Evaluation Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

I used a vast range of media technologies during the processes of  "Research and planning", "Construction" and "Evaluation"

Research and Planning

Below is a mindmap of the technologies I used for the research and planning processes of the project. After the mind map has finished playing/loading please feel free to scroll through the overall document using the mouse.



It s clear from my mindmap that far more new web-based technologies were used with the only "traditional" technology being Adobe Priemeire Pro.

With the prolifiration of Web 2.0 the research and planning process was extremely easy, We had numerous tools to showcase our ideas and an unimaginable amount of infomation at our fingertips. For example we were able to communicate online with each other outside of school hours through the use of WhatsApp. This was extremely useful especially during the initial planning process when we would often have ideas later in the day. A screenshot of our group chat can be seen below.

Screenshot of me sending a reference after school hours to other members of the group

Screenshot of Giphys interface it was very useful and accurate in terms of making GIFs and allowed my points to be expressed visually.

Technologically converged smartphones could also use these web-tools making the whole process even easier. The leaps in technology in the recent years have made what previously would've taken money and experience achievable with merely a wifi signal.

Construction

The technologies we used during the construction process can be seen in the below slide.

It is clear for the construction process for our media texts we used a mixture of "traditional" technologies of hardware and software as well as "newer" technologies of web based software. I now know the difference between "traditional" and "newer" technologies and how we used a mixture of both such as 1080p capable DSLRs and web-based software web-design in order to create professional looking media. 

Evaluation

The technologies I used for the "Evaluation" section of the project are highlighted below

Blogger

Blogger was extremely useful as it allowed me to use multi-media within my posts. This makes my posts much more interesting as well as allows me to showcase my points/ideas in a very visual manner. Blogger also supports many embed options, this allows me to use other web-based software to create content which I can then put directly onto my blog.This is extremely important for this side of the project as the evaluation discusses visual media such as pre-existing websites, music videos and album covers.

Possible multi media options I can use within my posts

Google Slides

Google slides is a web-based presentation service. I decided to use this form of presentation as the interface was quick and easy to use, with literally no context I was able to use the tools as they were simple and clear.

 Using presentations is a quick and easy way to break down a large point into smaller sections which can then be easily "digested" by the viewer. I find it highly effective when explaining my ideas and it also has a sleek design. A major factor is that it is web-based and thus I can embed my presentations into a pre-existing post, users can then interact with the presentation by pressing the left or right arrows.

example of a slide embedded in a blog post

The code you simply copy and paste into the HTML section of your post

Prezi

Prezi is another web based presentation software, however it has many more options when it comes to customization. This can be seen in the various templates available. Prezi also has the option for videos which is useful when presenting a visual reference. However despite this I find prezzi extremely fiddly and a hassle to use thus I use Google slides for the majority of my presentations

Various templates for Prezis

SurveyMonkey

Survey monkey was extremely useful when collecting Target Audience feedback, this is because it allowed us to create a survey completely for free. The weblink could then be sent to peers to fill out the survey. Further more survey monkey would analyse the results for you and convert them into graphs, this made analysis of our results quick easy and accurate. We were extremely lucky to have this web-based tool to collect our TA feedback completely for free

Examples of graphs made from SurveyMonkey

Examples of graphs made from survey monkey

 











Iphone

In order to interview my focus group I recorded the footage with my Iphone. This was useful as it was on hand at all times so if I had the opportunity to get primary market research I didn't have to worry about having a camera on me due to the technological convergence of the Iphone. Also interviewees seemed more comfortable being filmed by an Iphone instead of a traditional camera. The iphone films in high quality considering its size however it doesn't have expandable memory. This meant that often I had "Storage full" halfway through an interview which as a hassle.

Iphone camera is portable, always on hand and reasonably high quality.

Youtube

After I had edited my focus group video I then uploaded it to YouTube where I could directly embed it into my post. this was extremely quick and easy to do and the embedding process took less than a minute. The embed feature on YouTube was amazing as it allowed me to put my interview halfway through a post which was a nice touch.

My embedded interview in the middle of my post

With the benefit of hindsight I would make myself familiar with all the web-tools available to me at the very start of the project. I feel my blogger has become more advanced in terms of content as the project has progressed, this is because I continued to learn how to use these web-tools during the project. I learnt a lot about the free tools available to me such as Google Slides and GoConqr and how I could use them to convey my ideas
So my advice would be to research and practice with the web-tools before hand, this would make your blogs content advanced from the very first stages of the project.

In conclusion I fully appreciate the use of "traditonal" media such as software and hardware as well as the use of "new" media such as web-based software and tools and how the use of both can result in production of media texts at a professional level at the fraction of the cost and time.