professional cameras, quite a few off them have either the same megapixels available, or lower, with only expensive ones higher. Comparing this to my camera I used, I feel that mine was most appropriate as it was cheaper, smaller and easy to carry around and I got a high quality for a low price.

Apple Mac Book I used the Apple Mac book for the first time to create the magazine. Aswell as the keyboard and mouse being slightly different to other computers, laptops and net books to which I was used to, i had to pick up tools and skills and learn how to navigate around the system. After practising and getting use the system, by the end of the unit I found myself known with what to do, the programs to use and how to navigate around, including the websites, programs and different tools available.

In design and Photo Shop With the magazine task, it was my first experience when using Photoshop and In design. I needed to learn all the new skills and techniques within each program, especially Photoshop, as I used this for my front cover and contents, but then In design for the double page spread. They both were quite straightforward to pick up and to use, and I found that these programs have helped me if I need to use the programs for the future. I used the magic wand tool mostly, to cut out the photographs of my model to which I used. I used PhotoShop for things like cutting out photographs, different texts and fonts, whilst I learnt skills from In design, learning how to use text wrap, creating columns and how to put text in different columns.

An a example to the left shows the text wrap. As you can see, all the text now goes around the photograph on the page, and when/if I want to change or move the photograph, the text will modify along with this.

The Grab Tool As I was working on a Apple computer, there was no "Print Screen" button meaning that I could not easily use screen shots in my work to show proof or evidence of what I was doing. To over come this, I had to use the "Grab Tool" which was located at the bottom of the tool-bar on the Apple Mac Books. I had never used this tool beforehand but I found it easy to pick up and very useful also, as I could take screen shots or a selection to which I wanted to show on my blog.

Blogger and Picasion Along with the other methods of techniques I have previously stated, I had not heard of or known about either Blogger, or Picasion, but since my music magazine have used both programs. Blogger is used for the whole publishing of my work, and displays my coursework, whereas picasion is a website which creates GIF animation, meaning I could show a slide show of photographs (as shown above.)

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word was a program which I had used previously on many occasions, and this was used to create my double page spread on. This included the use of "symonoms" to exchage words for a mnore professional use, and to check spelling and grammar as well as punctuation.