Research + PlanningSites used throughout coursework

Blogger

• Blogger has been an exceptional website to create and upload my coursework to. It has enabled me to organize my work in the forms of posts, which makes uploading seem less like work and more like a journal/diary entry. This method of documenting makes work easy to catalog and look through using widgets such as the archive tool located on the left side bar. The comments section also makes feedback from teachers readily available, but also ensures that you know how to improve each 'post' or section of work. Blogger made me realize that organisation is necessary to be successful.

• Blogger has also been a useful to look at other past students blogs to take inspiration and see what work is required for sections iwas unsure about. Despite not being a students blog, Pete's Media Blog has been great for background reading and relating topics to our music video coursework

Pete's Media Magazine Blog

Blog Archive –from above

Prezi

• Prezi is on online power point program, which enables you (and others as you can co-edit with others) create online power points, similar to Microsoft, yet it seems much more modern. Instead of having individual slides, you have a large canvas to work on. This appeals to me more as It is a more visual program and it gives the creator much more freedom in relation to content as you are able to directly add videos from YouTube and images straight from Google. Pezi has allowed me to edit anywhere as it uses cloud storage which means I can access it from any computer. However it does tend to operate much slower on older computers, which I discovered when using the home desktop. Pezi has made me consider how topics link together verbally but also graphically with images.

Prezi layout – pre-set design

Share prezi to co-edit

Glogster

• Glogster is an online mood board creator with similar qualities to prezi. We mainly used this to create boards of our shoots. This enabled us to add images to the board tat we had taken throughout the day with smaller captions next to them. It allows the user to present their content in a more creative manner with textured papers and a variation of text fonts and sizes. It also has the capacity to add direct videos and photos from Google and YouTube. As prezi, glogster also give you preset designs to help arrange your content in a more fluent manner. Because of its nature, this site is designed to create more artistic pieces which inform the viewer more visually rather than verbally. Glogster has taught me that images are necessary to convey what you are trying to present.

Pre-set design

Pintrest

• We used pintrest throughout our genre research. Pintrest enables you to create pin boards of images from their search engine. This is a user based engine, so all of the content has been uploaded by its users. Topics range from fashion to DIY's. We used this create pin boards and collate ideas for our chosen genre of indie rock. Our pins varied from the clothing the target audience wore, where they shop and ate. I feel that this website is easy to navigate and collect ideas. It is especially for organisation as all of the photos are in one place, rather than having individual photos in a folder. I have also enjoyed using that I have transferred using it in my other subjects. Textiles for example, it has allowed me to create boards to collect ideas and refine my chosen topic.

One of our boards during research+ planning process

Bitstrips

• Bitstrips is website which allows the user to create comic strips for any purpose. In our case this was presenting the target audience. We had made a character who we put in different scenarios to present the likes dislikes and activities they participate in. I feel that this creative website allows you to present your research in a more creative manner. This site was relatively easy to navigate and create with, however, I have yet to apply it to other lessons but do intend to use it in my upcoming English Language coursework.

Bitstrips Homepage

Snacktools

• Snacktools is a website which allows the user to create numerous things. From photo slideshows, polls, flip books online presentations and many more. I used this site to create presentations and flip books so that images didn't take up large amounts of space. This site was useful and made me realize that space is important when presenting work to others, columns of photos can be quite boring, to 'fix' this snacktoolswas helpful putting them into a slide show.

Slideshare

• Slide share has been a very useful tool in relation to sharing content and putting Microsoft documents such as powerpoint and word into blogs in an embedded format. This also reduces the space taken up as you can scroll through the point or powerpoint in one frame, which makes things much more confined and organised. It has also been useful to look at other students work to ideas and research as anything you upload can be seen by others. This has taught me that looking at other peoples work is useful when I am unsure of how to complete a task.

Slideshare homepage

Bubbl

• Bubbl has allowed me to create online spider diagrams to collect ideas and present to others. Due to its online nature this too has the ability to be embedded into a blog post which means its much more efficient in comparison to hand written as this uses a cloud storage, so can be edited anywhere. I feel that this will be a site that I could potentially use in other ares of my a level courses, for instance Textiles to narrow down ideas, and English to organise my ideas in the data investigation coursework. This has taught me that the planning stages are necessary to organiseyourself and stick to a plan

Bubbl Homepage

Exam time

• Exam time is rather similar to Bubbl in the way of format. It too is a online mind map site. The useful features also allow you to publish to blogs in the form of an embedded code. I am unsure of which mind map process I will use in the future as they are both equally good. I have also used the flash card feature in other lessons and found this useful. Similarly exam time has taught me that planning is essential as you can always look back our your initial ideas if you get stuck or need some inspiration.

Exam time Homepage

Wix

• We used the website creator wix in order to make our own website for promotional aspect of our coursework. This taught us how to make a website effectively and how to make it user friendly to our audience. The guidance throughout the creation was use full. If I wasn't sure how to make an aspect of the website where was a search bar or question marks to click on, so help wasn't far away. Wix has shown me that a strong online presence is an essential part of modern day marketing and adverting, without it a business will struggle to make an impact and compete against larger companies. This inevitably is information that I will take with me into higher education on a marketing course.

Wix Homepage

Our Website - created on Wix

Youtube

• Youtube is such a large platform. Holding video from fashion to DIY. However when we were challenged with something that we weren't sure how to tackle we looked to youtube for video tutorials. This helped immensely when we weren't sure how to do something specific in final cut or Photoshop. I learnt from this to be more independent and doing my own research is just as good as asking a teacher for help. If I actively find out the information myself, I am more likely to remember the information. In relation to other alevel subjects, youtube is great for secondary research for English Language for documentaries and many other things. For textiles large companies often have youtubechannels where they upload there own videos of catwalks and fashion week exhibitions, which does no only give an image of the clothing, but it also give you impression of how the fabric drops and moves, which I think is imperative when talking about a specific garment. This has taught me the power and potential videos have but also uploading to a host gives your videos more exposure in terms of views and recognition.

Youtube Homepage

Vimeo

• Vimeo is similar to YouTube in the way it is a video hosting site, however I believe that YouTube in more interactive with its users and perhaps more user friendly. I used it to upload our video as it takes less time to upload and YouTube tends to have more restrictions in what you can upload. Similar to YouTube in a sense of being a video hosting website, however it has less users due to YouTube being the dominant host. For this reason I feel that using this in the future might not be the best depending on the situation.

Vimeo Homepage