Easter Homework: Evaluation

Over Easter you will need to write your evaluation for your product. At least 5 or 6 of these questions should be completed and ready to be reviewed and marked by me before the first lesson after Easter break. 



There are 7 questions you must answer for your evaluation of your music magazine.

These questions are:

1- In what ways does your music magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real music magazines?  

2- How does your music magazine represent particular social groups?

3- What kind of media institution might distribute your music magazine and why? 

4- Who would be the audience for your music magazine? 

5- How did you attract/address your audience? 

6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? 

7- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

These questions must NOT be answered in an essay format and should be treated as 7 different tasks. 

These questions should be answered creatively using a range of different creative technologies.


Bad Examples:

http://ocrmedia13links.weebly.com/lowdon.html (on the some examples section)


Hints and Tips:


Try to avoid just speaking at a camera, this is not a creative use of technology and does not demonstrate good use of ICT. The exam board are NOT looking for spoken essays

Equally they are not looking for essays on a PowerPoint/Prezi or written word documents. They are looking for creative responses to the questions that balance creativity and knowledge.

This balance must be achieved to get into the top Level 4 mark band. Minimal creativity but good content will restrict you to the top Level 3. 


Potential Technology to Use: 

This list is by no means definitive! If you know of a creative piece of software, or if you have an idea that isn't listed below that doesn't mean you can't use it. 

The software listed below are merely there for suggestion purposes. 

Xtranormal:

http://www.xtranormal.com/

This is a free online animator you might want to use to create small animated answers to your questions.

Its very simple to use and add text to, below I've embedded one of my own examples:

There are limitations to this software however. As you can see, the mechanical voices can sound awful in places and can fudge your words, however there is an option to record you own voice (as you can hear at the end) which works well and lip syncs nicely.

You are provided with a number of credits (300) when you first sign up for an account, this is enough to make 1 video. But once it is published it will cost you more to edit it, so you need to make 100% sure that it is perfect before you publish it. If you do not do this you will need to purchase more credits.



Pixton:

www.pixton.com 

This is a free comic creator you can use to create comic strips answering your evaluation questions.

It can take some getting used to, but the tutorial videos are good and once you have the hang of it it's pretty simple. 

This comic has been taken from another user of the site and explains how you can answer question 3 using this software. 






Prezi:

http://prezi.com/

This is very similar to PowerPoint, but you can zoom in, move around and embed videos and sounds into the presentation.

If you use this software make sure you are not simply writing an essay and presenting it, use it creatively.


 

Glogster:

http://www.glogster.com/login

You can use this website to create poster or pinboards of images and videos. 

Its fairly simple to use and you can take images directly from google search as well as embed videos directly from YouTube. You can also embed audio tracks from your own MP3 players to the Glog. 

From my experience creating a Glog can put a bit of a strain on your internet connection, so it might be worth while to ask your family/friends if they are intending to download anything while you are making it (this can really slow up the process and sometimes make it freeze so save it regularly.)

You could use this to create a visual representation of your audience (Question 4), or use it to compare you own representation of social groups to existing ones (Question 2)

I have created an example of an Audience themed Glog below. 





YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com

You can post videos to YouTube and embed them into your blog. 

This is a fairly simple process, but you can also use the tag and annotation tool to add more interactivity to your videos. 

This will also allow you to direct the examiners attention to specific features of your magazine within your video.

Remember to make your video engaging, but informative. You should balance the creative and the content equally to ensure you reach the highest mark band. 


Voice Thread:


http://voicethread.com/

Voice thread can be used to physically annotate images/videos as well as comment on them. 

You can do this either by using the built in voice recorder, or you can annotate them with comments and the pen tool.

Once completed you can embed these into your blog.