Evaluation- 4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

There was a lot of media used to construct, research, plan and evaluate my work. Without the different media I wouldn’t be able to complete my coursework to the highest standard. I believe using the different types of media is beneficial because it allows me to express myself and allows me to go in detail with my work. From last year’s coursework the source of media has change vastly as we have used more media in our work.

However there are some Medias that we have kept i.e. blogger, phones, Bluetooth, survey monkey and computer. With blogger it has allowed me to write my personal diary daily. This means that am able to write step by step what am doing in my coursework. Therefore am constantly reviewing and talking about each stage of my coursework. As a result blogger covered my plan and evaluation in the coursework. Another source of media is our phones, the phones were important for us this year and last year because we are able plan our work and the way we did that was being taking films and pictures of our rehearsals, filming and editing. Using the phones is vital because we are able to give evidence to the things we did i.e. filming and editing. Therefore it rewards us with more marks because of the use of technology. Along with the phones we also had to use Bluetooth and the Bluetooth allowed us to send our work to the computer so that we could post it up on our blogs for evidence. The iMac computers are a further source of media that we have used for both years (AS and A2) and the iMac computer basically covered our construction as that was what we used to edit. This is because the iMac computers are the most suitable computers to edit as they are more equipped compared to a Microsoft computer. Another advantage on an iMac computer is that it’s flexible and simple to use as everything organised and set up to use. Beside the iMac, youtube is another source of media that was used. Youtube is very crucial towards the research and construction of our coursework because we were able to upload videos and research videos to get ideas for our own coursework. It further allows other people to review, rate and comment videos therefore we were able to upload our own video to get feedback. Survey monkey was the last source media that we used for both of our coursework. Survey monkey is a website that is entirely based on creating questionnaires. Therefore it allowed us to research as we used it to write questionnaires in order to find out information from our audience.

Here is picture of the media sources that we have used for both years (AS and A2;



Now there are other sources of media that were used this year that I didn’t use last year due to the importance and the difficult of this year’s coursework. For example this year we were able to upgrade our camera to HD, whereas last year we were using the DV Cameras and they had lesser qualities compared to the HD Cameras. The HD Cameras have high quality on literally everything e.g. magnification, resolution, picture and etc. Therefore the HD Cameras made our music video look very professional due to the picture and resolution quality. Along with the cameras, we also had a software upgrade this year. Last year we were using iMovie to edit our coursework however this year we used Final Cut Express to edit our music video, this would be known as the construction part of our coursework. We used Final Cut Express because it’s a new software that has more and better features compared to iMovie. I believe that Final Cut Express was more complex and exciting as it offered a variety of skills and editing techniques. Therefore we were able to add better effects to our music video.

Slideshare and Photoshop are two other sources of media that we included in our coursework this year. For example Photoshop was used because it’s a graphics editing program therefore we used it to create our digipak and magazine advert. Photoshop is the best choice for graphics editing because it’s more advanced and it’s easier to understand. Furthermore Photoshop has much better accuracy since there are more specific colors and mathematical equations are used to cut round pictures/objects carefully and accurately. As a result we felt that it would be beneficial to create an effective digipak and magazine advert. Slideshare is an additional source of media that allowed us to show our work in a more thrilling and modern way. For us it was effective to use because it’s a different way to show our work and it increases our communication skills.

The last source of media that we used that is different from last year is the website unsigned.com. We used unsigned.com because we had to find music that weren’t copyrighted and the website gave us unsigned music. Unsigned.com is the most popular website in terms of unsigned music as a result we felt that it would be reliable and safe to use.

Here is a picture of the media sources that were only used in this year’s coursework (A2);