Q: What have you learnt about technologies from constructing your product?

During construcing my magazine, I learnt a lot about different technologies such as Blogger, Prezi, Photoshop, Indesign and various camera equipment. This made my knowledge of new technologies which are used to make media products such as magazines develop and give me a better understanding of them. Below I will explain what technologies I used to construct my magazine and what I learnt about them. 

Blogger:            Whilst doing my coursework, I created a blog for the first time and had to learn everything from the beginning as this was the first blog I had ever made. I learnt how to upload blog entries including pictures, videos and also learnt how to customize the background and fonts on my blog to make it look unique. I would have never thought to make a blog if I had not done this in Media, but it has helped me to understand more about technologies whilst constructing my magazine.

Prezi:              Prezi is a useful site where you are able to make and share interactive ‘presentations’ similar to PowerPoint but is easier to share with people. I used Prezi whilst doing coursework to answer a question and had to learn how to use it as I had never used Prezi before. It was simple and easy to learn and had a wide variety of things to choose from.

Cameras and camera equipment:                Before taking the pictures for my magazine, I had to learn how to use professional camera equipment in order to get the best quality pictures for my magazine. During some lessons, we had an introduction into the professional cameras and how to get the best pictures possible and tried out the cameras. After, we had to work independently to take the pictures ourselves with the cameras and also had to ensure we set up all the camera equipment ourselves. Before constructing my magazine, I did not know how to use a professional camera but now I am able to.

Photoshop:                          Whilst constructing my magazine, I had to use Photoshop to edit my pictures to give them a more professional ‘real life’ magazine look. Before constructing my magazine, I had no idea how to use Photoshop and when I first started using it, and also found it pretty difficult to understand all of the tools that Photoshop provided. But due to a lot of practise during lessons and free periods, I had learnt how to use it and managed to edit my pictures.

Indesign:            I used Indesign to put my whole magazine together, this programme was used the most in contributed towards constructed my media product. I put all of my pictures and texts together on Indesign and played around a lot on it to make my magazine have the look that I first thought of. Before using this programme in Media, I had never used it and didn’t have any understanding of it but whilst constructing my magazine, I learnt a lot about it and how to use the different tools it provided.

I think that using all these different technologies has made my magazine look as professional as possible as if I used other technologies such as Microsoft Paint to make my magazine, I wouldn't be able to use as many functions as I did on Photoshop and Indesign. Camera equipment that I used also gave my magazine a more professional look as if I used a cheap unprofessional camera, the picture quality of my magazine pictures would not be as good as they currently are. I think that the technology I used has a massive effect on my magazine and helped me to shape it to what I first planned it to be when I made my magazine plan.