DRAFT EVALUATION QUESTION 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout my research and development process of my music magazine I used a wide range of technologies for the process which helped make my final music magazine product. Some of the software I use I wasn't very confident with because I had never used it before, whereas other equipment I used I am experienced with and therefore could use it without hesitation. But as I developed my magazine I taught myself with some help from others and created the magazine which I see as my best work so far. However I still think that there is a lot that I could learn which I haven't already.

Photoshop: This is the program which I sued the most mainly because I created the whole of my music magazine on. This was the program which I ad no experience with, and therefore when I first started out I was unsure on how to use it. But with a 'basics' class with the teacher and some help from other and mainly research I created my media product. Likewise I still think that I have a lot to learn in terms of the capabilities of the software, and I wish to carry on with the curiosity that I had

which allowed be to experiment with the features of the software.

Blogger: This is the website which we used to present our research and development, which we would evidence and then post so that all our work would be available online. This is a relatively straight forward website as it allows you to customise how your blog looks. You can organise your post so that they are all 'labelled' which helps as it is easier to find a post when you have been posting for a couple of weeks, as it saves time instead of scrolling through all your posts. What also made this website easy to use is that I had used this before to 'blog' my class work. But using it constantly has improved my understanding of it more of the features and also how to presents and embed work on to it.

Google: This is a generic search engine which is very common as most people know how to use it. It is easy to use, and I used this search engine to find out information that I required for my information, when looking up how to do things, looking for examples and finding photos and mages to backup my research.

iMac: Throughout my research and development I used an iMac, this is because it provided me with all the programs and facilities needed to created my media product and also to edit it. By using this iMac it allowed me to create my music magazine to the best of my ability. Also as I own a Windows at home, I am not used to using an iMac, so I wanted to test myself and see how I would cope with using a different operating system. But I found out that it isn't too different to what I am used to so I got the hang of it, and I actually enjoyed some of the features that are exclusive to the iMac.

CANNON EOS 100D: The camera that I used is the CANNON EOS 100D to take all my picture both on the preliminary task, draft magazines and final magazine. I am used this camera as I have access to it at home and I am used to the features and the functionality of it and know the capabilities of the camera. As the cameras is a 18 megapixel camera I knew that it would be able to take highly detailed photos shown off in my final media product. I used the CANNON EF-S 18-55mm lens as this is a good all rounder, as the lens is not too wide and not too cropped. This makes a difference because it also gives you the options of optical zoom and it has manual and automatic focus capabilities. I enjoyed using this camera as I think that it allowed me to take the best photos I could being an amateur photographer. Along with the camera I used a SanDisk EXTREME PRO SD card for the photos to be saved on. this is because I was able to remove the SD card from the camera and put it into the iMac, so that I could access the photos directly from the SD card. But the SD card had a speed of 280/s which is fast and therefore I wouldn't have any trouble uploading and extracting photos from my computer or to my computer because of this transfer speed.

Word/Scribd: I used this application because it was easier to type up information which I gathered from my research. By doing this I was able to make sure that it made sense as it has spell check. In junction with application I used the website scribd so that I could embed my documented research onto my blog. A benefit of using scribd is that you are able to embed the document online and also access it anywhere as it is on the internet. This is good for me as I can access it at home and anywhere else if I wanted to quickly edit previous document, and when you edit the document and save it, it automatically updates on the embed document on my blog which is a huge onus instead of re-embedding it every time you make a change.

Google Drive: When researching from home, I used a cloud based service from Google called 'Google Drive' this made it easier to access my work from home and school without carrying a USB stick and keep transferring the documents. It made it easier because all I has to do was sign into Google search engine, which provides more features, at home and at school and it would automatically update the documents which I just had to drag and drop from my home computer or the school computers. This way I didn't have to worry about compatibility issues either.

Dafont.com: When creating my preliminary, first draft magazine and final music magazine I used a website called dafont.com, this website allowed me to install any desired font on their website onto the computer so that I could use it when creating the different magazines. By using this website it allowed me to chose from a wider selection of fonts so that I could pick the best font possible for my media product. All of the fonts which I used in my magazine like the masthead (Elkwood) was downloaded from the website dafont.com.

Power Point/SlideShare: I used this desktop application to gather photos together and save them as a picture so that it was easier for me to present my work. I also used the desktop application to present some of my research information, and by using slideshare I was able to embed the power point into my blog so that it was available on my blog and also because it was another medium for presenting my work.