The End!!!

Over the course of the 10 weeks I have learned quite alot! I have learnt and improved upon skills as well as furthered my knowledge on technology and the lectures have allowed me to think about factors, which I wouldn’t usually consider. Overall I found each workshop and lecture interesting as it allowed me to think and develop further.

Final Artefact

The final artefact required us to combine our knowledge on Flash and Dreamweaver in order to produce one final artefact. We had to produce a slideshow within our website, with all the requirements stated within the blog. In my website I had left a blank space where my flash slideshow would fit in and therefore I had to create a slideshow to fill in the space. I wasn’t completely confident in producing my buttons and making my images fade in and out however after a bit of experimenting I soon figured it out! The factors, which I expected to be the easiest, were actually the hardest and vice versa! Such as importing my slideshow into Dreamweaver was pretty straightforward however it took some experimenting to make my buttons work and to learnt how to make all my images fade in and out.

Flash workshop 2

Continuing from the 1st workshop on Flash we were shown how to create a slideshow of images with the use of buttons, which enables us to go back and forth as well as fade in and out of the images. What we had learned within these two workshops had to be clearly visible within our final artefact and I therefore had to ensure that I experiment with the programme.

Flash- Workshop 1

The final programme, which we were going to learn about, was Flash and we were informed that our final artefact would consist of using this particular software. I was unfamiliar with Flash and have never come across it before and was keen to learn about what the programme is about. I learned that Flash specialises in creating animations, which sounded particularly interesting, and as well as this it can be used to create slideshows, which is what we will be doing. Mez went through the basics with us the first factor, which we learnt about three aspects of Flash; key frames, motion tween and similar to Photoshop Flash also contains layers. By the end of the workshop I wasn’t completely confident with how to use the programme however with practice I was confident that I soon would be.

Improving my Website

As Nick had suggested, I should insert div tags to my website and I decided that it would benefit me if I created a whole new website, however still with the same contents as this would allow me to ensure that I fully understand and know how to create a website with div tags. I found that this was very useful as I was also able to insert my improved images, which followed a story. I created a header, which contained my title and the menu bar was a method of navigation for to each of my pages and before I knew it I had created my website!

Feedback

I had my feedback session with Nick in connection with the work I previously handed in, in order for him to give me advice on the improvements I need to make and to inform on any positive and/or negative factors. Nick commented that I should add a few more images to my flickr slideshow and that I should follow a story with my data as this would be more relevant as well as interesting as well as gain me a higher mark. He further commented that I demonstrated the basic use of html links well and CSS and commented that I should insert div tags to my artefact. And finally my blog is up to date and that I should maintain it. I took his advice into account and took some a couple of more photographs and edited the existing ones to create a story and re uploaded them onto my flickr account. I decided to improve my website at a later date.

DreamWeaver continued

Following on from the previous workshop we continued to learn more about DreamWeaver and focused on div tags, which I found quite difficult to grasp. We were informed that proffessional webiste contain headers which contains the name of the webiste and a menu bar. We were to try and understand how to follow this through and as Mez was expaling and showing us I found the idea quite complex. As I was following each step I required some assitance and Nick helped me and at the end of the workshop I could see tha difference the div tags made, my pages looked more proffessional now. I knew that in order for me to become confident in inserting div tags I would have to practice a lot more!

Creating our own webiste!

Our second artefact required us to use our knowldege of Dreamweaver, we were informed that we would have to produce a webiste, which allows us to demonstrate our knowledge of creating links with both texts and images as well as using CSS. As advised by Mez I created my route directory ensuring I created a new folder for my site and then I started to structure my pages, starting with my index page-my homepage, which featured links to all of my pages and as I was creating each page I named each individual page with a different name. In order to ensure that I fully engage with the task itself, to create links I decided to use my images from my previous artefact as this would save time and allow me to focus on creating the links and to experiment with the software, with the use of CSS I created a background colour and editied my font. To my surprise I found that I enjoyed creating my artefact, although I have made a webiste within college with Dreamweaver I enjoyed having more time to experiment with the software and was pleased that I was able to create my webiste quite easily with little assistance!

DreamWeaver

The next software which we were introduced to was DreamWeaver, which was another programme I had previously used in college, however I wasn’t as confident using this particular software as I was with PhotoShop as we only briefly covered it within college. The first factor which Mez stressed upon and showed us how to follow through before going onto creating your website was to set up a route directory for your site. It was crucial to ensure that we keep our folders well organised as any folders or any factors within the folder that have been moved will cause problems. Mez showed us the structure of HTML and showed us CSS, which is a new factor to me.

Data Visualisation

The first artefact which we had to produce, which was the flickr slideshow was based on the lecture of Data Visualisation. In the lecture we were shown several different types of ways in which professionals had used to represent data. The one, which stood out to me, the most was the method used to represent population in different countries, by laying out mats, which represented a particular country, different portions of rice were laid out on each mat with one grain of rice represented one person. This was very visually interesting and mind blowing to see.

We were informed that we are able to use digital camera or our mobile phones to take photographs of the data, which we wish to represent. I chose to take photographs using my digital camera and took photos around my house of the products, which I frequently use such as my computer, mobile phone, ipod, TV, wii, toaster, playing on the wii and can make you hungry! I also chose to photograph the washing machine, as it is my job to put the washing on! And finally the cooker lights as this would represent electricity which is what all of my products use. I collected my statistics and with the use of Photoshop I was able to place my data on my images and finally upload them onto my photostream.