Question 6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of construction this product?

By Tabby Neal

Through this process I have gained a lot of knowledge and understanding from using a variety of different technologies in the construction of the final product. The technologies I have used include:• Mobile Phone Email• Scanner Pc• Photoshop IMovie• Slideshare Emaze• Prezi Microsoft word/ PowerPoint• InDesign Scribd

Technologies…The technologies can be put into groups as to what their key function is , for example embedding.Certain technologies I have used to allow me to embed files into my blog. Scribd , Slideshare are two of the ones that I have used to be able to do this. To be able to do this I has to enter the title into google and clicked on the appropriate link , after this I created a free account to allow me to upload whenever I needed to.

Next I uploaded my selected file, ensuring I had saved it in the correct presentation or document format, I uploaded it and once this was done it could now embed it. To embed it I had to click on the share button to be able to get the coding that would be needed to copy into the http of my blog, allowing people to view/access it.

What have I learnt through construction…

• Through constructing my final product, I have learnt a lot about time management as well as thinking skills. I have become a lot more practical in my way of learning how to use the technologies. My style of learning has been to watch in lesson as well as tutorial videos to allow me to use different tools effectively. In addition to this I have learnt by experimenting whilst working as I find this is the best way to develop new skills whilst in the process. To track my progress in the way of I have improved since the start, I have done daily/weekly diary entries to note how I feel when I move onto different tasks and technologies as well as if I found them useful or the difficulties I might of faced.

Photoshop and InDesignPhotoshop and InDesign, have both been used in the construction of my product. They are the more visual technologies as I can see what exactly I am doing, helping me to manipulate my images and text etc. From using these technologies I have learnt the different skills needed to effectively use the individual and vast amount of tools included in this software.I have found Photoshop much easier to use as I

have previous knowledge and an understanding of the basic tools to use. As well I find it much easier as around your image in a sidebar, it shows you all the different layers you have created for your image. This allows you to work on different layers and change the effects or ordering for how you want your image to appear.

Overall in Photoshop, there are more variety of tools, especially more ways you are able to manipulate and personalise your image to your desired outcome.

The colour adjustment as well as the brightness and contrast.

All the effects I have applied to my image.

Picture layer is one of the first layers shown.

InDesignWhen using InDesign, it has a different kind of format compared to Photoshop. It is more centred around the text rather than image manipulation. To be able to use my selected image in InDesign, beforehand I had to edit my image in Photoshop and then place it into InDesign as there is no specific editing tools.To be able to use an image I had to use the toolbar and select ‘place’ to be able use my image, although I found the quality of the image then decreased. I found this application quite hard to use as there was no layers to be able to re arrange the positioning of text or the image in the background. A difficulty I faced was be able to get the text to appear on the image as it kept appearing underneath. To solve this I put the image on first and then later added the text on top.

It has a similar tool bar like Photoshop however most of the tools are for editing the text and adding shapes rather than manipulating the image itself.

The toolbar at the top has all tools in the appearance of the text, like the spacing and the character.

Scanner• I used a scanner, to allow me to scan in my drawn drafts of my

plan of my magazine pages. I individually scanned in my Front cover, Contents page and Double page spread. Once I had done this I saved the image as a JPEG which then allowed me to place it on my blog. As well as using the scanner provided, at come I could use a scanner app on my phone which allowed me to use my phone camera to take a picture of whatever I wanted to scan and upload it, allowing it to be then put into a scanned format and the quality of the image being of a high standard.