Tara Extended Project Activity Log

financial accounts and costs

2010-05-04T07:58:00.000-07:00

Shown below are my personal notes and copies of the financial accounts and costs for the print and distribution of our personal newspaper. It shows the outgoing costs so purchases for printing the newspaper and postage etc, and also shows the ingoing costs, such as the adverts costs, and copies of the newspaper sold so far.

Accounts

Outgoing costs

We as a class printed 500 copies of the newspaper at a £1 a newspaper, so therefore our overall outgoing costs for the Newspaper club was £500 inc VAT postage for first three orders, which was £11.40.

Income - Ingoing costs

For our incoming costs, we made a considerable amount through adverts.

For the Junction advert, we were given £350 for a newspaper advert.

For the Lincoln advert, we were given £100 for a half page newspaper advert.

For an OCR advert, we were given another £100 for a half page newspaper advert.

Total advertising income is £550 from the 3 adverts.

Reigate school bought 120 copies of the newspaper for £60, adding £60 to the income profit.
Islington college also bought 40 copies of the newspaper, which adds another £20 to the overall profit.
Netherhall school bought another 30 copies of our newspaper, which was another £15 of the profit.
Guernsey grammar school bought another 20 copies of the newspaper which adds another £10 to the overall profit made.

There were also another 50 free copies/samples, given to the group members (us) the moderator etc.
We still need to sell 260 copies of the newspaper, which should increase our profit costs further.
We have sold 210 copies of the newspaper so far, which is a great achievement as we have sold almost half of all the newspapers we bought. These newspapers are to be advertised further by Jenny Grahame on OCR teachers site this week, so hopefully we aim to have sold all the copies through this method of advertising.

Total profit including adverts and distribution of newspapers - £655

This therefore in my opinion, is an excellent achievement in terms of a profit. We have made back our outgoing costs simply on adverts, so therefore any costs made now or at a later date, will be further cost and would be additional costs and even more of a profit.

Feedback after distribution

2010-05-04T07:53:00.001-07:00

Shown below is also our feedback so far of the newspaper after distribution of the newspapers, so therefore this is new feedback.

Mary Berrisford, Islington

“We've just put the underground map on the wall and are fighting about who is on the coolest line(that's teachers not students by the way!)Initial reaction is that we can't wait to use it in the classroom -could be a few more bigger images in there...We'll use it with students next week (weds) and email you some more feedback”

Jenny Grahame

“MediaMe looks great. Works really well with the colour, etc. Mega achievement.”

Reigate College

"Good on section 1
Methodical systematic and detailed
Very concise to the point
Very clearly expressed
Wordsearch page blurry
Wikipedia game Already played by lots of class good -article- less obviously useful than others
Useful - better than a textbook
Great format
Tube map great
Format handy
Teacher prefers online to print -students like print far more
Layout really good
Is point about TV not needing a licence true?"

Overall.. ( my thoughts)

Overall, I personally think this feedback is very positive and has helped further analyse what we hoped to achieve. It sets clear our achievements and our targets, and the feedback we received has really helped analyse our overall progress. I think the colour we used in the newspaper was attractive to the audience and I hope that it was also visually interesting.
The only negative or constructive feedback I can see is that the word search was blurry, which personally I agree with once you look at the newspaper. Unfortunately, the makers of the page used an image which was stretched too far and therefore became blurry when printed.
Other than this, the point associated with my article especially was "is the point about not needing a TV license true?" from Reigate college. This was a very good point made, and I personally believe the quote as true, as the source we took it from is here - http://www.bitterwallet.com/5-reasons-why-you-can-cancel-your-tv-licence-tomorrow/10985

However, once cutting the article down we may have made the statement we were trying to make a bit unclear and therefore it was inevitably going to cause confusion.
Overall thought I think we had the majority of positive feedback and this is a great achievement because it means students can actually learn from the newspaper, exactly the aim we have held from the start.

Mike's blog feedback 3

2010-04-26T02:26:00.000-07:00

Here is mike's feedback for my blog, this is the third time that he has given feedback. Overall, I think the feedback is helpful and there is only 2 videos I could add, so everything is up to date which is what I was aiming for. I will add the videos suggested by Mike and hopefully my blog should be sufficient with evidence.

Finished newspaper slideshow

2010-04-26T01:54:00.000-07:00

Here is a slideshow that Kirk made to show all the pages of the finished newspaper, similar to a virtual flick through of the pages. This is good because it showed everyone's individual progress and all the individual pages. Here are some screengrabs from the slideshow.

However, Kirk has missed out mine and Matt's page of the newspaper, but there are screengrabs of the page on my blog anyway so this can be easily located.

Notes for presentation

2010-04-26T01:39:00.000-07:00

Here are the following notes for the presentation part of the extended project. For notes to refer back to, here are the rough basics for the presentation.

- The presentation can be in any form you want, for example I could use cards, slides, use the blog to refer back to, use websites or even present freestyle.

- The presentation is designed to last 5 to 10 minutes, and I must address 4 main areas. It must be thorough and well detailed to ensure top marks, and cannot be too brief.

- It must include the following area topics:

- What was the project about?

* what did I do?

* what was I making?

- What was your particular role and contribution?

*what jobs did I do?

*did I stay assigned to your role?

- How sucessful was the outcome?

*what went well?

*what went not so well?

*effective only partly? etc

- What did you learn from the process?

* did I learn actual content for the exam?

* Did I learn how to produce in print format, using templates etc?

* Did I learn new teamworking skills?

I also have to be asked questions about the project, so I could also prepare for these.

21st April - Final evaluation

2010-04-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

Here is my evaluation for the extended project.

How well does it meet your original intentions?

The newspaper met my original intentions to an extent. We planned as a class to have articles related to the media critical perspectives exam and for them to be helpful and informative, with statistics and facts towards the exam, which students could quote or use to back up any points they made. Looking at the newspaper as a whole, most of the articles addressed these, especially Matt and my article, which I am pleased with for the original aim we wanted. We have clear facts and statistics to use, especially relating to the Media in the online age section of the exam. We had key questions to think about for the exam and key topics which could be raised. Some statistics from our article are shown below:

However, some articles did not relate to the exam at all and some thought that they were writing articles from their own personal view, which would not help anyone in the exam, because it was only one person's view. Alot of people wrote in a style where 'I think that.. 'coming from my experience of..' and this would not help students in the exam. Therefore, some students had to rush to change their articles so they could actually get them in the newspaper, and some decided to just have them online instead.

One thing I am dissapointed about is the fact that we didn't address question 1A of the exam very much at all, everybody wrote articles about the other aspect of the exam, for question 1B. We only addressed 1B after teacher feedback and someone actually being assigned to write about 1B, which is dissapointing. I think that nobody wanted to write about it because it wasn't as exciting as the other aspect. Nonetheless, we should have wrote about question 1B from the start and then we wouldn't have had to rush more near the end of the project. Overall however I am pleased with the finished project.

How does it look?

I think that the newspaper looks very efficient, and very much like a student newspaper which I am pleased about. We did not want the newspaper to look too business like, so we aimed at making it colourful and vibrant, with formal language to a lesser extent than a business newspaper such as The Guardian.

I like the look of the newspaper and think the articles are colouirful and attractive which make you want to read them. I think the activities page and everything looks interesting and am pleased to say the newspaper is something I would sit down and read, so am pleased with the finished outcome.

How pleased are you with your contributions?

I am very pleased with the contributions I made towards the newspaper and think that I did as much work as I personally could towards the project. My first job was the quality control team job of ensuring people had evidence on their blogs of work, this included a whole Flickr account with 70 odd pictures all showing people working, which could be easily added to the blogs. I also sent reminder emails ensuring everyone used pictures on their blogs, and made sure everyone knew the sign in for the Flickr account.

My second job was to write an article with Matt L about media in the online age, we chose to write about the abolishment of TV in the household due to new TV streaming websites such as BBC Iplayer and ITV player, 4OD and TV Catchup. I chose this job personally to do because I also wanted to have an article in the newspaper, as it would be good for experience. Therefore, I think that I did as much work for the project as I could handle, and I thought I worked effectively at this. Although I may have chosen another job to do as well, I think this did not distract me from anything because the article was made collectively with Matt L and therefore I did not have to write as much as I would have. Below is a picture of the finished article.

I originally wanted to be a part of a team creating a page for the newspaper, so the quality control team job was a good step up for me and I felt I did a lot more work than I would have done if I had just been assigned the job of a team member.

How effectively do you think you worked in your role and others in theirs?

I think I worked very effectively in my role, and I don't think my added job of writing an article distracted me from my main job, I thought that this gave me more to do which I liked because I like a challenge in terms of work, and I like to have a lot to do. I think the rest of the quality control team worked well in their roles, especially Kirk who monitored everyone's progress, and made clear schedules for days, activities and ensured everyone stayed working. Mike also worked well, creating as blog for feedback for everyone, and giving clear instructions on what else to add to their blogs, and what things were missing.

I also think the team leaders worked well, managing their teams effectively, although there was some tension because some other people like to take control, the team leaders worked well and managed their teams effectively, despite the fact they were sometimes not there and team members were confused about what to do - they overall worked well in managing their teams.

Team members worked well too, and mainly all made a page or article for the newspaper. Some articles did not really realte to our original aim which I was dissapointed about, but once getting on with their work after clear instruction most were able to change and edit their articles so they could fit in the newspaper. Most team members showed clear effort, despite the fact they do not like writing academically.

What could be learnt from this experience?

A lot of considerable points can be learnt from this experience, especially the fact that it shows we can work well as a class when given the correct roles. Another clear thing to learn is that most people need clear instructions in order to complete work but once they do, they work effectively as a team. We need an aim from the start so we can stick to the objective, but as a class we work well.

Another main point is that despite some of the class not meeting deadlines individually, we can all meet deadlines as a team and this is a good achievement. We met the print deadline effectively, although some people were left with more work to do than others, for example I came into the lesson to work on unfinished pages despite finishing my own page already, but I didn't mind this as I knew we needed to meet the deadline effectively.

What has been learnt from previous experience?

From previous experience, we can learn that despite some projects where we did not work as a team effectively, for example the SHOW project, this project showed that we could work collectively as a team when we are assigned the correct roles - and can create an effective extended project and also meet the deadlines.

Previous experience showed us who could work in what roles effectively and who struggled when given managerial roles - and this helped us when choosing roles for the class.

Nonetheless overall, I think myself and the class worked extremely well in terms of meeting the deadlines, in terms of creating an effective newspaper which meets our original intentions, and also in terms of working as a team, which it showed we can do when we put our minds to a project. I think I worked very well in terms of following my role, despite also doing additional work of writing an article with Matt L. I think the extended project went well and I have monitored my progress effectively, keeping a work blog of what I did each day, what I thought about it and what else I needed to do.

Overall project plan

2010-04-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

Here is my personal and overall project plan for the extended project. I think it reflects clearly my personal roles and things i need to do.

Action plan for week beginning 29th March

2010-04-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

Here is my final action plan for the extended project, which shows my progress, plans and what I still need to do each day of the project. Overall, I think I have assessed daily progress etc well in each action plan and I think the action plans will be good as evidence to show work completed and by who.

1st April - individual progress

2010-04-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

Today I worked individually on finishing off and modifying any further changes that needed to be made to the newspaper. Below you can see some screen grabs of the work I completed today.

The first change I made was to the front page of the newspaper, I added the links to where the rest of the articles could be found online if they were not put in the newspaper, and also a link to petes media blog which is also considerably helpful for help in the exam. I then continued by adding everyone's names to the front to show that we made the newspaper collaboratively.

I then startd to make little changes to the pages which were not finished, and added the text of media word search to the left of the word search on the activities and adverts page.

Here you can see me playing about with text and working on the text and colour.

Here you can see the final page after I made this modification.

Next, I added the two logos of the junction and the cambridgeshore city council onto the other activities and adverts page. I then also added in the text which needed to be added and formatted this according to the style sheet and house style guide. I then also played about with the size of logos etc to see the effectiveness and the layout of the text. I managed to almost finish this to what I think would be suitable to the newspaper and I think Nick will make the rest of the small modifications.

Overall, I personally thought I did well with the two pages and individually managed to finish off the last bits of the newspaper ready for the printing deadline.

31st March - Front page of the newspaper

2010-03-31T10:17:00.000-07:00

Today myself and the rest of the quality control team worked on the front page of the newspaper, because it still had not been completed.

We first worked on adding the media me logo which I designed, and then worked on adding the editorial text Alex wrote, after I wrote the introductory paragraph and put it in bold text.

When we got to this point it was the end of the lesson, so me, kirk and mike stayed behind after lesson to finish the front page.

We then added four coloured boxes to the left hand side of the newspaper, advertising certain articles, we advertised mine and Matt L's article Time to turn off TV for good?, James' article Spike Jonze to Telephones, Alies article Has Twitter changed Communication and Tim's Tube Map.

In the end we managed to almost finish the front page, which I agreed to personally finish tomorrow. I felt this was a great achievement because we stayed behind after lessons to finish it and in the end I felt proud of the fact we worked on it collaboratively and it turned out looking professional and attractive.

Final Flatplan video

2010-03-31T09:35:00.000-07:00

Here is the flatplan video with the audio recorded from the planning session, which show the progress we made and the decisions we made as a team. Kirk recorded the audio, but overall it shows our work as a team and shows decisions we made, it is very effective in showing progress and evidence.

31st March - Progress

2010-03-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

Today we were able to complete some substantial progress for the magazine, The first thing we did as a class was to arrange the pages of the newspaper and what should go where. The quality control team with myself and the 3 teams came up with page orders.

Here at first were the 11 pages we had at the start, and with 12 pages to fill we had a problem. Therefore, Sam came up with the idea of having an activities page on the top half of 2 seperate pages, and the adverts on the bottom half - which I thought was an interesting way to break up the pages, as a page with 2 adverts on personally I think people would just flick past and not take notice - but if there were activities this would make a difference.

Here you can see Alex (the liason officer for the quality control team) rearranging the big flat plan of the newspaper on the board to meet the page suggestions we thought.

Here you can see my personal notes on the quality control team's order of the pages. I thought to order the pages in order of relevance and having the adverts at the back of the newspaper would be good because i will draw peoples attention. Also having the activities near the back page makes it a good way to finish the articles in the newspaper.

This arrangement of the flat plan I think was Philippa's teams, and they said to put the activities page on page 5 because it breaks up the articles. I like this idea better than simply our quality control teams idea of having the activities near the back page, because I think it would break up the articles and people would take more notice of the activities.

Here you can see Loz (team leader) re arranging the flat plan on the board.

Here you can see the final order for the newspaper. Notes are below:

page 1 - front cover

page 2 - question 1A of the exam

page 3 - time to turn off TV for good? (Mine and Matt L's article)

page 4 - Is Wikipedia an online blessing?

page 5 - Lincoln advert and activities

page 6 - Tim tube map (double page spread)

page 7 - Tim tube map (double page spread)

page 8 - Lincoln advert and activities

page 9 - Wikipedia world tour (activity)

page 10 - Has Twitter changed communication?

page 11 - zeitgeist forecast

page 12 (back page) - online gaming communities

Overall, there were a lot of various changes and discussions about the ordering of the pages in the newspaper. From the quality control team and my first ideas, not a lot has changed and therefore people liked the order we had put the pages in, which was good.

We managed to make the activities and the adverts on pages 5 and 8 so that the tube map could be a pull out poster if neccessary with activities to do, a point made by Loz which I personally thought was a great idea, it also breaks up the articles quite substantially.

The gaming communities articles by Ash and Dave are now on the back because they were the most visually interesting articles, and we felt it would be something constructive for students to look at.

Overall I felt we moved forward quite a lot in Today's first lesson and were able to make some considerable decisions for the newspaper, as well as a clear and consistent order.

Flickr

Matt L also uploaded these pictures to the Flickr account for me, which was very helpful. Throughout the project I have been uploading photos of progress and evidence to back up what we have done, because my main role is to keep evidence. I feel the Flickr account and photos are an excellent way to keep evidence alongside the activity logs. Overall there are 135 photos in the Flickr account which the majority of I have uploaded, and I think this is a fantastic achievement for evidence purposes.

Feedback from Mike

2010-03-30T07:54:00.000-07:00

Here is my feedback from Mike, and as you can see there is not a lot to do which is good. Overall, I think this feedback is accurate as i have kept on task for everything and made sure everything is done so I can keep on track.

30th March - Final Article JPG

2010-03-30T07:51:00.000-07:00

Here is mine and Matt L's final article as a JPEG file. It shows the work we have done, what we have changed and what we have edited. The article is now going for proof reading from Nick and Pete, so we may have a few more changes to make to it, but overall it is mostly completed which means we have successfully kept to our article completion deadline.

30th March - Article proof reading

2010-03-30T07:20:00.001-07:00

Matt L and I also wanted to proof read the article once more before handing it in, and as we had looked at it so much and would be less likely to notice little mistakes, we asked kirk to look through the article, (shown below) and give us some proof reading comments. This will help us further on our article and will make sure it is checked through thoroughly.

Here you can see kirk looking through our article.

Here you can see him giving us feedback with the original article he added comments to.

Here you can see a close up of the feedback.

Here you can see the article with all of kirks comments.

Final rough Flatplan draft - Video

2010-03-30T03:22:00.000-07:00

Here is our final rough draft flat plan before we get feedback from Jenny and Pete about what to cut out from the article. From looking at the flat plan, we can see that we have one spare page left with 3 potential articles too which all fill a page, and therefore we need to cut some articles out of the newspaper.

Online method

Pete mentioned yesterday about having an online site for more articles, similar to Media Magazine. I think this is a great idea and will mean students will have more to use to revise.

29th March - Flat plan

2010-03-29T06:57:00.001-07:00

In today's second lesson I also worked on the final rough flat plan with Kirk and Alex, and we managed to fit most of the substantial articles in there, but after jenny's next set of feedback she should indicate which ones need to go or could go as currently we still do not have enough room for all the articles.

Here is our front of our flatplan.

Here is the middle page of the flat plan.

Here is the back page.

Overall, I think that the flat plan will also really help us indicate how much space we have or need for all the information we want to put on the newspaper. After one more set of feedback from Jenny after the feedback in the pages template, we should have a clear indication of what articles we can keep and what are not so relevant.

29th March - Progress

2010-03-29T06:46:00.000-07:00

During the first Monday lesson, we worked on a brainstorm which helped with answering questions 1A and 1B of the exam, which we have not focused on yet. It really helped to understand the basics of the questions and I feel i have a better understanding now of the first part of the exam.

Here is our brainstorm which i created in a group with Sam and Mike. We did a brainstorm of the creativity part of the questions 1A and 1B, and used specific examples of our own work aswell as examples of what we have done during the projects. We completed this brainstorm for another group to use and give feedback on, and therefore we recieved another brainstorm to write about.

Here is us working on our brainstorm and adding details.

Here is our brainstorm close up to see the detail we added.

Here is another close up of our brainstorm.

Here is a close up of the brainstorm we received back, and we were asked to write about using conventions of real media products during our work and how these have progressed. I wrote an essay example and felt this really helped me to understand the process of the first two questions of the exam.

29th March - Working further on the article

2010-03-29T02:17:00.000-07:00

Today we worked further on our article, adding more images and a boxout with helpful key links. Below you can see Matt L and I working further on our article.

Here you can see us adding a boxout to the article, and adding the pictures again to fit around the text, we also gave them a smoother edge to the sides of the picture.

Here you can see our almost completed article, we only need to add Matt's opie and then we are done. This afternoon we will add it and then we will be ready to send the final version to Alex to send to Jenny and Pete.

Here are some pictures which we used in our article. They are enlarged on the blog but we have taken them ourselves which means we are not breaching any copyright laws.

Overall I think Matt L and I have worked hard to meet the deadline and I am glad we have met it successfully. I think our article covers a lot of useful points for students to use in the exam and also has key questions for the students to think further about, as well as key links.

Work at home - Cutting down the article

2010-03-28T07:14:00.000-07:00

Today I did some work at home, and Matt L and I managed to cut down our article so it all fitted onto one A3 page. I felt there was some good information and useful stuff cut out but we had to cut it down due to the article fitting in the newspaper. Below you can see me begin to cut down the article in pages. I have also taken screen grabs while working for evidence.

Cutting down the text

Here you can see me working with the template and the text in Pages, after opening the article we worked on Friday.

Here you can see me start to cut down some of the information which Matt L and I thought was less essential than the rest, and you can see it is starting to fit all on one page.

Here you can see all of the article now fits on one A4 page which will look the same on an A3 page.

Overall

Baring in mind we still need to add pictures and need to illustrate the article a little more may need to be cut out, nonetheless I think we have done well in keeping the most important bits of information in the article.

Adding images

Matt L and I have also worked on adding some images to the article , which we thought we would have to cut more text out. However, I have managed to add two small images and all of the article still fits on one page, which is good news. Below is the process I took to adding some images to the article.

Here you can see the folder which the images we took ourselves are in. I decided to only use a couple of these because we did not want to cut much more of our article text out.

Here you can see me choosing the images to add to the article from the pictures we took ourselves for our article on Friday.

Here you can see the same process of me choosing images and adding them to the article to see which ones look best.

Here you can see I have added the second picture to the article and resized it so it is little, I have also created an opacity border in the inspector part of pages, so it is not a hard square image in the article for a softer look to the image.

Here you can see the whole version of the article we now have ready for Monday, with the two images I have added and all the text now all fitting on one page.

Action plan for week beginning 22nd March

2010-03-28T02:46:00.000-07:00

Here is my finished action plan for the week beginning the 22nd March. Overall, I think it does a good job of outlining my plans for each day, my progress and what else I still need to do.

26th March - Progress - template

2010-03-26T07:07:00.000-07:00

After first working on a style sheet for the whole class, Sam and Alex put up the three ideas of templates we had, (shown below) and we were able to work out a style sheet for everyone to use, which is shown below also.

Here are Sam and Alex working on the style sheet after the three ideas the groups had.

Here is the template we all agreed to use for the newspaper.

Here is the step by step process of the template by which we all have to stick to. There are 3 columns, a main title, a strap line and crossheads for now. Then we will go on to add colour and pictures to the article. This template is to simply see how long the article is and how many pages it will take.

Potential pictures - taken ourselves

2010-03-26T03:51:00.000-07:00

Me and Matt also took some pictures ourselves to avoid any copyright laws and restrictions. The pictures clearly relate to the article and because they are taken ourselves we also have a more student feel to the article. Below are the pictures we took ourselves on Friday the 26th March.

Here is a picture of an Iphone on TV Catchup.

Here is a picture of a person holding the Iphone, which we thought may appeal more to the students more.

Here is a picture of the Macbook on BBC iPlayer which we thought would be relevant to the article.

Here yet again is a picture of Matt using the Macbook on BBC iPlayer which we thought may appeal more to the viewer because someone is actually using it.

25th March progress

2010-03-25T08:58:00.000-07:00

In today's lesson I worked on a home style guide with Mike, which consists of the rules we need in the articles, such as bullet points for lists, names italicised, quotes in bold and font sizes etc.

Shown below is Mikes and my rough draft. Mike continued with this after I started working on my article with Matt L. Matt and I also worked further on our article after working on feedback from nick, other students and also feedback from our client jenny grahame.

Here is a picture of the feedback slip which we received, and here are the notes for the feedback written out incase the image is not clear.

In terms of content, this is The Business - Loads of really useful info, which addresses the different exam qs in a very focused and helpful way. But because there's so much dense factual info, you need to think about your layout to make sure things stand out.

- Crossheads for different sections would be really useful - e.g. : The challenges to TV; Legal Issues; New contenders; the future? Preparing for the exam ect (but create your own sexier crossheads)

plus bullet points are often helpful to emphasise points -e.g. in your second paragraph, where there are tons of stats and your final 'Preparing for the exam' section.

Working on the Flatplan

I also worked further on a flat plan with Kirk, and after a while we realised with all the articles the size they were, we will have a big problem fitting them all into the article. After working out who would take a page and a half, 2 pages, or one page or even half a page, and adding everyone's articles in I realised we had forgotten about two articles which obviously we couldn't leave out. Therefore, we all need to make substantial cuts to the articles to fit them all in there, for example, Philippa's article needed to be cut down to one page, same with Alie's article and the same with Mine and Matt L's if we can manage it.

Hopefully, the groups should make these changes otherwise we cannot fit all the articles in the newspaper and some may need to be left out. I am sure after asking them on Friday most of them were willing to cut down. Me and kirk will also work further on the flat plan now with modifications on Monday.

24th March - work at home - potential style sheet

2010-03-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

Tonight I also did some work at home on a potential layout for Mine and Matt L's article. I could only fit half of the article in the A4 page layout but an A3 page should be fine to fit everything in, and since the newspaper has an A3 page this should be ok. I first worked on the title etc and worked down from the page, adding text and pictures as I went.

Here is me beginning to work on the title of the article and work out the text.

Here you can see me add some pictures into the article and also begin to work on the text further.

Here is my finished potential layout for the magazine. I think it should be simple and effective and I think this layout manages this, we will see what layout we finally use though, this was just a rough idea.

24th March - Potential pictures for article

2010-03-24T03:05:00.000-07:00

Here are some potential pictures for the article I have researched using a creative commons search, so therefore the pictures are free to use and are not copyright. I have also pasted the URL of each picture below the picture for evidence of how I found them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/restlessglobetrotter/2214417034/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dantaylor/4114637276/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/milkandmonsters/3102653100/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubicgarden/2451266469/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dantaylor/2954851362/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slighning/3106542823/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hummy/4072683736/

24th March - List of advertisers

2010-03-24T02:27:00.000-07:00

Here is a list and summary of sponsors for advertisers in our MediaMe newspaper. I have listed the actual sponsors and the possible sponsors who look promising.

Sponsors

Mike Mason and Sarah Barrow - Lincoln University - £100 'half a page advert, logo on the front of the newspaper and contact details on the back'

Simon Bates (The junction) - £350 - half a page advert and logo on the front of the newspaper.

Possible sponsors

Jon Wardle - Bournemouth University (£50 advert looks promising)

Robert Carlton - OCR (£50 possibility)

Jenny Grahame - Media Magazine (£50 possibility, maybe more)

Overall Cost

I am now going to work out the overall cost of the sponsors and advertisers if we were to get all of them sponsoring us, and the minimum advert cost is £50 for a quarter page advert.

Lincoln - £100

Simon Bates - £350

Bournemouth University - £50

Robert Carlton - £50

Media Magazine - £50

100 + 350 + 50 + 50 + 50 = £600

Therefore, the overall cost if we were to get all the potential sponsors would be £600, and the cost of the newspaper to print is £500 (500 copies for £1 each) so we have already exceeded our costs needed if this happens. However, we cannot assume that every sponsor will get back to us and they want an article so we cannot assume this as the real overall budget.

23rd March - Minutes from meeting

2010-03-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

Here are some notes from Dave's meeting with us about style sheets and advice. As you can see he drew a template with the main parts of the article and worked out what we need on the article. This was really helpful as it meant that we had a clear idea of what we needed in the article.

23rd March - Feedback

2010-03-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of our feedback we recieved from Nick and from 2 class members in year 12.

Here is a close up of feedback from Nick, you can see he has made some improvements.

The blue pen highlighted article is from the 2 class members of year 12.

Here is a summary of our feedback from the class members over what we did well and improvements we could make.

Here is a summary of all our feedback written up from the notes:

Here is some feedback for our third draft of our article,

Student Feedback

- Some Spelling Mistakes

- Second opinion in first paragraph

- Expanding needed in some areas

- Explain TVCatchup

- Expand watching films illegal online?

- Include own opinion or rhetorical question in paragraphs

- Expand on Conclusion

- Need more personal opinions and contrasting opinions

Teacher (Nick) feedback

- Snappier introduction

- Add about time shifting

- Add about sky + in first paragraph

- Be more specific in second paragraph

- Expand on paragraph 3 ending

- 'overloading the Internet' talk about bandwidth and problems for theInternet

- find examples of online + terrestrial viewing

- Expand on some areas of the Article

Overall, I think both Nicks and the class members feedback will really help, especially from the class members because they are our target audience, so if they do not understand it then we know we need to make some changes for our target audience to understand the feedback.

Nick's feedback is also very helpful because he analyses what we have done so far and what we need to do next, also good examples of what we can add such as Sky + TV.

Transcript of Interviews

2010-03-23T02:52:00.000-07:00

Shown below are the transcripts which kirk created after todays interviews.

Tom

1) What social networking websites do you currently use if any?
Have you ever deleted your social profile online and why?

I actually don’t use any, I cant be bothered with continuous updating

2) Do you use the internet to watch TV programs as opposed to physically watching
TV? For example BBC I-player, 4OD etc …

Yeah TV programmes, I use streaming sites such as TV dome occasionally use BBC-I player, I don’t really use 4 OD, TV dome is better as it has all the American TV shows and also does pirate films

3) Have you ever produced a video and posted it online?
What websites have you posted your video (s) on ?

No, but I have during the course, I use vimeo but only for the course, Vimeo has better quality above you tube, as you tube has a low audience

4) In what format do you view the news? For example Internet, newspaper, TV?
What format do you prefer?

I get a little up date on my computer, when I go on my computer I get a little news update with important news, I cant be bothered to buy newspapers

5) Do you download music from the internet?
What websites do you use in order to download your music?

I use lime wire

6) Are you currently using any of the following websites to upload your own
material?

- Deviant Art
- Flickr
- Youtube
- Myspace

If so then why? And how often do you upload material to the websites?

I use flicker for photos and you tube as its what we are pointed at during this course

Tom & Sven

1) What social networking websites do you currently use if any?
Have you ever deleted your social profile online and why?

Tom - Facebook, I still have myspace but don’t do any thing with it

2) Do you use the internet to watch TV programs as opposed to physically watching
TV? For example BBC I-player, 4OD etc …

Tom - Yeah I sue 4 OD
Sven - I use you tube to watch new shows and use bbc I player

3) Have you ever produced a video and posted it online?
What websites have you posted your video (s) on ?

Sven - I mainly create animation videos and stop motions then place them on you tube
Tom - Me and my friend have an account so we upload videos, he does like magic videos and stuff

4) In what format do you view the news? For example Internet, newspaper, TV?
What format do you prefer?

Tom - I watch the TV in the mornings and I get the free newspapers off the train
Sven - I watch the news on TV in the afternoons

5) Do you download music from the internet?
What websites do you use in order to download your music?

Tom - My dads got a subscription to napster so I use that sometimes and ive used lime wire before but it takes too long so I don’t use it any more and id rather own CDS
Sven - I don’t download any music

6) Are you currently using any of the following websites to upload your own
material?

- Deviant Art
- Flickr
- Youtube
- Myspace

If so then why? And how often do you upload material to the websites?

Tom - I use flicker for college and that’s about it, maybe if I was creating a project I might use deviant art and I use it because its what we have to sue during this course, I upload photos about once a week

Tilly & Lewis

1) What social networking websites do you currently use if any?
Have you ever deleted your social profile online and why?

Tilly - Facebook, I did have a myspace but I don’t use it anymore but nobody uses it and everyone has a face book so I use that
Lewis - Facebook

2) Do you use the internet to watch TV programs as opposed to physically watching
TV? For example BBC I-player, 4OD etc …

Tilly - I did use BBC - I player before I got virgin TV and also I used 4 OD I prfer watching things on TV, but sometimes catch up online
Lewis - I use online TV to catch up

3) Have you ever produced a video and posted it online?
What websites have you posted your video (s) on ?

Tilly - I use youtube to watch videos now and again, I prefer youtube than vimeo as its easier
Lewis - I watch music videos on you tube Ive made videos of me and my mates mucking about, youtube is better than vimeo as Its harder to use vimeo as we have only just been using it in our course

4) In what format do you view the news? For example Internet, newspaper, TV?
What format do you prefer?

Tilly - I watch news on TV, I don’t like reading newspapers
Lewis - I watch news on the TV

5) Do you download music from the internet?
What websites do you use in order to download your music?

Tilly - Yeah, I use limewire and I-tunes to listen and download music
Lewis - Yeah

6) Are you currently using any of the following websites to upload your own
material?

- Deviant Art
- Flickr
- Youtube
- Myspace

If so then why? And how often do you upload material to the websites?

Tilly - I use fliker every two weeks and upload photos
Lewis - I use fliker and upload photos every two weeks

Max & Yasmin

1) What social networking websites do you currently use if any?
Have you ever deleted your social profile online and why?

Max - Just face book, used to use myspace and bebo, stll somewhere on the internet but not active
Yasmin - Just face book, used to use myspace and bebo

2) Do you use the internet to watch TV programs as opposed to physically watching
TV? For example BBC I-player, 4OD etc …

Yasmin - Yeah I do I use BBC iplayer, its more convenient watching TV on the internet
Max - Ive used bbc iplayer once or twice

3) Have you ever produced a video and posted it online?
What websites have you posted your video (s) on ?

Yasmin - Ive uploaded videos on youtube in this course
Max - I use youtube and have done since the age of about 12, Vimeo is more streamlined but ill probably still use youtube Just the fact that you have to get an account and everything just on youtube its easier

4) In what format do you view the news? For example Internet, newspaper, TV?
What format do you prefer?

Max - I don’t watch the news at all but I do see pop ups now and again on line and I would check the internet if there was some major important news
Yasmin - Its usually just on in the background and when I sign into hotmail the news pops up and I look at the metro on the train

6) Are you currently using any of the following websites to upload your own
material?

- Deviant Art
- Flickr
- Youtube
- Myspace

If so then why? And how often do you upload material to the websites?

Max - Yeah ive used deviant art once or twice for an old art project and I have friends that have flicker sites but I don’t have one myself I upload material about once a month
Yasmin - I use fliker to upload photos on my own personal profile I upload material about once a month

Hannah & Emma

1) What social networking websites do you currently use if any?
Have you ever deleted your social profile online and why?

Hannah - Facebook and used to use myspace
Emma - Facebook used to use picso and bebo I never use them now as no ones on them apart from face book always on facebook

2) Do you use the internet to watch TV programs as opposed to physically watching
TV? For example BBC I-player, 4OD etc …

Hannah - Sometimes use BBC I player
Emma - I use sky plus and record programmes but I sometimes use BBC - I player I prfer watching TV as its easier

3) Have you ever produced a video and posted it online?
What websites have you posted your video (s) on ?

Emma - we put our videos from college projects online
Hannah - We put our videos from college online, like the music videos etc

4) In what format do you view the news? For example Internet, newspaper, TV?
What format do you prefer?

Hannah - I don’t really watch the news or anything really
Emma - I watch news on the TV if its on and nothing else is on, its not that important to me

5) Do you download music from the internet?
What websites do you use in order to download your music?

Hannah - I use limewire for downloading music as its free
Emma - I use I-tunes and limewire as its free I convert MP3s from youtube now and again as its free and easy to do

6) Are you currently using any of the following websites to upload your own
material?

- Deviant Art
- Flickr
- Youtube
- Myspace

If so then why? And how often do you upload material to the websites?

Emma - I use flicker to upload photos but I use face book as well but I do like flicker, I use myspace now and again
Hannah - I use flicker for college photos

Overall, I personally think that these interviews were helpful, and will help us to create some statistics and percentages for the newspaper and articles. The feedback was not as constructive and not as much detail as we wanted, but I think myself and Kirk worked well together to get as much as we could out of the students.

Progress 23rd March - Interview video

2010-03-23T02:22:00.000-07:00

Here is a video which kirk made showing the pictures of interviewing we took yesterday, and also the recording we made for evidence. Kirk added the recording over a slideshow of the pictures so we could collate these for evidence. Overall, the interviews went well and we got some good statistical quotes to use in the exam.

Style sheet analysis - Fabulous Magazine 2

2010-03-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

Here is another article from Fabulous Magazine, but this article is the cover article, so all in all takes up 5 pages in the magazine. The magazine article is featuring the cover star, Charlotte Church.

Here is the first double paged spread in the magazine, which starts off the article. Here you can see a clear main picture which takes up most of the double paged spread, as well as a quote from the cover star which is enlarged, bold and a different font to the normal text article.

You can also see the main title is huge compared to all the other text, and the sub title is the second largest part of text in the article, similar to the other articles I have looked at.

Here you can see the sub title clearer, as well as the two authors which are shown by the bold text. You can also see a sub image to the left of the article, which accompanies the main image on the double page spread.

Here is the next double paged spread of the article, which features the majority of the article. You can yet again see a main image, on the page, as well as a kind of mix between a box out of the article of sub images.

Here you can see the article text a bit clearer, and you can see various indents in the text where a new paragraph starts, but no spaces between the text, this is mostly the format for articles according to the ones I have researched.

Here again you can see a quote from the cover star, which is bigger and bolder than the main article text and is a different font. You can also see indents in the text again.

Here you can see a series of sub images which are seperate from the article, similar to a box out.

Characteristics of article/feature

- main title

- sub title

- header

- main picture on each double pages spread

- 2 columns of text per page of article

- sub images to accompany the main image in the article

- an 'image box out'

- quotes from the cover star, which are bigger text, bolder and a different font to draw the audiences attention

- atleast 4 types of different size, font etc text.

Style sheet analysis - Fabulous Magazine

2010-03-22T08:30:00.001-07:00

This article is from Fabulous Magazine, a magazine free with the News Of The World newspaper on Sundays. This has a much broader audience as it is a free magazine and relates to the audience of the newspaper, it also offers competitions etc and holds characteristics of a glossy magazine.

This is the main article in the newspaper. As you can see, the annotations show there are clear indents in the text, a main title, a sub title, and a main picture as well as a sub picture to accompany the main picture.

The main title is the biggest text, it is also a serif font, the sub title is the second biggest text and is a serif font too. The 2 author's name of the article or story is also in bold and is in the main header of the article. The text for the article is also a different font to the other fonts and is a sans serif font so it is easier to read.

Here you can see my annotations clearer, showing the indents of the text in the article, as well as the number of columns per page.

Here you can also see the sub image of the article (the smaller image) to accompany the main image of the article. You can also see more of my annotations of the text.

Characteristics of the article/story

- Main title

- sub title

- main header

- sub header

- clear indents in the text after each paragraph, but no spaces

- 2 columns of text per page

- main image, as well as a sub image to accompany the main one

- article text in a sans serif font, every other font is a serif font such as the title, sub title etc

Style sheet analysis - Company Magazine

2010-03-22T08:13:00.001-07:00

Here you can see my homework of an annotation from Company Magazine, also analysing the style sheet from this magazine to see if there is any differences. Company magazine has a specific target audience of 17 - 25 year old females, so the target audience is firstly very different to media magazine which is aimed at simply a media related audience.

This is the first double paged spread article in the magazine, although in actual fact it is two seperate interviews, I will still analyse the articles main features and characteristics. You can still see the article features a main heading, main images and sub headings etc.

From this picture (although slightly blurred) you can see the main picture of the article, a quote from the interviewee which seems to be larger and bolder, designed to catch the audiences attention (something which did not feature in media magazine.) You can also see the synopsis of the author of the interviews and the subtitle.

From this image, you can see the highlighted pink areas are where the sub headings are for the article, or in this case, the questions. They are bold as opposed to the other text and I think are also a different font. You can also see most of the text is aligned to the left of the page, and there are 3 columns per page - similar to media magazine.

Here again you can see a boxout of the article, (the red box) you can also see the subheadings too (highlighted in pink) and a quote from the interviewee once again to draw the audience in.

Key features of article/interview

- main title (sans serif font)

- sub title (sans serif font)

- heading (sans serif font)

- sub headings (questions) possibly in a different font to the article (serif?)

- main picture

- box out in different colour background and key facts/points

- quote of interviewee (bigger font, bolder and centre alignment)

- text aligned to the left of the page

- 3 columns of text to each page

Style sheet analysis - Media Magazine

2010-03-22T07:59:00.000-07:00

These pictures below show myself annotating a style sheet from an article in Media Magazine. A style sheet is a sheet showing the characteristics of the layout of the article, such as columns, pictures, headers etc.

In this picture you can see the overall article on a double paged spread. You can also see I have highlighted and annotated the article accordingly showing the key characteristics.

Here you can see a close up of my annotations etc and my highlighting.

These two pictures again show annotations to the article. I pictked out key characteristics such as the main title, main picture, indents in the text, formatting, number of columns etc.

Summary of characteristics of article

- One main title (biggest of all the font sizes)

- sub title (second biggest font size)

- main header (3rd biggest font size)

- sub header (4th biggest font size)

- main picture

- sub pictures

- indents in the text after every paragraph, no spacing

- specific formatting (numbers, dashes, bullet points)

- atleast 9 different sized fonts, bold fonts, different fonts etc

- Boxout and background information on author

- 3 columns of text per page

- Text aligned to the left

Progress 22nd March

2010-03-22T04:15:00.001-07:00

Here is some pictures of today's progress, with me mike, alex and kirk working on a questionnaire to get some qualitative and quantitive research for our newspaper. We are going to ask the year 12s some questions tomorrow for some general and personally collated questions for our newspaper and articles.

Here are some of the questions which we put together to ask the years 12s tomorrow.

Overall, these pictures show the process in which we worked to come up with a set of interview questions that would generate some evaluative answers for us to use in the newspaper and in our articles.

Kirk is going to generate all the questionnaires from each group, (4 groups in total) and bring the collated versions of questions in tomorrow for us to interview the year 12's.

Action plan for week beginning 15th March

2010-03-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

Article draft 3 for tomorrow

2010-03-18T12:20:00.001-07:00

Here is Mine and Matt L's article draft 3 for tomorrow to send to our client Jenny Grahame for feedback. We have tried to change it as best we could so it relates more to the exam and have included a paragraph at the end for students of key topics for them to think about.

Time to turn off TV for good?

This article addresses the aspect of media in the online age, and how this has begun a definite media revolution. Also how the internet is changing the way we view our media, and future possibilities of a growth in the internet as a TV source. Relevant questions to this article are ‘Discuss the extent of which the distribution and consumption of media have been transformed by the internet.’ and ‘The impact of the internet is revolutionary. Discuss.’ Feel free to complete these in your own time.

From the use of the internet, media has evolved more than we ever thought it could, one example being able to now watch television at no set date. Online TV program streamers, such as BBC iplayer, which launched on Christmas day 2007 (here you can watch programs from any channels on the BBC up to a week previously) 40D which launched on 6^th December 2006(same concept, any program from channel 4) and ITVplayer which launched 8^th December 2008 (same concept once again, any program from ITV channels) all allow substantial freedom when it comes to watching television. Youtube is also a big competitor for video streaming, for example the length in time it would take to view all content on YouTube would be 412.3 years (March 2008)Also, Youtube (launched February 2005) could now be taking away viewers from television even more, ‘YouTube now allows users to upload HD videos and recently launched a service to provide TV shows and movies under license from their copyright holders.’

Media faces competition in the online age due to TV streaming websites (shown above) is providing a challenge to television especially. Despite the fact they are not taking the television audience for programs away, they are diverting the audience to an online method of watching the programs; this could create a problem for television in general, perhaps even to the point where a television is no longer necessary in the household because everything can be watched online. A good example of this is as follows. "On the 10th of October 2009 internet history was made, as for the first time an English national World Cup Qualifying game was shown exclusively online. It is interesting for two reasons: firstly that it came about as a result of the collapse of a satellite sports channel (Setanta), and secondly; it shows the shift towards endusers willing to pay premium to watch sports content on their computers".

A strong leader for the online streaming craze, and an online evolution is the ever growing popular website TV Catchup. This was thought up by a group of friends who thought watching TV on the internet would be an interesting compromise. This was three years ago (2007) and since then the site has grown and grown; the latest figures were 758,000 members. In January, 1 million viewers a week streamed a total of 2 petabytes of live TV over TV Catchup. That’s the equivalent of 40 millions four-draw filing cabinets filled with text.That’s a lot of TV, ‘the equivalent of 26.6 years of HD-TV Video watching.’Which is showing that how the viewer watches TV is changing forever.

But is this way of watching TV legal? The downsides of the media revolution have resulted in illegal streaming and downloading of films, music and programmes. Legality of these websites has meant that TV Catchup’s form of live web streaming doesn’t not need a TV license if “You’re covered by the homeowner’s TV License if they have one, provided you live in the same building. If you live in self contained accommodation such as a separate flat or annex you need your own separate license.” This shows that, providing you have a valid TV license and you live at the address that a valid TV license is present, you are allowed to stream television live without any legal obligations. If you want go to university after your A Levels, then it’s also legal if: “Your out-of-term address is covered by a TV License AND You only use TV receiving equipment that is powered solely by its own internal batteries AND You have not connected it to an aerial or plugged it into the mains.” TV Catchup is totally different to just watching films online, (this is illegal) but TV Catchup follows the same licensing rules as TV and you can be caught very easily if you do not have a valid license.

‘A quirk of tv license’s outdated legislation is that it only covers live broadcasts. That means for on-demand services such as the BBC iPlayer that show content after it’s appeared on live television, you don’t need a licence – a point made by the BBC in their guidelines for watching programmes on a mobile device.’ These TV streaming websites may be legal due to the fact they are not live TV, but controversy has arisen in the claims that tv streaming websites are overloading the internet. Uploading multiple shows to one source is in a way a digital move from TV to the internet, and these internet tv websites could simply act as internet TV channels in the future. ‘The success of the BBC's iPlayer is putting the internet under severe strain and threatening to bring the network to a halt, internet service providers claimed yesterday.’ They want the corporation to share the cost of upgrading the network — estimated at £831 million — to cope with the increased workload. Viewers are now watching more than one million BBC programmes online each week.

Additionally, another example that strongly supports the internet taking over a physical television in the household is the new arrival of a new TV player referred to as MSN video. ‘Microsoft is launching an online TV player called MSN Video that will stream full-length television episodes such as 'Peep Show' and 'The Young Ones' after striking content deals with the BBC's commercial arm BBC Worldwide and independent producer All3Media.’ This site is a similar version of YouTube, but what I could see this is a calmer version as there’s no video blogs of kids posting various irrelevant videos, all of the content seems to be either clips or trailers from movies and TV. This website has deals with different channels to have their shows put on the website for people to view. This radical move from TV channels to the internet streaming websites such as BBC Iplayer and so on could mean it is time to switch off your television permanently. Will every TV channel eventually have an internet website streaming the channels online instead? This could lead to an inevitable audience diversion towards the internet.

Nonetheless, TV streaming websites are popular as shown by the above statistic of 1 million BBC shows bring watched online each week, and we can only estimate their popularity will grow. Perhaps in the future, media in the online age will now mean a TV is not a neccessity in the average household. According to a BBC article written last year, ‘Freesat viewers will be able to catch up with Christmas specials, following a deal that will see the BBC Iplayer launched on the digital TV service next month.The service, a joint venture between the BBC and ITV, is also planning to launch ITV's catch-up TV service, the ITV Player, in the first half of 2010. Freesat will be the first free-to-air service to launch the ITV Player, allowing viewers to watch on-demand programming via their TV set rather than a computer.’ With increasing extension plans, we can only estimate that media in the online age has begun to make considerable changes to the way we live our lives, and it will continue doing so. No longer will TV need to be watched at a certain time, or even on a television. ‘The Freesat iPlayer offering will provide 450 hours of BBC on-demand programming per week, including Top Gear, EastEnders, Life, Gavin and Stacey, and Christmas special The Gruffalo, for viewers to watch for up to seven days after the programmes have aired on TV. A full public launch is planned for early 2010.’

For your exam, you could think about the following key topics, and how the arrival of internet and web 2.0 has made an impact. Remember to include examples whereever possible. How has the internet and evolutions in web 2.0 changed the way people interact and show their work, has it made a difference to small scale media pioneers, or people trying to gain a career in media? (They can now upload videos to YouTube, and these can be seen worldwide, this is different to 10 years ago when the only way to get noticed would be to hold live events or social gatherings.) Think of some more examples for help in the ‘media in the online age’ exam question. Definite competition from online TV distributors (TV catch up, BBC iplayer) as opposed to watching television at home, will this technical revolution eliminate TV as a necessity in the home? In the future, TV could be watched purely online, what if every channel had an internet website streaming the same programmes? The uncertain future of print journalism, newspapers and books if everything is printed online. Are any other media distributors facing the same fate? Could everything eventually be digitalised? Or does the fact people still prefer a physical object to keep stop this from happening?

Tara and Matt L

Progress 18th March

2010-03-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

In today's lesson, I first handed Tim's feedback back to him so he could read it and change his article accordingly, and I received my feedback back from Mike, and Philippa sent it to me by email which was helpful. Loz still has not given us any feedback as he was not in today which means we should have more soon.

Here is Philippa's feedback, and a closer look at our personal feedback is shown below.

Overall, I personally thought this feedback was helpful, Me and Matt L will also work on adding some more text to the article ourselves as we did not realise the statistics etc overweighed the amount of our own writing. We did not want to put much of our own opinion in the article as we thought this would not be helpful, so we mainly focused on statistics and data to back up any points the student could make in the critical perspectives exam.

However, we will work on adding a bit more writing ourselves and also linking the article more to a specific exam question or topic, which we knew we needed to do a little more of after the evaluation of our articles.

I also completed a mini evaluation which evaluated our articles as a group so far and how effective they were. I decided that we needed a lot more statistics, data and relevant information, as well as a lot more links to specific exam questions rather than opinionated articles. (My hand written notes on this are shown below)

I also thought it would be good if someone else was to cover question 1 of the exam, as so far only Mike has begun to do this, and so far most of the articles relate to question two. Perhaps someone could help Mike with this as it is a very big task and there is a lot to write to explain to students what they need to do in detail.

Me and Matt then also started to edit our article after the feedback received from Philippa and Mike. Mikes feedback was pretty general in that it said give a brief description of when BBC iplayer etc started, and link it to a specific example in the exam.

Our topic our article is mainly linked to is the media in the online age section, although it could also slightly be linked to global media and postmodernism too, perhaps a little more information about these could also be useful in an extra paragraph.

Below are some of the pictures I took of the class working for evidence purposes, I have also uploaded these photos to Flickr for people to use on their blogs for extra evidence as well as their own.

Article feedback for Tim

2010-03-17T14:43:00.000-07:00

I also gave Tim some feedback for his article for homework. I thought overall it was good, contained an interesting and new game which simultaneously would teach the gamer as well as letting them find out a new game.

Here is my feedback for Tim.

Tim was quite stuck with ways to link it to the exam, so I helped him with 3 aspects of the exam he could link it to, as you can see from my above notes. These aspects were:

1) Postmodernism

2) Media in the online age

3) Media and collective identity

Hopefully, this should help him in developing his article and I hope that he thinks the feedback is constructive.

Flyer decision

2010-03-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

Pete also decided that my flyer was to be the one handed out on Friday. Therefore today Nick asked me to print off 120 copies of the flyer to hand out, which I did and gave it to him after a few minor adjustments at home yesterday.

Hopefully, these flyers should really attract an audience and I hope we get some interest for the newspaper. I personally think the flyer looks very eye catching and interesting, and there is not too much text to focus on, therefore it should attract attention. Below is the finished flyer, although the price of £15 has been changed to £10 to make the newspaper a bit cheaper.

Notes and progress 17th March

2010-03-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

Here are the notes I took from today's lessons. Personally, I felt today's lessons were very beneficial as they helped us link our articles once again to the exam.

One of the most helpful and beneficial things today other than the video we were shown (explained below) is that we had to swap our most recent draft of our articles with someone else in the class, who will give feedback tonight and give us it back tomorrow. This way we know what we can improve by our articles and what we can add to make them better.

What was most helpful though was a video we were shown in class from Youtube, called 'media in everyday life' by David Gauntlett. It helped us analyse the 6 concepts of the media A2 exam question 2 against the video and make arguments towards the exam questions, which is what these pictures of my notes below show.

I worked with Mike today as a pair and we were able to pick out ideas for the 6 elements of the exam from the video, this also really helped us grasp the exam better and this will be beneficial in our articles I think.

I think overall, this background research really helped us with our articles and should help us relate them more to the exam. I think today was very helpful and we should hopefully be continuing to develop our articles to make them better both for ourselves and for media students reading the newspaper.

article research, relevance to article

2010-03-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the specific parts in the article research I completed today which I think relate specifically to the exam and can be used for an argument or for some general information or statistics.

This part of the article is addressing that Youtube is now making plans with channel 4 to air some of their shows on Youtube for a wider audience. This I thought was interesting as it is challenging the idea of Global Media which relates clearly to this section in the exam.

This part relates clearly to our article as it is linking to BBC iplayer and the way it has changed viewing habits of many people, relating to the 'Media and collective identity' section of the exam. Is BBC iplayer taking away traditional methods of sitting in front of a TV with the family? Is it changing the way people interact?

Overall I think some of these passages could be very helpful in the exam, maybe as statistics, data or just as footnotes for something to use and quote in the exam.

Action plan so far for week beginning 15th March

2010-03-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

Here is my action plan so far for this week, I will update it according to the progress I make under the 3 main points, plans, progress and what do I still need to do? as the week progresses.

Revised article

2010-03-16T08:48:00.000-07:00

(Here is mine and Matt L's revised article after our feedback from Jenny Grahame and some class members. We have tried to add more statistics and now have 10 footnotes in total, researching articles have also helped us as well as it has helped us get some information to put into the article which shows us both sides of the argument about TV streaming websites. We have now addressed partly whether it is legal and how it could be taking away the need for a TV in the average household, and how it could evolve in the future. The bold areas show where we have put footnotes and quoted from articles.)

Relevant exam questions

‘Discuss the extent of which the distribution and consumption of media have been transformed by the internet.’

- ‘The impact of the internet is revolutionary. Discuss.’

key questions for students to think about

How has the internet and evolutions in web 2.0 changed the way people interact and show their work, has it made a difference to small scale media pioneers, or people trying to gain a career in media?

(They can now upload videos to YouTube, and these can be seen worldwide, this is different to 10 years ago when the only way to get noticed would be to hold live events or social gatherings.) Think of some more examples for help in the ‘media in the online age’ exam question.

Definite competition from online TV distributors (TV catch up, BBC iplayer) as opposed to watching television at home, will this technical revolution eliminate TV as a necessity in the home? In the future, TV could be watched purely online.

The uncertain future of print journalism if everything is printed online. Are any other media distributors facing the same fate? Could everything eventually be digitalised?

How are TV streaming websites, such as BBC Iplayer, ITV player and tvcatchup.com changing the way we watch our media? Think about programmes, films etc.

From the use of the internet, media has evolved more than we ever thought it could, one example being able to now watch television at no set date. Online TV program streamers, such as BBC iplayer (here you can watch programs from any channels on the BBC up to a week previously) 40D (same concept, any program from channel 4) and ITVplayer (same concept once again, any program from ITV channels) all allow substantial freedom when it comes to watching television. Youtube is also a big competitor for video streaming, for example the length in time it would take to view all content on YouTube would be 412.3 years (March 2008) Also, Youtube could now be taking away viewers from television even more, ‘YouTube now allows users to upload HD videos and recently launched a service to provide TV shows and movies under license from their copyright holders.’

These TV streaming websites above are providing a challenge to television especially, despite the fact they are not taking the television audience for programs away, they are diverting the audience to an online method of watching the programs; this could create a problem for television in general, perhaps even to the point where a television is no longer necessary because everything can be watched online. A good example of this is as follows. "On the 10th of October 2009 internet history was made, as for the first time an English national World Cup Qualifying game was shown exclusively online. It is interesting for two reasons: firstly that it came about as a result of the collapse of a satellite sports channel (Setanta), and secondly; it shows the shift towards endusers willing to pay premium to watch sports content on their computers".

A strong leader for the online streaming craze is the ever growing popular website called TVcatchup, This was thought up by a group of friends who thought watching TV on the internet would be an interesting compromise. This was three years ago (2007) and since then the site has grown and grown; the latest figures were 758,000 members. In January, 1 million viewers a week streamed a total of 2 petabytes of live TV over TVCatchup. That’s the equivalent of 40 millions four-draw filing cabinets filled with text. That’s a lot of TV, ‘the equivalent of 26.6 years of HD-TV Video watching.’Which is showing that how the viewer watches TV is changing forever.

But is this way of watching TV legal? I decided to go onto the TV licensing websites to see the legality of these websites. I have been searching through their website and I have discovered that this form of live web streaming doesn’t not need a TV license if “You’re covered by the homeowner’s TV License if they have one, provided you live in the same building. If you live in self contained accommodation such as a separate flat or annex you need your own separate licence.” This shows that, providing you have a valid TV license and you live at the address that a valid TV license is present, you are allowed to stream television live without any legal obligations. If you want go to university after your A Levels, then it’s also legal if: “Your out-of-term address is covered by a TV License AND You only use TV receiving equipment that is powered solely by its own internal batteries AND You have not connected it to an aerial or plugged it into the mains.” TV Catchup is totally different to just watching films online, as this is illegal, but TV catchup follows the same licensing rules as usually TV and you can be caught very easily.

‘A quirk of tv licence’s outdated legislation is that it only covers live broadcasts. That means for on-demand services such as the BBC iPlayer that show content after it’s appeared on live television, you don’t need a licence – a point made by the BBC in their guidelines for watching programmes on a mobile device.’ These TV streaming websites may be legal due to the fact they are not live TV, but controversy has arisen in the claims that ‘The success of the BBC's iPlayer is putting the internet under severe strain and threatening to bring the network to a halt, internet service providers claimed yesterday.’ They want the corporation to share the cost of upgrading the network — estimated at £831 million — to cope with the increased workload. Viewers are now watching more than one million BBC programmes online each week.

Nonetheless, TV streaming websites are popular as shown by the above statistic, and we can only estimate their popularity will grow. Perhaps in the future, media in the online age will now mean a TV is not a neccessity in the average household. According to a BBC article written last year, ‘Freesat viewers will be able to catch up with Christmas specials, including Doctor Who and Strictly Come Dancing, following a deal that will see the BBC Iplayer launched on the digital TV service next month.The service, a joint venture between the BBC and ITV, is also planning to launch ITV's catch-up TV service, the ITV Player, in the first half of 2010. Freesat will be the first free-to-air service to launch the ITV Player, allowing viewers to watch on-demand programming via their TV set rather than a computer.’ With increasing extension plans, we can only estimate that media in the online age has begun to make considerable changes to the way we live our lives. No longer will TV need to be watched at a certain time, or even on a television. ‘The Freesat iPlayer offering will provide 450 hours of BBC on-demand programming per week, including Top Gear, EastEnders, Life, Gavin and Stacey, and Christmas special The Gruffalo, for viewers to watch for up to seven days after the programmes have aired on TV. A full public launch is planned for early 2010.’

Feedback from client Jenny Grahame

2010-03-16T07:48:00.000-07:00

A very promising start – but across the board, some problems in the balance of information and opinion. You really need to start from thinking about the essential information your readers are going to need for the purposes of the exam (Matt and Tara start off very well in this respect) , and resource them factually and theoretically before you launch off into your own views.

To take just two examples, I think Natalie’s piece, which is very factual but well informed, gets this nearly right, although it could do with some references to theory; whereas Philippa’s article on Facebook is very lively and personal but needs much more factual research and detailed examples of Facebook use to support the arguments, and in particular to justify some of her remarks about Facebook ‘addiction’ - which does play a bit worryingly to the ‘moral panics’ often expressed about social networking. Similarly, James’ piece on Wikipedia needs a lot more data and theoretical references to support his personal views – and he needs to unpick his section about ‘How ‘true’ is Wikipedia’, in which he makes some fairly general assumptions. Across the range of the pieces, I think you’re covering interesting stuff and have got lots of good ideas, but often there’s too much padding and not enough planning to incorporate more critical and theoretical issues.

Have to rush, but will feed back more at the next draft. Do think about planning, though – sometimes its really helpful to incorporate web references and exampoles into your initial planning from the very start. The use of real-life examples, with weblinks and acknowledged quotes, is what will make these pieces really useful to readers.

Overall, I think Jenny's criticism is very fair and accurate, and it backs up what I have personally said from the start about clear statistics and quotes in which students can use in the exam would be good in the articles. I also said a personal opinion isn't vital as this will not help students in the exam, Jenny has also picked up on this too, so overall I agree with her feedback.

I am glad Jenny have recognised that Matt and I have tried to do this is our first draft of our article and I think we are overall doing well, it simply needs expanding and adding more statistics. It will be interesting to see what Jenny says about mine and Matt's next draft of the article.

Articles

2010-03-16T06:17:00.000-07:00

Here are four articles I personally looked at regarding BBC iplayer, ITV player and TV streaming websites.

1) http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3716781.ece

2) http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3474399.ece

3) http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/25/freesat-iplayer-itv-player

4) http://www.bitterwallet.com/5-reasons-why-you-can-cancel-your-tv-licence-tomorrow/10985

Along with Matt L's articles too, we should have a pretty good basis to base our article around too. Shown below are my annotations of the 4 articles and highlighting the main points made, the pink is for statistics and main points and the yellow is for people's opinion and quotes.

Edited & final flyer for Wednesday 17th March

2010-03-16T04:32:00.000-07:00

Here is my final flyer version to be given in Wednesday along with Hayden's, so we have two flyers to choose from. From the original version, I have changed some of the text and made the red template boxes a bit smaller.

The first thing I changed was the email address since we now have a newspaper googlemail, which is mediamenewspaper@googlemail.com.

I also changed the text in the main template box below the silhouettes of students. I changed the text so it was not so long worded and complicated, and left it at that, hopefully this should attract the audience better as there is not so much to read.

I changed the copy price, for teachers they can buy 20 copies for £15, which is 75p a copy, rather than £1 each copy as it had said on my rough flyer previously. However, we can have a discussion about price on Wednesday and then I can quickly change the price on the flyer if neccessary, the price I put on here is just an estimate.

I have also changed the text from 'calling all media students!' to 'Calling all media teachers and students!' as I have realised that teachers will be buying the newspapers for their classes, and after a discussion in class with Alex we realised it needs to attract teachers too.

Overall, I think the flyer is effective and simple and would be a good flyer to attract potential buyers, nonetheless we will see what flyer is best on Wednesday and therefore it will be finished for Alex to take to the media conference on Friday.

Monday 15th March - Flyer development

2010-03-15T04:47:00.000-07:00

In today's lesson, I worked with Hayden on developing the flyer. Hayden worked with my general idea for the flyer and is going to work in Photoshop and change it to suit what we need. We need some of the text to be changed so its simple and then also decide on the overall price and the title at the above header of the newspaper, as mine on the flyer template were just simple and an estimate of what it could look like - we need to decide fully on these.

Here is a picture of me sending the rough flyers to Hayden's email so he can work on them on his computer.

Hayden asked me to send him a flyer with no text on which he can work on in photoshop. Here above is the example of the template with no text on, and hopefully we can create a effective flyer which Alex can hand out on Friday.

I will also work on my own flyer, just expand on this one so on Wednesday we have a couple of different versions to choose from. I think its most important that its kept simple.

Text for flyer

2010-03-15T04:43:00.000-07:00

MediaMe is a student written newspaper which aims to give extensive helpful, factual and statistical information for Media A2 students studying the media critical perspectives exam in June.

It contains articles, statistics, activities and revision techniques, as well as exam methods and model exam answers. Articles include character profiles and topics for students to raise in the exam, also key questions to think about.

Calling all A2

Media students!

mediame

Read, Revise, Remember.

OUT APRIL 2010

£1 per newspaper

Articles

Games

Activities

Statistics

Character profiles

Exam help

Homework - creating a flyer

2010-03-14T12:02:00.001-07:00

Me and Kirk set a homework to create a flyer advertising the newspaper for Alex to hand out at the conference meeting to potential advertisers and buyers. Alex will be attending a conference meeting this Friday with our client Jenny Grahame. Handing out advertising flyers will be a great way to get some interest with the newspaper.

From this above template in Pages, (similar to word processor) I was able to create a small flyer which should advertise the newspaper. The pictures below show me creating the flyer in pages.

Here you can begin to see me changing the template to suit the newspaper and editing the template, adding pictures and text.

Above, you can see my finished rough flyer for the newspaper. I used the silhouette figures to catch the audiences attention and got these from a google image search, click this hyperlink to see source. I wanted to use a bold and colourful colour scheme for the same effect and wanted to include key information.

I have also came up with a slogan for the newspaper, which is Read, Revise, Remember. I liked the idea of repetition and this slogan seemed quite catchy and rememberable to me.

Activity 12th March

2010-03-12T10:32:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures that I took of today's progress in class, yet again gathering some feasible evidence.

For our first lesson, we mainly learnt about all of our articles and how to specifically link to the exam for help for the students and ourselves simultaneously. With Barney's help, we was able to relate all of our articles to atleast one topic of the exam question 2 - which was really helpful and made sure we understood where we were going with all of our articles.

Here is Barney, helping us make connections between our articles and the 6 points to consider in question 2 of the exam.

Here is some of the progress we made after talking about each one.

Here are some close up shots I took from my camera to help see the notes we made together as a class.

In the next lesson, we worked on Mine and Kirk's activity which we discussed on Wednesday. Kirk then wrote an activity letter (below) and we simply wanted each group to brainstorm ideas for the flyer Alex (the liason officer) needs to hand out next Friday at the event in London with our client Jenny Grahame. This will hopefully help advertise our newspaper and we could get some potential advertisers or buyers, which would be great at this stage.

Here are some of the brainstormed ideas that the groups thought of.

Here is Philippas group's (the blue team) brainstorm. There ideas were good but were a bit vague I thought, so we asked them to expand it, which they did, their finished ideas seemed a lot better and hopefully we can collate these ideas on Monday.

Here is Loz's team's (Red team) brainstorm. This one was a lot more focused first time round, and actually answered each question on the sheet which was what we were looking for. Yet again collating these ideas on Monday should give us a good idea of what needs to be on the Flyer.

Here is a picture I took of the class working on the brainstorming.

Me and Kirk also agreed to set a homework for each person to personally come up with a draft flyer for Monday. This we thought was feasible and therefore should be easy to complete, it will also not take long either but will give us a good idea of what the flyer needs on it to advertise and promote the newspaper as effectively as possible.

Work at home

I also did some work at home, uploading the photos I took in lesson to our Flickr account so the whole class can access them and add them to their blogs to give them evidence of the lessons and work completed. I will continue to upload photos like this and have been since the day we started the project, I think this way we can all keep a substantial amount of evidence for our activity log blogs.

Mike's feedback from rough article

2010-03-12T03:15:00.000-08:00

Here is Mine and Matt L's feedback for our rough article from Mike.

The notes written up if you cannot read them clearly are as follows:

1) Article Title?

2) What is BBC iplayer? - As Jenny said, we have to assume that not everyone has heard of these, explain the background of them all.

3) You could explain how all of these sites have developed over time, what they started as, to where they are now.

4) Good work so far, where will the article develop?

5) Footnotes show a good amount of research has taken place.

Overall, I think that this is generally good feedback and that Mike has clearly liked the fact that we have used footnotes to show background research. More footnotes will be essential and I think this would really help to show evidence and levels of research.

Things to change

- The article will develop from the things we still need to include, and after
talking ideas through with Mike and Matt L, we have both decided some more
statistics, and people's opinions to use in the exam so students can back up
their points.

- It also needs a lot more content in terms of detail and analysis,
because this is only a rough draft so content will obviously add up over
time.

- Also, points about general applications such as BBC iplayer, 4oD and general
summaries of what these are to the student will also be helpful as we cannot
assume everyone knows what they are.

Progress 11th March

2010-03-11T02:58:00.000-08:00

In today's lesson, we mainly worked on developing our articles, but as Matt L and I had already done a rough draft on our article I mainly worked with Kirk in setting up activities for Friday and also ensuring everyone has a rough cut.

Plans for Friday 12th March

Therefore, plans for Friday would simply be to ensure everyone has a rough article, collate all these articles and put them on a fresh flat plan with a production meeting, perhaps even with the team leaders. This way, we will be in our best possibility to ensure we link all the articles to the exam and ensure we can give students valuable knowledge for the exam.

In my opinion, clear statistics and data for the exam should be used in all articles. This way, students can have clear things to add to the exam in order to bump up their opinions.

Article first rough draft

2010-03-10T12:12:00.000-08:00

Shown below are some general ideas I have had for Mine and Matt L's article to help with the exam. We are thinking about possible questions to ask ourselves and statistics to use in the exam, as well as what could happen in the future of media and web 2.0.

Focus on the media in the online age section of the exam

and maybe relate it to one of the questions from january exam or specimen questions, with a comment box below the article that says for example 'This article is particularly helpful for ‘media in the online age’ section of the January past paper, ‘Discuss the extent of which the distribution and consumption of media have been transformed by the internet.’ and ‘The impact of the internet is revolutionary. Discuss.’ on page 9 of the newspaper'

Students - think about these as key questions:

How has the internet and evolutions in web 2.0 changed the way people interact and show their work, has it made a difference to small scale media pioneers, or people trying to gain a career in media? (They can now upload videos to YouTube, and these can be seen worldwide, this is different to 10 years ago when the only way to get noticed would be to hold live events or social gatherings.) Think of some more examples for help in the ‘media in the online age’ exam question.

Definite competition from online TV distributors (TV catch up, BBC iplayer) as opposed to watching television at home, will this technical revolution eliminate TV as a necessity in the home? In the future, TV could be watched purely online.

The uncertain future of print journalism if everything is printed online. Are any other media distributors facing the same fate? Could everything eventually be digitalised?

From the use of the internet, media has evolved more than we ever thought it could, one example being able to now watch television at no set date. Online TV program streamers, such as BBC iplayer (here you can watch programs from any channels on the BBC up to a week previously) 40D (same concept, any program from channel 4) and ITVplayer (same concept once again, any program from ITV channels) all allow substantial freedom when it comes to watching television. Youtube is also a big competitor for video streaming, for example the length in time it would take to view all content on YouTube would be 412.3 years (March 2008) Also, Youtube could now even more be taking away viewers from the television, ‘YouTube now allows users to upload HD videos and recently launched a service to provide TV shows and movies under license from their copyright holders.’

Shown above is Mine and Matt L's very first rough draft article, which we will work more on in tomorrow's lesson and add more to. I think it needs to have:

more relation to the exam,
some more statistics for students to use in their exam
also comments from media practitioners etc if any, (maybe show a difference in opinion so we can assess both sides of the argument in the exam, this will bring about more of a debate and show students have looked at both sides.)

Progress for 10th March - Choosing a name for the newspaper

2010-03-10T09:14:00.000-08:00

Today we undertook a number of measures which all have contributed well towards our progress. Firstly, we held another production meeting, with Myself, Kirk, Alex, Mike and Pete. We allocated roles for everybody, mostly to get on with their articles and to find or highlight relevant information from various articles about the article they are writing, such as statistics or things that students can quote in the exam which show definite relevance.

Matt helped to highlight a few articles for our article together while I was in the production meeting. Our article is about TV catch up and media in the online age, which we hope will really help A2 students.

First of all, we asked the class to brainstorm ideas for the name of the newspaper on post it notes. The rest of the quality control team and myself then gathered these together and worked through them into what we thought was sensible, fun, interesting and unique. Below you can see the various post it notes we had to choose from.

We finally decided on two possible names, my two possible suggestions were MediaMyLife and The Media Box. Nonetheless, we decided that we liked the repetition of two M's in the name of the newspaper, and therefore found it hard to decide between our final two names, which were MediaMe and MediaMuse. I liked both of these suggestions but personally thought MediaMe had a better ring to it.

Therefore, we asked the class to vote out of the two final examples, and we got the majority of votes on MediaMe, which people felt was a bit simpler.

Loz and Tim then decided to work on some logos, which we will start to develop over the nest few days. Tim's logo was very simple and I liked it a lot, it really outlined the title and I think it would work well with the newspaper. Nonetheless, we will look at some more logo examples and ideas and decide which one we like best as a class.

Tim's logo idea is the small logo in the corner of the picture. Loz's logo ideas are shown below.

Another thing discussed today with Pete is to make a flyer advertising the newspaper. Next Friday the 19th, Alex our liason person is to go to a conference in London with Jenny Grahame, our client. He is going to hand out these flyers to potential advertisers so it is essential we get the flyers done asap, and they advertise the newspaper well. This picture of the sheet below shows Pete's notes to us about what needs to get done and what actions we should take.

Overall, in the production meeting we had today I thought we were really moving on in terms of progress, and we decided some definite decisions which will hopefully mean we are moving forward effectively. I am looking forward to collating all the rough draft articles together Friday and working on another Flatplan, as well as working on my article with Matt tomorrow and also helping others. Overall I think we are working well and should start to get a good idea of what else we need to do after collating all the rough articles on Friday.

Articles for research on media in the online age, and the media revolution

2010-03-09T10:22:00.000-08:00

Here is a list of articles which I found particularly useful for background research on mine and Matt L's article. I have asked him to highlight the relevant information in Wednesday's lesson so we should have some good background research, now we need to search for statistics which we can incorporate into the article and therefore students can use in the exam to back up any points they make.

1) http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article1874668.ece

2) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7897212.stm

3) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1410733/

A series of 3 programmes about the future of media looks at how television will have to continue to evolve to survive in the future.

4) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hglw6

5) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/6057097/The-social-media-revolution-is-going-nowhere.html

6) http://socialnomics.net/2009/08/11/statistics-show-social-media-is-bigger-than-you-think/

7) http://paulseaman.eu/2009/09/theres-no-social-media-revolution/

Overall, I think some of these articles will be particularly helpful with our article, and hopefully contain some good information in order to help students with the exam.

Reflection from Mike's feedback

2010-03-09T10:13:00.000-08:00

Here is some reflection feedback which Mike has given me for my blog so far:

Having gone through your blog, this is a list of improvements that you need to make:

- Make sure that all your blog posts fit onto the one page, you can do this on the settings.

- Explain briefly what the job roles involve

- Include a screengrab of your twitter page

- You could give a brief intro to the keynote presentation

- Flatpack design images from Dave's session missing?

- Today's notes

This is good stuff so far with good images / evidence.

Overall, I think this is very helpful feedback which will help me in the long run to sort my blog out and change whatever is necessary. I think all the points made are relevant, especially the intro to the keynote presentation, the brief explanation of jobs and the screen grab of my twitter page.

I think this will all help me with my blog work in terms of evidence and reflection. Another thing I noticed was although Dave in his session drew a rough explanation of the flat plan, I did not take a picture of this or draw my own flat plan to upload to the blog, I simply explained what this was and thought it was appropriate. Obviously, a visual image of the flat plan would help considerably.

Progress and production meeting 9th March

2010-03-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

For today's progress, we firstly had a production meeting to discuss how we were getting on in the class and what people were working on.

We first allocated roles for everyone to do, mainly researching and writing articles, and then noted these down for evidence, as seen below.

Overall, I think that this meeting really established what we needed to do and we made clear that the writers were to really start researching and writing their rough drafts of their articles. I also agreed to write an article with Matt L and the TV catch up idea, and to show that web 2.0 and media in the online age are really beginning to change things, for example TV streaming websites such as BBCiplayer, ITV player, 40D, and especially TVcatchup.com are eliminating the need for a television in the average household.

Notes from peoples roles are written here:

Present today - Tara (myself), Sam, Alex, Philippa, Kirk and Dave (filling in for team leader for Loz)

Assigned jobs

Alex and Sam to email potential advertisers for the newspaper today
Tim and James to work together, both doing wikipedia related articles
Matt L - TV catch up article with myself
Ash - Online video gaming
Alie - Twitter article
Philippa - How facebook affects social life
Matt H - The audience move from Myspace to Facebook
Hayden - Zeitgeist forecast
Dave - Online gaming communities
Loz - The evolution of music
Alex - internet flash games article
Sam - character profiles on Simon Panrucker and David Gauntlett
Mike - continuing on blog feedback and reflection

Overall, I think the homework for the rough draft of the article by Friday may be a bit lenient and Nick has set for the rough draft to now be handed in on THURSDAY 11th march. Other than this, I think if we continue to ensure the articles are sufficiently researched and written we should have some good outcomes. We can then start to move on in terms of putting the articles together of which are similar, also starting to move on with Flatplan rough drafts etc.

Action plan for week starting 8th March

2010-03-08T07:24:00.000-08:00

Today's progress 8th March

2010-03-08T05:57:00.000-08:00

From today's lesson, we first had a presentation in class from the report that was created by the gold team about how students learn. There was general information about what things students did to learn and what revision techniques they found helpful.

From today's production meeting, we generally summed up that we needed more ideas and Kirk and I managed to set up a homework for everyone to write up the article they were interested in and wrote briefly about over the weekend. We set a homework for them to finish the rough draft of the article by Friday at 1.05. This way, we can evaluate the essays in Friday's lesson and give feedback for over the weekend, and this way the articles will be well on their way to getting completed and we should stick to deadlines.

From Pete's little interview about a case study on how students learn, he explained that it
depends on the student, and there is definite variety needed, and activities etc as opposed to simply just text. Lots of visuals and interactive games could also help to visualise the text information too. Pete's media blog is also a good place for research and articles. This really helped with what else to do in the newspaper and what to include.

Extended Project Folder

We then looked at a folder which Pete showed us to show to the team leaders, generally outlining the exam, with past papers, specimen answers and so on, and all of the virtual revolution videos to learn from, as well as a few presentations and things Pete thought would be helpful. We then explained this to the team leaders for them to explain to their team. Below are my general notes on the folder:

A level specification pages 36 - 41 relevant to the exam, and the critical perspectives aspect.
Exam paper from January and questions, also specimen questions, we will also write exam answers for these and things to note in the exam, for example the 5 aspects to take account of during the exam, which are research and planning, creativity, digital, post production and use of media technologies in your exam.

Pete explained about having a grid as opposed to lumps of text which will make it easier to learn from, and we will also use bullet points to summarise. Overall I think this is a good idea, as bullet points help me to learn as they are simple and concise, therefore I think this will be effective.

Questionnaires

Pete also handed back the questionnaires from Rhygate, which help to understand our target audience and what they want from the magazine. Below are some pictures of the questionnaires.

From the questionnaires, we can summarise that for the 7 questions we wrote for the questionnaire, most of the students had similar answers.

1) Do you have any ideas for the name of the newspaper?

Media2U, Cream Daily, Exams for you, How to solve the A level exam, media newspaper, A level media, SM newspaper (Student Media newspaper), Something unique and original (one word), Shout Out, Media in the online age.

2)Would information on exam revision techniques past papers and questions be helpful?

In summary, they all agree that these would all be helpful and are needed in the newspaper.

3) How would you like the information to be presented? E.g written, images.

They all agree that a definite mix of both would be best, and with clear images to help them with revision aswell as clear bullet points etc.

4) Is there any additional material you would like us to include in the paper? E.g crosswords, wordsearchs, comic strips and competitions.

In summary, competitions, reccomendations for books, jokes, activities, comic strips, terminology glossary - and they all agree that this would also help them to learn.

5) Would you like the newspaper to be formal, informal or a mix of both?

In summary a mix of both would be best, not too formal or informal but a compromise in the middle would be great.

6) Would external links be helpful? For example, blogs, websites or articles.

They all agree that these would definitely help with revision and the students will be able to quote some of these resources in the exam maybe.

7) what revision techniques do you find useful and why?

In summary, images and cards, reading, internet research, maps, brainstorms, anagrams, summarising, practice questions, seeing examples they can do themselves afterwards, revision cards, tests and videos.

Overall, these summary of answers from the questionnaire have confirmed our thoughts about what students would like in the magazine, what helps them to learn and what else they would like for additional content.

Rough idea for article with Matt L

2010-03-07T10:12:00.000-08:00

Focus on the media in the online age section of the exam

and maybe relate it to one of the questions from january exam or specimen questions, with a comment box below the article that says for example 'This article is particularly helpful for Q2 of the past papers on page 9 of the newspaper'

How has the internet and web 2.0 changed the way people interact and show their work, has it made a difference to small scale youtube video posters of media pioneers?

Definite competition from online tv distributors (TV catch up) as opposed to watching television at home, will this technical revolution eliminate TV as a necessity in the home? In the future, TV could be watched purely online.

The uncertain future of print journalism if everything is printed online.

new idea for newspaper - merging ideas

2010-03-07T04:06:00.000-08:00

BBCiplayer, 40D, and ITVplayer - Media Critical Perspectives exam - Media in the Online Age

For my new idea for the newspaper, I have thought about media in the online age, focusing directly from the critical perspectives exam so media students know exactly where to look for information on this topic. From the use of the internet, media has evolved more than we ever thought it could, into now watching television at no set date. Online TV programme streamers, such as BBC iplayer (here you can watch programmes from any channels on the BBC up to a week previously) 40D (same concept, any programme from channel 4) and ITVplayer (same concept once again, any programme from ITV channels) all allow substantial freedom when it comes to watching television. (We could also include Matt L's idea of tvcatchup.com for TV streaming anywhere on the same page)

All three of these websites have evolved considerably from the internet and now allow us to watch television programmes, movies, etc at any time we want to if we have missed them up to a week previously. It defeats the idea of sitting at home waiting for a television programme to come on because you couldn't watch it any other time, which is what would have happened 5, especially 10 years ago. I discovered these TV streaming websites through advertisements on the TV after programmes, which mainly all follow the idea of 'If you have missed this programme or previous programmes of this show, you can watch online at..)

These TV streaming websites above are providing a challenge to television especially, as they are not taking the television audience for programmes away, they are simply diverting the audience to an online method of watching the programmes. This could create a problem for television in general, perhaps even to the point where a television is no longer necessary, because everything can be watched online!

Overall I think this would fill up quite a substantial amount on an A3 page and think a page on media in the online age concept would really benefit media A2 students, who could easily talk about this in the exam. We could also include a media timeline on the same page, how media has evolved throughout the years, students could take statistics from this timeline and use this in the exam too.)

I think a merge of all these ideas would be a great way to both involve the media students and learn for ourselves simultaneously. Perhaps we could include a few comments by media examiners, practitioners etc about media in the online ago and this may get the students interested moreso.

Progress at home

2010-03-07T03:44:00.000-08:00

From working at home, I have made more progress in terms of evidence. I have uploaded more photos from the class working on our Flickr photo stream which I set up, and I have also sent a reminder email to ensure that people are using the Flickr and getting more marks in terms of substantial evidence. Below are some pictures of the class working which they can use for evidence for the project:

There are lots more like this on the Flickr account too. I have also sent a reminder email for the class to use Flickr, which you can see pictures of below:

Hopefully this will encourage the pictures to be used and people will have more substantial evidence on their blog, as well as pictures of written notes etc.

Production meeting 4th March

2010-03-04T13:10:00.000-08:00

Today we had a production meeting in class, which really helped to develop and evolve our ideas into more. We were thinking about what ideas could fill a whole newspaper page, what ones were limited, where the pages would go in the 12 page spread and we even started to write a first flat plan. Here is myself and alex working on the rough draft flat plan for the newspaper.

From the production meeting we gathered that we needed at least 4 more ideas if we were to even start filling up all the pages substantially. Some ideas we had were good but we soon realised even with a lengthy article they would not fill up a whole A3 newspaper page. In the end after we (the team leaders and the quality control team) had a meeting, we set homework for everyone to come up with atleast 1 more fresh idea by Monday so we had enough ideas, it is better to have too many ideas than too little.

After narrowing down the ideas from the board activity yesterday, we saw that we only had 7 ideas in total that were substantial.

These ideas written up were:

1) Tim's wikipedia world tour game, we thought this could be a fun way of academic learning which teaches media A2, we just need to relate it as such.

2)Interviews of upcoming media pioneers, and the zeitgeist forecast of media now and in the future

3)Article on technical advancements in the media, for example the move from Myspace to Facebook, BBC iplayer etc, perhaps with a relevant crossword

4)History of music remixes, with music, visuals, videos

5) Character profiles - Simon Panrucker (this would go on the double page spread)

6) Common mistakes made in the media A2 exam

7) media exam answers, brief exam outline, past papers and questions etc.

Plans for Monday 8th March

As you can see, we need a lot more examples and therefore more ideas should surface on Monday which we can collate and summarise. Hopefully we can then work on a second rough flat plan on Monday.

Tara Extended Project Activity Log

financial accounts and costs

Feedback after distribution

Mike's blog feedback 3

Finished newspaper slideshow

Notes for presentation

21st April - Final evaluation

Overall project plan

Action plan for week beginning 29th March

1st April - individual progress

31st March - Front page of the newspaper

Final Flatplan video

31st March - Progress

Feedback from Mike

30th March - Final Article JPG

30th March - Article proof reading

Final rough Flatplan draft - Video

29th March - Flat plan

29th March - Progress

29th March - Working further on the article

Work at home - Cutting down the article

Action plan for week beginning 22nd March

26th March - Progress - template

Potential pictures - taken ourselves

25th March progress

24th March - work at home - potential style sheet

24th March - Potential pictures for article

24th March - List of advertisers

23rd March - Minutes from meeting

23rd March - Feedback

Transcript of Interviews

Progress 23rd March - Interview video

Style sheet analysis - Fabulous Magazine 2

Style sheet analysis - Fabulous Magazine

Style sheet analysis - Company Magazine

Style sheet analysis - Media Magazine

Progress 22nd March

Action plan for week beginning 15th March

Article draft 3 for tomorrow

Progress 18th March

Article feedback for Tim

Flyer decision

Notes and progress 17th March

article research, relevance to article

More research for article

Action plan so far for week beginning 15th March

Revised article

Feedback from client Jenny Grahame

Articles

Edited & final flyer for Wednesday 17th March

Monday 15th March - Flyer development

Text for flyer

Homework - creating a flyer

Activity 12th March

Mike's feedback from rough article

Progress 11th March

Article first rough draft

Progress for 10th March - Choosing a name for the newspaper

Articles for research on media in the online age, and the media revolution

Reflection from Mike's feedback

Progress and production meeting 9th March

Action plan for week starting 8th March

Today's progress 8th March

Rough idea for article with Matt L

new idea for newspaper - merging ideas

Progress at home

Production meeting 4th March