Philippa Extended Project

Feedback for the Newspaper

2010-05-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

Mary Berrisford from Islington Sixth Form replied with this message when we were asking 
for feedback from the newspaper;

“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 from Media Magazine gave us this message when supplying us with some
feedback for the newspaper;

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

Brian Mulligan from Reigate Sixth Form 

"- 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?"


For 500 copies of the newspaper - £500 which inc VAT and postage for first three orders 
would be £11.40.

Our overall income from the newspaper;

advert Junction £350
advert Lincoln £100
advert OCR £100

Reigate sixth form - 120 copies - £60
Islington sixth form - 40 copies - £20
Netherhall sixth form - 30 copies - £15
Guernsey Grammar - 20 copies - £10

Total income so far = £655


free samples and copies for group members, moderator - 50

240 copies of the newspaper still to need to be sold.

It will cost us £511.40 to pay for newspaper in total and so far we have made £655 so we are

already in profit and we have still got 240 copies of the newspaper to sell.

Presentation on Extended Project

2010-04-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

This is the presentation that I made to present at the end of the project but I then chose not to use it as the settings on the video have gone too fast so it is hard to read. The presentation went quite well without the Keynote and just using the newspaper for visuals was useful and effective.

Kirk's Job Role Video

2010-04-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

Flat Planning Video - Sorting out Page Order

2010-04-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

Flat Planning (Extended project) from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

Mike's Feedback on My Blog

2010-04-26T06:33:00.001-07:00

Mike, from the quality control team, has been looking through each of our blogs to see what is needed to still be completed and to give us some feedback that we can improve on. He has looked through my blog and this is the feedback which he has given me.

I am now working on finding the videos on Kirks blog to put on to my blog and adding a few pictures to some of the rest of my posts.

Evaluation of Finished Newspaper

2010-04-21T01:34:00.000-07:00

How well does it meet your original intentions?

I think that the overall outcome of our newspaper is quite good but I feel that the newspaper is very basic and I expected a lot more. I thought that as we are paying for colour that the newspaper would be a lot more colourful and be something that stands out. I think overall the articles look how I saw them turning out but I thought that we would have used more images and colours throughout to make them standout on each page. I thought that because this was new to us that we wouldn't be producing something that is very complex and I originally assumed that it would be quite simple, easy to read but I think that if we had worked harder we could have done a lot better to make it interesting.

How does it look?

The front page is quite basic, as it is laid out similar to the articles throughout the newspaper. The title is in a simple font, a primary red colour and the page layout is of simple columns of texts and four information boxes along the left hand side. A few logos are displayed on the bottom of the front page but there are no images on the front page and I think that this would have made the front page more appealing. The articles are also laid out within this sturcture and a few of them have images but I think that we could have done with few text and bigger images to draw people in to reading the articles.

How pleased are you with your contributions and how effectively did you work within your role?

I am quite pleased with my contributions and I feel that I have tried to complete my role as best I can but as with a lot of projects, I think there are some things I could have done better. I enjoyed my role as leader of the blue group as I feel I have not had a leadership role before and I enjoyed the challenge. I think that I could have enforced the tasks within my group a lot firmer as sometimes they were reluctant to work and some things may not have been completed on time. However, with persistance they did listen and take to the tasks with enthusiasm and determination.
I felt quite happy with completing the work for the articles and even though mine was not used within the paper, I was quite happy with what I produced but I thought that if I had spent some more time on it maybe it could have been left in. This was an interesting experience to see how it works within the business and having to make ruthless decissions was very good for all of us.

What could be learned from the experience?

I think that we have learned a lot from this experience as it has given us a clear insight into the business how hard it is to produce something that people want. I was hoping that this experience would help us work together within different groups and with different people but there were a lot of arguements and some people refusing to complete work so i don't think that this was completed to the best of our ability. I think that we learnt that you need to be able to work really hard to meet a deadline and that in some cases tough decissions need to be made to make the process a lot easier and work to meet the deadline. This was a good lesson because before hand we would have spent a long time trying to cut something down that we couldn't and it lose us marks but now having the experience of needing to cut something down - we are now more willing to do so.

31st March - Sessions Work

2010-03-31T04:07:00.001-07:00

Today is our last session that we are able to work on computers to edit the articles so today is our deadline for all of the articles to be completed and given to our liaison. As my article has been chosen by quality control to not be within the newspaper but now online, I don't really need to spend anymore time today editing on it and it can wait until the newspaper is finished.

Alie, one of the group members, is not present today and she still needs a lot doing to her article before it can be classed as finished. I have decided that as I don't need to work on my article that I will work to get hers finished while she is not here so that our group can hit the deadline on time.

I started by creating a coloured block behind each heading within the article and also behind the title of the article. I thought that as most of the primary colours were taken from other people within our project, I would use pink so that none of the colours in different articles are the same. This colour also works with the person's opie picture and therefore makes the article as a whole more appealing.

I decided to go through her article making sure that all the text was spelt correctly, the fonts were all right and that the words that were meant to be in italics are in italics. I then went through her text trying to find pull out quotes, there were quotations she had made within her article, which I could then pull out of the text in a large font and therefore it would be something that would get the readers attention.

The finishing touches were then made to add the opie picture of Alie to the bottom of her article, sign it with her name and then to get it reviewed by quality control to make sure that it was all ready to be given to our liaison.

Mike's Feedback on my Blog

2010-03-30T07:46:00.001-07:00

Mike, one of our quality control team members, has been giving us feedback on each of our blogs. This has been quite helpful because we can see someone else's view on our work and it helps us to improve. I have gone through the points that Mike has given me and worked through my blog to make the corrections that he thinks are needed, as well as working to improve my blog on a daily basis.

30th March- Decisions with my Article

2010-03-30T07:33:00.000-07:00

Today I have been speaking with the quality control team and in particular, Tara our evidence helper within the quality control team. They have all been working together sort out how many articles we have and how the pages will be filled within the newspaper. They therefore have also been sorting through which articles will need to be cut down and or cut out of the newspaper completely.

Together they have decided that my article should be cut out the newspaper because it is not as relevant as the rest of the articles for helping students to revise. However, they have said that any articles that have not been put into the newspaper, will be put onto the website for the students to access.

Alie's Feedback on my Article - First Sub

2010-03-29T14:10:00.001-07:00

Within our group we thought that it would be a good idea to print out our article how they are at the moment and to give them to a different member of our group to go through and say what we could change or improve. James was not present for this task so myself and Alie swapped articles, went through each others articles and once we were finished, we then both worked on James' article and then give it to him once he is back at college.

This was quite useful to us, as it gave us someone else view on what we could improve on and I think as myself and Alie are working on a similar topic, we had a lot we could share with each other to help us improve. As well as giving feedback, we also went through the article making sure that it follows the style house guide that the quality control team had produced. This meant that we had to look out for fonts, sizes, italics etc.

Below are two images of the feedback that I received from Alie.

29th March - Sessions Work

2010-03-29T10:15:00.001-07:00

Myself and Alie have worked hard towards a deadline today. The quality control team have asked us to cut down our article from two pages to one page so that it fits within the newspaper efficiently. This was quite a hard task because we had to be very ruthless with our articles and we needed to cut our large amounts of text out of them.

My article was originally two pages, which included the image of my opie and also some links to some useful websites. I decided that the best way to go about doing this would be to read through my article and take out paragraphs or even individual sentences that are not needed within the article. As I went through my article, it became harder to take out big chunks of my text and towards the end I only had a small sentence that was into the next page. This where I really had to be ruthless and think of what the article could do without, so I took out some elements of my article that make it sound quite personal rather than general, therefore the feel to article then changed slightly.

This was interesting task and one the most challenging things that we had to complete for this project. This gave us a big taster into what the industry expects of its writers and how strict you have to be with yourself and the article that you are writing.

Plan for the Week 29th March - 1st April

2010-03-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

I have completed another weekly plan, this one is for next week - 29th March to 1st April. This week will need a lot of attention, patients and hard work, as a deadline needs to be met and we have a lot of work to get done. We need to really work on getting advertisements from possible advertisers or this newspaper will not go ahead.

I have made a plan of what I we need to be doing each day next week and also baring in mind that we finish on Thursday, we may not have computers then so our main deadline would be Wednesday.

Image Ideas To Go In My Article

2010-03-27T06:29:00.000-07:00

Now that my article is almost finished, I need to be gathering all of my images that need to go with the article. As my article is purely about Facebook, I think that gathering some images off my Facebook, some of website names, applications would be a good idea. I thought that because I break down some parts of Facebook within my article, that I should take screen shots of these parts, for example, I talking about 'events' so I have taken a screen shot of the 'event icon'.

I think that it would also be useful for the article if I were to take some images of myself or others using Facebook, this way it would give the read something that they would automatically be able to link with the article when they first see it.

Plan for the Week 22nd - 26th UPDATED

2010-03-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

Here is an updated version of the plan for the week 22nd to 26th March. I have made a plan at the beginning of this week, which was started by showing what I plan to do and this updated version now shows what I have done, how it went and now what is needed to be done.

Feedback on My Teams Articles

2010-03-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

Within our team, we have decided that it would be useful to all us if we gave feedback on each others articles. As we are all working on our own article, we may be able to share something to help others which the quality control team may not have been able to.

I have taken both of my team members articles, read through them and annotated them with what I thought they could improve on. Below are the images of the articles which I annotated.

Action Plan for 26th March

2010-03-26T13:39:00.000-07:00

Today is quite significant within the production of this newspaper and we need to make sure that we get all of these tasks completed or we will be getting behind on some of our deadlines. I have decided to create a small lists of tasks that we need to complete, that my team needs to complete and also what I will need to be completing.

- We all need to open a style template which James has made, paste our article into it, make some alterations and then print out to review

- Within our team we also need to complete this, we also need to look other all our articles within the template and produced feedback. We all also need to be working on keeping our blogs up to date with the work which we are completing with the sessions.

- As team leader, I need to be making sure that the articles are being put into the templates correctly, that I am giving them plenty of feedback which they work on to make the article better and making sure they meet the deadline at the end of the day. I will also have to make sure that, as James is not here today, that his article is put within the template and also given feedback ready for him to look over on Monday.

26th March - Sessions Work

2010-03-26T08:17:00.001-07:00

Now that we have a style template that we are trying out, we need to paste out our articles into this template to see what it looks like, to give feedback, see a flat plan and to see what needs to be changed. Below I have pasted some screen grabs of putting my article into this template and how we altered it once it was in place. It wasn't as simple as copy and pasting into our template, once the text was in place, we had to go through it putting the body text into the right font, making the headings of each section the right size and font and also the title needed to be in the right place and in the right font and size. This was simple process but my text seemed to come out in individual sentences so I had to go through all my text and back space it all - which took up large amount of time.

Once this was completed we then put our Opie pictures at the bottom of our article, along with our name. This was then printed off and we looked at them all within the flat plan. This was interesting as we found that we had 15 pages and are we only have 12 pages - this far too much and we need to cut down a lot of articles. My article is two pages long without pictures and I need to make sure that my article is cut down to one page which will include any images that I want to use. Alie, who is a member of my team, also needs to cut down her article which is slightly too long but not by much and the other member of my team has an article which is the right size, which helps our job a lot.

Third Draft of my Article

2010-03-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

Has Facebook Effected The Way In Which We Socialise In Todayʼs Society?

Facebook is a social networking site which as been running since February 2004. It was slowly introduced along side other social networking sites such as Myspace, Bebo and now it is the most popular social networking site on the internet. I think this is because it allows anyone to add anyone, have conversations with friends and use its applications to do almost anything. It is bringing many people together, you are able to search for friends and in some rare cases you end up coming across someone you haven't spoken to in years and reconnect with them.

There have been many game applications which many people use out of boredom and a few of them have become quite popular to a point where non-Facebook users have heard of the 'addictions' to the game application. For example, there is a game application called ʻFarmvilleʼ, which I think no matter how long you have been on Facebook, you have used it at some point, even if you’ve never used it since. This game was made by a company called Zynga, who have also made 36 other games on Facebook which include ‘YoVille’ and ‘FishVille’. The game allows you to maintain your own farm, add neighbours and make coins to buy decorations for the farm. Coins are received from completing tasks on the games and these coins allow you to buy more accessories for your game. However, some items cost more coins than you may have or they may cost ‘cash’. Cash items are not available for you to earn throughout the game by completing tasks and to be able to get cash you have to send in money to Facebook via credit card or pal and how much you pay depends on how much cash or coins you may want for your game. Through some research on Zynga, I have tried to find out all the ways in which they profit from these games but this is their only source of income.

Whilst researching I found an article by Nicholas Carlson, on the Business Insider website, which briefly explains a bit about what Zynga is earning1. Nicholas Carlson claims within this article that ‘While the most aggressive reports we’ve seen so far peg Zynga’s revenue around $150 million, our banker says he understands the number is closer to $250 million.’ This information is quite useful and raises an interesting thought about online games, how they may be so addictive to some that they spend a lot of money on them or that they have become some of the most popular online games.

As well as game applications, they have applications where you can fill out quizzes and post your results on your profile page for other users to see and possibly then do the same. I use quite a lot of the applications on a daily basis, however, I have started to use more of the activities available on the site such as making events and groups. Facebook has progressed over the years and you are now able to make groups that anyone can join or make an event that anyone can go to. I have played about with this a lot recently, for example, making an event to go see the film Alice in Wonderland. I must admit, it was hard to get anyone to accept to the invite as I only wanted people I knew to be there and in the end we ended up not going.

There are a lot more successful events, such as, the Cambridge Strawberry Fair, which has 1,961 confirmed guests. The Strawberry Fair website2 explains the fair as ‘a free volunteer run community music, entertainment, arts and crafts fair.’ This is has become quite useful, as for most of us, years ago we would have to make several phone calls to make an event but with Facebook, as long as you are friends with the people you want to invite, you can make the event and it can be sorted within minutes.

1 http://www.businessinsider.com/zygna-revenues-are-closer-to-250-million-says-banker-2009-10 2 http://www.strawberry-fair.org.uk/

However, these events can be very useful and interesting but a few of them have been known to get out of hand. As you are able to put up any information that you wish and the event can be open for the whole world to attend, some people have made the mistake of showing their house parties online. The Sun has written an article on a teenage girl who pasted her private house party Facebook, which then turned out to become out of hand and the girl was said to be unconscious throughout this whole evening. The article was called ‘Facebook party house trashed3’ and was published on the 22nd of February this year by Guy Patrick and he writes about the disasters the family came home to and shows an interview with the father. This is one extreme case of Facebook events going wrong, and unfortunately there have been a few other cases. There was a severe amount of items stolen, property damaged and they claimed to have an estimated £10,000 worth of damaged. This was all cause by a suspected fifty unexpected vandals and the owner of the house claims that he saw them ‘bragging’ on Facebook and he aims to hand them names into the police. Within the interview, her father says; ‘Suddenly from being a small party for her and her mates from school it turned into a riot, with men in their late twenties turning up in cabs’.

Status updates are also promoting tv programs and in some cases becoming a type of competition for them. Many members of Facebook like to discuss what they are currently watching on tv or what they enjoy to watch. These comments can sometimes effect the popularity of some shows, in both bad and good ways. Recently, a good example was the last two episodes of the fourth series of Skins which were shown on E4 on Wednesday 10th and17th of March. There seemed to be a large amount of students watching this episodes while on Facebook so I decided to observe them. On the 10th of March, there was a large amount of comments stating that were upset about one of lead characters being murdered and this seemed to make a big impact on others on Facebook at the same time. There was a discussion between about how upsetting the episode was but it caused a lot of interest and therefore this would be a positive for Skins. However, on the 17th of March, which was the showing of the last episode, there was a lot of viewers that were disappointed with the episode and they didn’t think that it was the best way to end the series. This may have made an impact Skins as from this they can see that they may have lost some interest from viewers and they may be encouraged to improve for the next series.

3 http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2864021/Facebook-party-house-trashed.html

out with their friends, a common place to hang out was down by the railway line, when my mother was my age. They would take advantage of the local pubs that would let teens hang out in the back to play pool. Sitting in each evening wasn’t really an option for them, as they didn’t have the right technology that would keep them occupied.

Today we have a lot more opportunities that don’t involve the new technology but we choose to enjoy the latest ‘gadget’. As being a student, you don’t have many financial responsibilities, paying bills or anything like that. We have more time to spare and more money than the average adult who works full time, five days a week. This gives us a large amount of opportunities to enjoy being a young adult but as you observe Facebook, you still find a large majority of young adults spending their evenings online.

The whole idea that if you have internet access you can be on Facebook whenever you want has become a profit to phone companies. Most phones now have the internet available on them, apps are also available to use and they made a very popular app for Facebook. This now means that anyone with the right technology and with the right app, can now go online wherever and whenever they want. This then brings out the unlucky few who have the 'addiction' to Facebook, who then spend most of their time with their iPhone out, updating their status on Facebook. Itʼs now very easy for people to get addicted to the internet and its sites available and now we have other ways to get to it, rather than a computer, we now spend the majority of our day glued to these sites. Ruth Bloomfield produced an article on the Mail Online4 website which looked into this ‘addiction’ and how it may be ‘taking over our lives’. One line read ‘The UK has undoubtedly become a nation of Facebook addicts, ‘said a spokesman for market research company Mintel, which commissioned the report.’ This seems to be a common thought amongst people writing articles and it shows that it is an issue that is becoming more dominant in the online age. Another line in this article reads; ‘More than half of adults who use sites including Facebook, Bebo and YouTube admit they spend more time online than with real friends and family.’ This shows you that even though it may be an issue that is hidden under most peoples tongues, when Facebook users are asked they do agree that these sites have become an addiction to the regular users.

Facebook has effected a large amount of online users and I think that it has effected the way in which we socialise, whether it being good or bad. The case of it becoming an addiction has been raised across may articles and interviews but this may just be a word that we are using to explain the new way in which we socialise. Additions are normally said to be bad things that we can’t seem to lose and in some cases Facebook has brought about bad elements which make us question whether it is the best site to use. Facebook has allowed us to become friends with people from all parts of world and reunite with old friends. It has allowed us to daily state what we are doing and to make global events for anyone to attend. Even though each of these points can get out of control, for example the house party that went wrong, this seems to be the way in which our technology is evolving and how we are possibly trying to make the online world better.

4 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1176442/How-Facebook-changed-nation-introverts-taking- lives.html

Feedback From Nick and Students

2010-03-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

Nick's feedback on my article so far;

- Why is it the most popular social networking site?

- Show both sides to my argument

-'Farmville' - who made this? how do they earn money from it?

- Expand on the Strawberry Fair event

- Why do you think the media latches on to stories like the house party that went wrong?

- What did they do before technology when at home?

- More reference to arguments - for and against Facebook

- More statistical evidence

Feedback from students on my article so far;

- Explain the coin system further on 'Farmville'

- Expand on why people may not have joined my event that I made

- Publishing dates or articles I have researched are not necessary

There were also a few grammar mistakes that they wanted me to correct.

This feedback was very useful to me as I was quite stuck on how to make my article more fuller and more interesting for the reader. Now that I know a lot of things I need to add, I can get on with expanding my article and giving the students an article which will be easier for them to revise from.

Research into Article Style Layout

2010-03-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

Now that we are looking into the style of our articles, I thought that it would be a good idea to do some research before I start to think about what our newspaper should look like. I know that the product I have researched is a magazine but I feel that our newspaper will have more of a magazine feel to it, especially as it is aimed at students. I decided to look through my magazines at home, find the main article feature within the mag and annotating it on what they have used for their layout. Below are the images of the magazine that I took and also the post-it's that I put on the magazine to annotate it.

25th March - Sessions Work

2010-03-25T13:39:00.001-07:00

Now that we have almost finished our articles, we need to really be thinking about how we want the article to layout and what it should look like within the newspaper. Myself and Alie have drawn out a small outline to what we thought the simple style layout should be and we used James' article as a basis for the layout and our outcome is the first image that you see below. The second image shows a print out of a document that we produced, which also displays a layout for the articles. We took the layout that we had drawn out, used boxes and lines in Pages to show the layout and then added in the appropriate text in the fonts and sizes that we thought would fit best.
This task was very useful as it gave use a basis for what we wanted the style to look like and we gathered them with others in the class and were able to see what we all wanted. It also showed us that we need to be more creative with these layouts, as we are paying for colour in the newspaper, we need to show how that would work and make the layouts more colourful and interesting.

24th March -Sessions Work

2010-03-24T03:19:00.001-07:00

Today we have worked on producing some ideas for the style of the newspaper, sketching them down and then giving a template to quality control. Within our group we gathered the ideas we each had for what style we thought each page should look like and then sketched them out on a A3 piece of paper. This was then used as an idea sheet to refer to when producing the template on pages. We used the content of James' article to put within the template and used his article and images as the preview of what a page would look like.

Once we had completed this template, we transferred it to a memory stick to print off in A3 and then to give to quality control. We have had a bit of confusion with what content was needed to be put in this template, as we first used James' article content but we needed to use Tara's content This needed to be altered so James altered this and then sent it to quality control to print in A3.

Myself and Alie then completed another template, which shows more of the boxs, fonts and sizes that we would use, sketched this out and then printed off three copies of this for our group and quality control.

Questionnaire for Students

2010-03-23T03:02:00.000-07:00

Today we made some questionnaire for some students which we thought would help us in our process for making the newspaper. We needed opinions from students who would be reading the newspaper, to what they thought the newspaper should be like and what would help them to revise. As a lot of the articles are based around the internet and how we use the internet on a daily basis, we thought that we would ask them some questions based on how they use the internet and how often they use it. Here are the questions we asked, the answers we received and the results.

When did you last access the internet?

yesterday

last night (yesterday)

40 minutes ago (today)

this morning (today)

10 minutes ago (today)

yesterday

today

yesterday

this morning (today)

last night (yesterday)

Result; 7 today, 8 yesterday

What did you do when you were online?

updated twitter and facebook

played online ‘call of duty’

updated facebook

downloaded music (illegally)

searched wikipedia

checked facebook

checked bank details

went on facebook

facebook

downloaded music (illegally)

google account / blogging / youtube

facebook

hotmail (email)

Result; 8 - social networking, 2 - downloading, 1 - gaming, 3 - research/work, 1 - email

Which website did you last visit? Why?

facebook - check notifications

HSBC - check if paid

facebook - chatted on facebook chat

facebook - update status

facebook - chatted using facebook chat

youtube - check subscription

facebook - see what people were doing

facebook - facebook chat

google - find songs to download

wikipedia - research what SONY stoud for

facebook - check up and baet score on tetris

facebook - talk to people on facebook chat

hotmail - checking mail

wikipedia - information on twilight

Result; 9 - facebook, 1 - HSBC, 1 - google, 1 - youtube, 2 - wikipedia, 1 - hotmail

When was the last time you used a research website? Which one was it? What did you research?

month ago (wikipedia) - an artist for college

a few weeks ago (wikipedia) - record label for college

month ago (wikipedia) - project related

last week (wikipedia) - new media for college

40 minutes ago (wikipedia) - searched SONY

today (wikipedia) - twilight

research in books

two weeks ago (wikipedia) - tracklist for CD

doesn’t remember

yesterday (wikipedia) - elite status

a few weeks ago (wikipedia) - music industry

last year (wikipedia) - pandas

last thursday (wikipedia) - music genres

last month (wikipedia) - music videos

last month (wikipedia) - digi-packs

Result; 4 - month ago, 2 - a few weeks ago, 1 - two weeks ago, 2 - last week, 2 - today, 1 - last year, 1 - doesn’t remember, 1 - yesterday, 1 - research in books

Do you use other regular research websites?

not really - just wikipedia

just wikipedia

just wikipedia / also use google

wikipedia / imdb

just wikipedia / also use google

just wikipedia

Results; 6 - just wikipedia, 7 - just wikipedia / also use google, 2 - wikipedia / imdb

Do you have a social networking site?

facebook / myspace (hardy use) / twitter / bebo (never use)

facebook

facebook / bebo (never use)

facebook

facebook / myspace (don’t use it)

don’t have a social networking site

facebook

facebook / myspace

Results; 11 - facebook, 1 - facebook and myspace (uses both), 2 - facebook and twitter, 1 - doesn’t have a social netowrking site

How often do your update you FB status?

twice a week

3 times a week

don’t update

once a day

barely update

twice a week

everyday

3 times a day

5 times a day

once a day

never has

hardly does (but did yesterday)

Results; 4 - once a day, 1 - 5 times a day, 1 - 3 times a day, 2 - 3 times a week, 2 - twice a week, 3 - don’t update, 2 - barely update

Have you uploaded videos online? How old were you when you first did?

yes / 15

yes / 16

yes / 16 (didn’t before course)

yes / 16

yes / 12

yes / 14

yes / 16 (didn’t before course)

yes / 16 (vimeo)

yes / 12

yes / 16

Results; 14 - yes, 1 - no

Example of a Possible Style Layout for Newspaper

2010-03-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

Today we have been given a double page spread article which was called 'the ocr a2 critical perspectives in media exam'. We then look over this article and annotated it to show how it was laid out and what styles they used to present it.

Below is an image of the article that I annotated and also how I thought they laid out this article.

The first thing I noticed was that they used a simple but bold font as the title of the article which was situated so it is the first thing that you see. It is not clear from the image, but they also used a mathematical background to relate to the content of the text. Under the title they have used a subtitle which is in a slightly different font but is as simple and is in a slightly smaller case. Then throughout the article they have used this same font as the subtitle, for the headings for each section of the article. For the important name in the first paragraph they have used a bolder text so that it stands out as important information and they have also done the same thing at the end of the article and used a box around the author of the article.

Plan for the Week 22nd - 26th

2010-03-22T04:26:00.001-07:00

Today I have created another weekly plan for this week and it contains the work that we completed today and also what we plan to do for the rest of the week. This may vary depending on what we manage to get completed.

Action Plan For Today

2010-03-22T04:17:00.000-07:00

Today we will need to be working on making questions for a questionnaire that we will be giving to some year 12 students. These questions will help us to find more information that may help us with our articles and find out how involved students are with the online age.

We will also need to start thinking about planning a style for the newspaper, gathering some ideas and then giving them to the quality control team to look over.

Feedback From Mike on My Second Draft Article

2010-03-21T14:33:00.001-07:00

To make sure that my article is the best it can be, I have to produce a new print out each time I make changes based on the feedback that I have been given and then get more feedback based on my updated version. I have decided to give most of my updated articles to someone in the quality control team to get my feedback.

This is feedback that Mike, from quality control, gave me;

- Texts and figures need to be added

- When did Facebook become global? expand on this

- Include a few more quotations

- What is the future of Facebook? explain this

- How has this developed with media in the online age? What change has been made to Facebook over time?

19th March - Sessions Work

2010-03-19T16:12:00.000-07:00

Today our lessons was cut short to an hour and a half so we didn't have a lot of time to complete a lot of work that we wanted to get done. Barney took the first half hour of our lesson to talk to us about media in the online age and how viral music videos have effected the industry.

He gave us some questions and points that we should think about;

-Why do you watch the videos?

-Is it to pass time or do you connect with the music?

-Viral model = Does it democratise the process? Can youtube allow artists to hijack the system?

-Traditional model = Music and video had a symbolic relationship - Iconic videos created superstars, superstars created bigger videos, e.g Thriller

However, we managed to worked on our articles today, working on the feedback that we were given from other members of the class and we then sent a PDF of our article to Alex to send off to Jenny for more feedback.

Second Draft of my Article

2010-03-19T14:39:00.000-07:00

Has Facebook Effected The Way In Which We Socialise In Today’s Society?

There have been many game applications which many people use out of boredom and a few of them have become quite popular to a point where non-Facebook users have heard of the 'addictions' to the game application. For example, there is a game application called ʻFarmvilleʼ, which I think no matter how long you have been on Facebook, you have used it at some point, even if you’ve never used it since. The game basically allows you to maintain your own farm, add neighbours and make coins to buy decorations for the farm. As well as game applications, they have applications where you can ﬁll out quizzes and post your results on your proﬁle page for other users to see and possibly then do the same. I use quite a lot of the applications on a daily basis, however, I have started to use more of the activities available on the site such as making events and groups. Facebook has progressed over the years and you are now able to make groups that anyone can join or make an event that anyone can go to. I have played about with this a lot recently, for example, making an event to go see the ﬁlm Alice in Wonderland. I must admit, it was hard to get anyone to accept to the invite as I only wanted people I knew to be there and in the end we ended up not going.

There are a lot more successful events, such as, the Cambridge Strawberry Fair, which has 1,961 conﬁrmed guests. This is has become quite useful, as for most of us, years ago we would have to make several phone calls to make an event but with Facebook, as long as you are friends with the people you want to invite, you can make the event and it can be sorted within minutes.

’ and was published on the 22nd of February this year by Guy Patrick and he writes about the disasters the family came home to and shows an interview with the father. This is one extreme case of Facebook events going wrong, and unfortunately there have been a few other cases. There was a severe amount of items stolen, property damaged and they claimed to have an estimated £10,000 worth of damaged. This was all cause by a suspected fifty unexpected vandals and the owner of the house claims that he saw them ‘bragging’ on Facebook and he aims to hand them names into the police. Within the interview, her father says; “Suddenly from being a small party for her and her mates from school it turned into a riot, with men in their late twenties turning up in cabs”.

To many people, Facebook has become the site that you can't really do without. Generally I don't think I would be able to get on with my daily life without the internet. Social networking has become part of my daily routine and I think that without it, we wouldn't talk to as many people and we wouldn't know much about what is going on. As Facebook has a message board as the 'homepage', where everyoneʼs status updates appear, I tend to see a lot of what they are up to and what is going on in the world outside of my life. I'm not really the kind of person that would watch the news and if anything serious, exciting or out of the ordinary has happened recently, it is bound to be in someoneʼs status at some point. Status updates are also promoting tv programs and in some cases becoming a type of competition for them. Many members of Facebook like to discuss what they are currently watching on tv or what they enjoy to watch. These comments can sometimes effect the popularity of some shows, in both bad and good ways. Recently, a good example was the last two episodes of the fourth series of Skins which were shown on E4 on Wednesday 10th and17th of March. There seemed to be a lot of students watching this episodes while on Facebook so I decided to observe them. On the 10th of March, there was a large amount of comments stating that were upset about one of lead characters being murdered and this seemed to make a big impact on others on Facebook at the same time. There was a lot of discussion between about how upsetting the episode was but it caused a lot of interest and therefore this would be a plus for Skins. However, on the 17th of March, which was the showing of the last episode, there was a lot of viewers that were disappointed with the episode and they didn’t think that it was the best way to end the series. This may have made an impact Skins as from this they can see that they may have lost some interest from viewers and they may be encouraged to improve for the next series.

The whole idea of Facebook is changing the way we live, these days I don't think people have enough conﬁdence to just go out somewhere and make a random friends and they would just get the small thrill of adding someone random on Facebook, who they will hardly talk to you or lives on the other side of the world. There are a large number of reasons to why this may be, to whether they just have low confidence, to whether they just have strict parents. It may just be the expectations of our elders, as I was asked by my uncle the other day as to why I was sat on Facebook on a Friday night rather than going out to get 'smashed' with my friends. When they were younger they didn't have the technology that we have today or the opportunities. There spare time was spent hanging out with their friends, a common place to hang out was down by the railway line, when my mother was my age. They would take advantage of the local pubs that would let teens hang out in the back to play pool. Sitting in each evening wasn’t really an option for them, as they didn’t have the right technology that would keep them occupied.

The whole idea that if you have internet access you can be on Facebook whenever you want has become a proﬁt to phone companies. Most phones now have the internet available on them, apps are also available to use and they made a very popular app for Facebook. This now means that anyone with the right technology and with the right app, can now go online wherever and whenever they want. This then brings out the unlucky few who have the 'addiction' to Facebook, who then spend most of their time with their iPhone out, updating their status on Facebook. Itʼs now very easy for people to get addicted to the internet and its sites available and now we have other ways to get to it, rather than a computer, we now spend the majority of our day glued to these sites. Ruth Bloomfield produced an article on the Mail Online

website which looked into this ‘addiction’ and how it may be ‘taking over our lives’. One line read “The UK has undoubtedly become a nation of Facebook addicts, ‘said a spokesman for market research company Mintel, which commissioned the report.” This seems to be a common thought amongst people writing articles and it shows that it is an issue that is becoming more dominant in the online age. Another line in this article reads; “More than half of adults who use sites including Facebook, Bebo and YouTube admit they spend more time online than with real friends and family.” This shows you that even though it may be an issue that is hidden under most peoples tongues, when Facebook users are asked they do agree that these sites have become an addiction to the regular users.

Feedback For Mike, Tara and Matt L

2010-03-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

Throughout this week we have been producing our articles and giving others feedback on their drafts. I taken a version of Mike's article and also Matt and Tara's article, read through them and give them feedback. As I wasn't present in college today, I sent them all a message on facebook giving them all the feedback that I could think of that may help them to improve their articles.

Feedback From Jenny

2010-03-18T03:20:00.000-07:00

After we had produced our first draft of each of our articles, we gave a PDF to Alex and he sent all of them to Jenny. She then replied and gave us all feedback on what she thought of our articles and how we could improve on them. Below is the email that she sent to Alex with the feedback.

"Hi Alexander

Sorry I wasn’t able to get back to you earlier – have had some problems with Acrobat Reader, mainly unprintable fonts, so could only read the articles onscreen, rather than in hard copy, which is usually the easiest way to comment. So these comments re very brief – wil give you more detailed feedback at the next stage.

A very promising start – but across the board, sone 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 vry 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 pece, which is very factual but well informed, gets this nearly right, although it could do with some references to theory; whereas Philippa’s aricle 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.

Hope this helps – although it’s very genral. Get back to me if you want me to offer more detailed advice at this stage.

Keep up the good work!

Jenny"

Draft of My Article

2010-03-18T03:19:00.001-07:00

Has Facebook Affected The Way In Which We Socialise In Todayʼs Society?

Facebook is a social networking site. It was slowly introduced along side other social networking sites such as Myspace, Bebo and now it is the most popular social networking site on the internet. I think this is because it allows anyone to add anyone, have conversations with friends and use its applications to do almost anything. It is bringing many people together, you are able to search for friends and in some rare cases you end up coming across someone you haven't spoken to in years and reconnect with them.

There have been many game applications which many people use out of boredom and a few of them have become quite popular to a point where non-Facebook users have heard of the 'addictions' to the game application. For example, there is a game application called ʻFarmvilleʼ, which I think no matter how long you have been on Facebook, you have used it at some point, even if you’ve never used it since. The game basically allows you to maintain your own farm, add neighbours and make coins to buy decorations for the farm. As well as game applications, they have applications where you can fill out quizzes and post your results on your profile page for other users to see and possibly then do the same. I use quite a lot of the applications on a daily basis, however, I have started to use more of the activities available on the site such as making events and groups. Facebook has progressed over the years and you are now able to make groups that anyone can join or make an event that anyone can go to. I have played about with this a lot recently, for example, making an event to go see the film Alice in Wonderland. I must admit, it was hard to get anyone to accept to the invite as I only wanted people I knew to be there and in the end we ended up not going.

There are a lot more successful events, such as, the Cambridge Strawberry Fair, which has 1,961 confirmed guests. This is has become quite useful, as for most of us, years ago we would have to make several phone calls to make an event but with Facebook, as long as you are friends with the people you want to invite, you can make the event and it can be sorted within minutes.

However, these events can be very useful and interesting but a few of them have been known not to work very well. As you are able to put up any information that you wish and the event can be open for anyone to attend, some people have made the mistake of showing their house parties online. The Sun has written an article on a teenage girl who pasted her private house party Facebook, which then turned out to become out of hand and the girl was said to be unconscious throughout this whole evening. This is one extreme case of Facebook events going wrong, and unfortunately there have been a few other cases. There was a severe amount of items stolen, property damaged and they claimed to have a estimated £10,000 worth of damaged. This was all cause by a suspected fifty unexpected vandals and the owner of the house claims that he saw them ‘bragging’ on Facebook and he aims to hand them names into the police.

The whole idea of Facebook is changing the way we live, these days I don't think people have enough confidence to just go out somewhere and make a random friends and they would just get the small thrill of adding someone random on Facebook, who they will hardly talk to you or lives on the other side of the world. There are a large number of reasons to why this may be, to whether they just have low confidence, to whether they just have strict parents. It may just be the expectations of our elders, as I was asked by my uncle the other day as to why I was sat on Facebook on a Friday night rather than going out to get 'smashed' with my friends. When they were younger they didn't have the technology that we have today or the opportunities. There spare time was spent hanging out with their friends, a common place to hang out was down by the railway line, when my mother was my age. They would take advantage of the local pubs that would let teens hang out in the back to play pool. Sitting in each evening wasn’t really an option for them, as they didn’t have the right technology that would keep them occupied.

Today we have a lot more opportunities that don’t involved the new technology but we chose to enjoy the latest ‘gadget’.

As being a student, you don’t have many financial responsibilities, paying bills or anything like that. We have more time to spare and more money than the average adult who works full time, five days a week. This gives us a large amount opportunities to enjoy being a young adult but as you observe Facebook, you still find a large majority of the young adult population spending there evenings online.

Action Plan 15th - 17th

2010-03-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

I have decided to write an action plan to show what I need to have done by Wednesday this week generally and also some specific tasks that I need to complete within my role.

By Wednesday I need to;

- Print off two articles are I think may help with my article and relate to what I am writing. I will also need to read through them and annotate them.

- Continue with correcting my article based on the feedback that was given to me by the quality control team and also other members of the class and make sure that I refer to the articles that I have printed off, including other sources that are relevant.

- Printing off two copies of my article.

Within My Role I Will Need To;

- Make sure that my team get their articles edited and printed by wednesday.

- That they complete the other tasks set.

- That james works on his infographic and alie works on her plan of her article.

Plan For Week 8th - 12th March

2010-03-12T08:03:00.001-08:00

For the week the 8th to the 12th I have planned what I will need to be doing for this project and what I have then completed. i have decided to show this in a table so I went on to pages and produced and filled out a table to display the information.

Feedback From Mike on My Draft Article

2010-03-12T08:02:00.001-08:00

Mike, part of the quality control team, has read through my article draft and given me some feedback. Below are the images of the feedback that he gave me and I have also written down the key points that he wanted me to fix.

"-Don't talk about the Strawberry Fair as this would only appeal to people in Cambridge, choose somethnig that would be more wide appeal - perhaps a festival, Glastonbury or V.

- Talk about the down sides of Facebook events, talk about the house party that over 100 people turned up to and the house got ruined - research into this.

- When you talk about people not having the confidence to go out and meet new people, suggest why?; - possibly bullied?, strict parenting or low self-confidence?

- Sometimes online, they speak to random people they will never meet for reasons;

- you can be who you want to be online, argue the point that it is actually a way of making new friends if they don;t have the confidence to meet them in person - maybe a better way online.

- Why do you enjoy sitting in on a friday night? what are the reasons behind this?

-no money, no one to go out with?, lack of motivation?, transport issues?

- What did the older generation do in their time?"

Risk Assessment

2010-03-12T08:00:00.003-08:00

As we are planning on producing a newspaper there isn't any risks that would affect us throughout the project. We will not be part of the actual making of the newspaper within the factory so the only risks to us would be within college, producing the content for the newspaper.
We have to be careful of the general risks which would involve damaging any equipment, tripping over wires and excessive use of a computer my harm someones eyes.

Buget and Funding

2010-03-12T08:00:00.001-08:00

This is quite a different project for us in a lot of different ways but one is that we actually have a budget that we have to stick to for this project. To have our newspaper produced and printed out in 500 copies it will cost us £500. This the only money that we will need to spend throughout this project as we are given all the equipment that we need to use by the college. This includes items such as laptop, printer, paper and pens.

As we aren't going to just be given £500, we need to find someone or some companies who may interested in helping funding us for this project and might also be interesting in the product that we are producing. We will be having a meeting with the quality control team and the liaison soon that we can come up with some possible ideas for who we may want to contact to help us with this and see how much we would want to ask each other them for.

Kirk's(schedule leader) Task

2010-03-12T07:57:00.000-08:00

Today our schedule leader has asked each group to complete a task, which would help us with researching and coming up with ideas for a flyer. The task was to take a big piece of paper, situate 'Ideas for Flyer' in the middle and expand out our idea in detail. Our group worked together to gather some ideas and we wrote them on this piece of paper. Below is an image that Alie took of the piece of paper and below that I have written out the ideas that were wrote on the piece of paper.

'Name of paper at the front and logo(if we have one), MEdia

Number of pages paper has

Target audience for the paper - A2 students

Explain the intentions of the paper - to help students further their understanding of media for the exam

Include content about the newspaper is for, e.g to help on the A2 exam

How the paper will helps students, e.g further education, revision, research and further understanding

Brief summary of articles and activities that will be in paper. "It will include useful info on researching for the exam and articles about practitioners which will be useful"

Colourful and vibrant so it stands out and make it appeal to the audience

A possible tagline such as - 'pass now' or something not quite as 'corny' - "get ready to pass"

Explain who is designing it. A2 students making it for A2 students

Sponsors on flyer(if we manage to get some), if we get sponsorship explain who is and include a logo, possibly at the back

Include images of content and pictures of us making it'

James has also briefly designed a small layout of the flyer at the bottom left corner of the diagram so I took a picture so it is clearer to see. It shows the rough outline of what the flyer would look if you applied all these points.

12th March - Sessions Work

2010-03-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

First of all today, Barney took our first lesson and talked to us about all of articles that we are making and helped us with improving them and seeing who may be able to help us. He showed us that we could link some of our articles together, not in a sense where we join them but to talk to others and sharing some ideas between each other. It helped me a lot because it showed me a lot more that I could put into my article, I didn't have to just talk about the social networking but also link in how tv shows are effected. For example, someone could put a status up on Facebook mentioning what was on tv and how they felt and then it could effect someone who may be waiting to watch it on 'Catch up tv'. There gives me another subject to add, where Matt L and Tara are making an article on this topic.

We have all been working on finishing our first drafts of our articles today, printing off copies to give to quality control and a PDF to send to Jenny graham. My role as leader of the group also had to be shown today, to motivate my team to complete the work needed and make sure that they meet the deadlines that were given to us.

11th March - Session Work

2010-03-11T12:15:00.000-08:00

Today we have received some exam results so we did spend a lot of our session today talking about what the results mean etc. Once we were finished with this, we worked on our articles and hopefully printing off a draft for someone in the group to look over and give feedback. I have managed to print off a draft and I have given it to the quality control team to read over and hopefully give me some feedback. This will help me a lot, as tomorrow is the draft deadline, I will be able to work on it a lot more tomorrow and improve it more before it gets sent off. The other two members of my group have not completed their drafts, but spent the lesson working on them and they will make the deadline for tomorrow.

Images of the Articles That I Researched and Went Through

2010-03-10T11:53:00.000-08:00

10th March - Sessions Work

2010-03-10T10:47:00.001-08:00

Today we weren't in our normal room, so we had no access to our laptops or the internet. This made the session a bit harder to do something productive but in each of our groups we found some productive tasks to be getting on with. I thought that it would be best to see how my group was getting on with their article and now that they were almost finished with annotating other articles, they needed another task to be getting on with. We were able to get to some resources within this room, so I got two big pieces of paper and I asked them to plan out what they want to do within their article. I wanted them to place their title in the middle, use it as a mind map and expand the article into each section they want to talk about so they then know exactly what they want to write.

This started off as a good task but they seemed to find it easier to make bullet points and then expand those bullet points to describe what they are going to write.

9th March - Sessions Work

2010-03-10T10:21:00.000-08:00

Dave came into our session again today to talk us about the articles that we are planning on putting in our newspaper. He started by asking us if we think that our chosen articles are relevant revision, is it interesting and will it give the reader something they couldn't get from reading something else?

He then got us to think about researching for the articles, would Wikipedia be good?, footnotes and quotes from other articles are useful and needed and possibly expert opinions?

He also said that the angle of how you go at this points matters too, to show you coming at the student angle - so they understand.

Tone is also important, will it be a news piece?, opinion piece?, feature piece?, interview? advertorial?

Presentation is also key and you need to make sure that the layout is interesting. There is no point having a page full of text as they can easily flick past but if they an image on it, something that draws them in - it will keep them interested to read on.

This was the meeting that we had to catch up on what everyone was up to and Dave(teacher) came into this meeting to talk further about the articles and then about possible funders/advertisers.

Mike - One of the Quality Control Leaders - Facebook

2010-03-08T10:28:00.000-08:00

Mike has worked on making a blog where he can keep everyone's blog so that we are all able to keep track of what everyone is doing.
He has messaged all of us on Facebook to inform us of what he has created and the link that we can follow to the blog.

Mike - One of the Quality Control Leaders

2010-03-08T10:11:00.000-08:00

Mike has read through my blog work that I have produced so far and has given me some feedback for what he thinks of it and how he thinks I can improve. Below is the feedback that he has sent me via email.

"1) You have blogged about the brief, but have not mentioned who the clients are - You need to do this.

2) Good image of the people you nominated for the roles, but some text underneath it explaining why you chose the people you did would be useful.

3) Explain each of the job roles and what they involve :what the teams have to do

4) Upload your keynote presentation and give a brief intro explaining what it is about.

5) Blog the group meetings and what the outcomes were

6) Blog what you did this afternoon

7) Blog what your job role is and what you think to it

8) Blog about the feedback you have received from me and explain and you plan to change etc

It's going good so far"

Possible Advertisers

2010-03-08T03:54:00.000-08:00

Today we have looked into what possible organizations, people or companies may be interested in funding us for this newspaper and in return we would give them an advertisement within the newspaper. Here is a list of the possibles that we came up with.

LRSFC

OCR

The Junction

Bournemouth

Lincoln

Media Mag

Picture House

Heart(Radio)

Star(Radio)

8th March - Production Meeting

2010-03-08T03:29:00.000-08:00

Today we decided that it would be sensible for us to have a production meeting to see where we are all at and talk to others about what we should do next. This meeting involved the liaison, the quality control team and the three leaders from each group.

We started our meeting by finding out what liaison had been working on and what he is intending to do next to move the project along. He has been contacting Julian Mc Dougall and Jenny Graham to find out what content for the exams needs to be covered within the newspaper, the exam info and mark scheme.

Alex then asked myself and the other two group leaders to talk to our groups about what article ideas that they have, what they may write about and what title it may have. He wanted to make a list of all of the articles that we are likely to put into the newspaper. Below is a list of my groups article ideas;

James - Wikipedia "Has wikipedia helped researching online?"

Alie - Twitter "Twitter"

Philippa - Facebook "Has facebook ruined students social lives?"

Finally, we then went on to talk about possible people that may want an advertisement within our newspaper and would be willing to help fund this production.

New Idea for Newspaper - 8th March Session

2010-03-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

I well I have sat down and had a think about what modern day magazines have in them and what i thought I would like in one to help me with revision.

I have thought that a lot of magazines have something similar a 1-10 step guide or tips to something and I thought that this may be useful in a revision way. We could find 1-10 websites that are useful for revision or 1-10 steps to how to get revision completed efficiently. I thought that for an activity for Monday's lesson, we could research into some websites that we think would be relevant for revising for this exam and also research into magazines that use this 1-10 tips/step guide.

5th March - Sessions Work

2010-03-07T11:11:00.001-08:00

I was also off ill during today's session at college so I thought it was best to catch up so I knew what was needed of me after the weekend on Monday. During this session the class worked on making a report which will be used to help us understand how to help the students with revising for the exam, using the newspaper. The report was called 'Ways that teenagers learn' and this was written by Ash, Alie and Tim - as neither I or James present this session, Alie joined Tim and Ash.

Whilst the rest of class was getting on with the report, the team leaders researched to find further into what they thought should be in the newspaper and what articles should go in it and what topics etc.

The Internets Role Within My Life

2010-03-07T06:20:00.000-08:00

I find that I am one of those stereotypical students/teenagers who would spend most of their out of college time socialising with friends on the internet. The teenager life style has changed a lot of the years, from times when teens used to 'hang out' near the railway lines to now, where the majority of the teens spend half their time using the internet in some way. This isn't really a bad thing, as our job industries have developed so much that they need the internet to work efficiently and this is the same in cases with studying at college.

When I first managed to get involved in using the internet, I found the simple sites and necessary sites such as Hotmail, MSN, MySpace and Youtube. As I kept using the internet I got used to the way it worked but I felt no need to expand the websites that I used as it had no interest to me. I would login the Hotmail, MSN check emails, catch up with friends and edit my profile on MySpace. Today it hasn't really changed to some extent, as I use the same process of checking my emails, catching up with friends but now more websites have been introduced, I now use Facebook instead of using MySpace. MySpace was and still is a site which most people used to look up bands and make moderately interesting profiles to show off to over uses but you would never really have a conversation with anyone on there.

Facebook(a social networking site) was slowly introduced along side it and now it is the most popular social networking site on the internet. I think this is because it allows anyone to add anyone, have a conversation with friends from anywhere and using its applications to pretty much do anything. It is bringing a lot of people together, you are able to search for friends and in some rare cases you end up finding someone you haven't spoken to in years and reconnect with them.

They have many game applications which a lot of people use for boredom and a few of them have become quite popular to a point where non-Faacebook uses have heard of the 'indictions' to the game application. For example, there is a game application called Farmville, which I think no matter how long you have been on Facebook, you have used it at some point even if you never use it again. The game basically allows you to maintain your own farm, add neighbours and make coin to buy decorations for the farm. As well as game applications, they also have application where you can fill out quiz's and post your results on your profile page for other users to see and possibly then do the same.

I use quite a lot of the applications on a daily basis, however, I have started to use more of activities available on the site such as making events and groups. Facebook has progressed over the years and you are now able to make groups that anyone can join or make an event that anyone can go to. I have played about with this a lot recently, for example, making an event to go see the film Alice in Wonderland. I must admit, it was hard to get anyone to accept to the invite as I only wanted people I knew to be there and in the end we ended up not going. There are a lot more successful events, such as, the Cambridge Strawberry Fair which has 1,961 confirmed guests. This is has become quite useful, as for most of us, years ago we would have to make several phone calls to make an event but with Facebook, as long as you are friends with the people you want to invite, you can make the event and it can be sorted within minutes.

I think that Facebook has become the site that can't really do without. Generally I don't think I would be able to get on with my daily life without the internet. Social networking has become part of my daily routine and I think that without it, I wouldn't talk to as many people, I wouldn't have a lot to do most evenings and I wouldn't know much about what is going on. As Facebook has a message board as the 'homepage', where everyones status updates appear, I tend to see a lot of what they are up to and what is going on in the world outside of my life. I'm not really the kind of person that would watch the news and if anything serious, exciting or out of the ordinary has happened recently, it is bound to be in someone status at some point.

I would consider this site to be the one I am the most interested in and the one in which I could be considered an expert in. On the other hand, I don't really use many other sites, I chose not to and therefore I don't really think I would call myself an expert in any part of the web.

I think that the whole idea of Facebook is changing the way with live, these days I don't think people have much courage to just go out somewhere and make a random friend and they would just get the tiny thrill of adding someone random on Facebook who will hardly talk to you or lives on the other side of the world. I think that it has taken away some young adults social lives, of course we all still like to go out to bars and clubs, but I'll quite often sit online on a Friday night and wonder why myself and all my mates are online rather than going out on a Friday night. It may just be the expectations of our elders, as I was asked by my uncle the other day of why I was sat on Facebook on a Friday night rather than going out to get 'smashed'. When they were younger they didn't have the technology that we have today or the opportunities and I think that we may have got wrapped up in the wonders of the new technology, instead of taking up all the opportunities that are available to us.

For example, there may not be many jobs at the moment for students but when we get temporary jobs, we earn a lot more than students used to years ago. This gives us the opportunities to go out with the extra money with have, there are more bars and clubs and it is much more acceptable for students(over 18) to go out to have a laugh. More students are able to get through college and be able to go to university than they used to years ago and being there adds more socialising, which comes with university life.

The whole concept that if you have internet access you can be on Facebook when ever you want has become a profit to phone companies. Since most phones have now the internet available on them, apps are also available to use and they made, a now common, app for Facebook. This now means that anyone with the right technology and with the app, can now go online where ever and when ever they want. For the unlucky few who have the 'addiction' to Facebook, for example, then spend most of their time with their iPhone out, updating their status on Facebook. It now very easy for people to get addicted to the internet and its sites available and now we have other ways to get to it, rather than a computer, we now spend the majority of our day glued to these sites.

4th March - Sessions Work

2010-03-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

Today I was college ill so I decided that I would find out what they had been getting on with and to catch myself up with what they have done. The class spent the lesson writing up the questions for the questionaire that our scheduled manager has asked us to produce. They all thought of some questions that would be suitable to ask and once they were all decided on, they were all put together to form the questionnaire.

This was then sent off with Pete when he went to a different college and he managed to get each of them to fill out one cope of the questionnaire each. We will hopefully be getting our feedback on Monday 8th March.

Keynote Presentation on Newspaper Club

2010-03-03T14:52:00.000-08:00

I have researched into www.newspaperclub.co.uk and made my research from the site into a presentation.

Dave's(teacher) Description of the Structure of Making a Newspaper

2010-03-02T02:05:00.000-08:00

Today, as well as having a meeting and organising work, Dave has also come in to talk to us about how the roles would work in an actual newspaper business. It is quite different to how we are structuring it but I think it would be too complex and take too long for us to re-make the same system.

He started by showing us the structure of making a newspaper and how it is different to how we will be doing it within our project. I have taken a picture of my notes which show the diagram that he drew to explain the system. It starts with the editor at the top, dept editor which is along side the art editor. Both of these roles are under the editor and they will be taking orders, as it were, from the editor. Below these roles are the production editor, who would make sure that everyone was doing their job efficiently(Kirks role within our project), the section editor and another section editor. The final role beneath these is the staff writer who would do most of the leg work throughout the process and be doing a lot of the writing.

Dave then went on to tell us about the folder system that a document for the newspaper would go through. The document would start of going into the 'Raw copy' folder after first being worked on, then into a folder called 'Sub copy' and it would then be sent to the art editor, into the 'To Art' folder. From art editor it would go into a folder called 'From Art', then to 'To Caption' folder, to the 'Final Check' folder and then it would be sent to editor for any final checks, which would go into the 'SEND' folder.

Finally, Dave decided to explain to us about the 'Flat Plan'. This is the structure that you should follow when making a newspaper, it shows each page, what is to be on each page and you cross off each page when it is completed. This plan should be classed a working deadline so that you can see what you need to do in each step of the process.

There are five deadlines that you need to consider when making a newspaper. The first one is the Flat Plan deadline; second is the resource check deadline, third is the copy deadline, fourth is the find deadline and the last deadline is the print deadline.

2nd March - Meeting with All Team Leaders(myself, Loz and Sam)

2010-03-02T01:51:00.000-08:00

After my meeting with my group I then needed to have a meeting with the other group leaders to

see what they have managed to complete this session and to see if there is anything I can ask my

group to do that another has done.

I found out that Loz's group has been making a spider diagram of what subjects and link would be

useful for the newspaper and the consumer. This was a good idea, the sources will help the

students to revise and I have decided to ask my group to complete this task at home for Thursday.

Sam's group spent the session researching media magazine, gathering information on then so we

are more informed of who are client is and they were making sure that all of their blogs were

up to date and they were making sure everything was organized.

2nd March - Meeting with Blue Group( James and Alie)

2010-03-02T01:00:00.000-08:00

Today I need to sit down with my group, host a meeting and explain to them what we are doing, what needs doing and what we want done by Thursday.

I started off our meeting by explaining to James what the project is, what we have done so far regarding roles and gr

oup and also what we pla

n to do throughout the project. This was needed as he wasn't present for the beginning of the project and he needed to be informed. I also wanted to get him up to date with his blog and tell him what he needs to have blogged so far to catch up with the rest of us.

I then took a note of who was here, all member of our group apart from Joe, who wasn't in today.

Once the basics were covered and everyone was up to date, I then decided to give each of us tasks to complete this session and also something that they can be getting on with tomorrow and which needs to be ready for Thursday. We found a piece of paper and decided to make a spider diagram of questions that we thought would be useful to ask other students, to find out what they would want in a newspaper like this. The plan is that Pete

is going to a different school of Friday and he is willing to take a questionnaire for the students to fill out so we will need to produce some questions, in a suitable format. Below is an image of the spider diagram that we produced and I also asked our team to produce a good layout for our questionnaire and to fill it with questions, so that should be ready too test on Thursday to see if it is suitable.

Kirk came over to our meeting half way through to ask us to download a proposal form so I need to ask my group to download this on the Mac's at college and at home. However, the link did not work and we were not able to complete that task today.

Roles and Groups

2010-03-01T12:44:00.000-08:00

Liaison (talking with the client and getting back to the quality control team) - Alex

Quality Control Team;

Evidence (making sure everyone is producing evidence of what they are doing) - Tara

Reflection (making sure everyone is keeping up their blogs about the project) - Mike

Schedule (making sure all groups are on time with any deadlines) - Kirk

Red Team;

Leader - Loz

Team - Dave, Hayden and Matt H

Blue Team;

Leader - Myself

Team - Alie, James and Joe

Gold Team;

Leader - Sam

Team- Tim, Matt L and Ash

Below is the sheet that we each filled out to vote who we thought was best for each role.

The Brief and What I Think

2010-03-01T11:40:00.000-08:00

Our extended project is to produce a 12 page, colour newspaper and this newspaper will contain material that will help OCR media students to revise for the A2 critical perspectives exam. We will be working through this project in three teams of four, each group has a leader, three quality control leaders looking over these teams and a liaison who will be talking to the client.

We need to make the newspaper appealing to the target audience and also related to the revision for the exam so they are able to use it to help them. We are allowed to add what ever we want, within reason but it has to relate to the exam and be useful for the consumer.

I think that this project will be good for us as we haven't really made something like this before and we have really only produced videos. I think that working all together to construct something will also be good for us, as we have seen we can work well together, it would be nice to do better working together than we did on the show project.