Friday 28th August

Good afternoon, Year 10. Today's work is about applications.

Applications are computer programs that let you do specific jobs.
Use this web page to make notes on the three different sorts of interface:

1. Text
2. Text and menus
3. Graphical

Then use the right-hand menu on the same page to make brief notes on the different sorts of applications:

1. Word Processing
2. DesktopPublishing
3. Spreadsheet
4. Database
5. Graphics
6. Presentations
7. Communications
8. Browser
9. Web Pages
10. Email
11. Project Management
12. PIM
13. Integrated & Suites

Then do the quiz.

Your period's work should either be posted on your blog or emailed to fy@cashmere.school.nz

Thursday 27th August

Instructions for Year 10

Good morning, everyone. Your work for Thursday is to investigate Web 2.0. One of the great things about Web 2.0 is that everything can be labelled with tags, also called labels in Blogger, or key words when you are searching. At the top left of my blog, you should see a white box labelled Search Blog. If you type Web 2 into this box and click on Search Blog, you will find all my posts that have labels of Web 2. On Monday March 9th, I posted some questions about Web 2 and used the label of Web 2. You will need to do some research to answer these questions. Please email your period's work to me at fy@cashmere.school.nz

Hardware Task

Your job is to use hardware and software to describe hardware! You are allowed to be creative! You will hand in your work at the end of the period by emailing it as an attached file to fy@cashmere.school.nz

Hardware to use
· Your computer and its attached “peripherals”
· Headset and microphone
· Webcam

Software to use
· Anything you like that is on the school network

Questions to cover are:
Why do computers need hardware?
Find a definition of hardware - copy it and say where the definition came from.
Explain the difference between hardware and software in your own words.
Hardware can be split into four sorts: input, output, processing and storage. Give an example of each sort of hardware.
What special hardware do networks need?
What hardware is used by other sorts of DigiTech?

Things to do with hardware:

1. Use a webcam to take pictures of hardware in the room and add to your work.
2. Use a headset to record your voice talking about hardware. You could add this to your PowerPoint, or save it as a separate file.

Things to do with software:

1. Use PhotoStory to make a video about hardware.

Evaluating Technological Practice

One of the tasks in your Gantt chart is to evaluate your technological practice. This means that you should write a page for your folders responding to questions like these:

• How did your Gantt chart help you to organise yourself?
• How did you use your project diary?
• How could you organise yourself better if you did another similar project?
• How well did you relate to your client and stakeholders?
• How much did your code of practice research influence what you did during your project?
• What have you learned from doing this project?
• How did storyboarding help you to plan your video?

Don't just copy and paste the questions!

Do write full sentences and paragraphs!

Resources

As you work towards completing your video project, keep an eye on the time. We have one CD writer in C3, so you can't all burn CDs at the same time! And if you want to make a sticky label for your CD, there is only one computer that can do this and it has been taking people a couple of periods to do this. I will provide you with a CD. If you want a case for it, you need to provide your own. As I write this, I am thinking that we need a booking sheet for the CD writer and labeller. And it might be useful for you to make a day-by-day plan of what you still need to do to have your project complete by the due date of September 18th.

Year 10 DigiTech Blogs 2

Students in my Year 10 DigiTech class are making blogs to learn about Web 2.0 tools.
You can see the blogs here:

• Aaron
• Adam
• Amy
• Cameron
• Chrissy
• Greg
• Harry
• Jacob
• James
• Jesse
• Josh H
• Josh L
• Kayla
• Kimberley
• Nikki
• Sam
• Tesha
  
• Tom
• Chris
• Kharn
• Mel
• Angelo
• Bradley
• Iyesha
• Robin
• Todd
• Bryden
• Jack

Evaluation

When you have finished making your video, you need to evaluate it thoroughly.
To write your final evaluation do this:

• find your refined brief
• start with a statement of what you have made and who you have made it for
• for each specification in your refined brief, say whether you have done it or not
• for each specification you have not done, explain why
• summarise the feedback you got from stakeholders
• state how well you think you have solved the problem

Presenting your CD

You should give some thought to presenting your CD. Questions to think about include

• how to label it
• how to package it
• what information needs supplying with it

Note that it will be marked by Cashmere teachers and then sent away for external marking with your folder.

Final Video Files

When your final files are completed you will need to put them on to a CD. There is a CD Writer in C3. It is usually in the drawer under the middle table. It looks as though you need to be logged on to the teacher computer to use it, though maybe you can take it to your computer and pulg it in. Joseph is going to be our class expert on using this, as he is the first to get to this point.
Things to consider include:

• Size of your files - will they fit on the CD?
• Names of your files - will they make sense to someone else?
• Storing your CD safely.
• Labelling your CD

Use of Logos

You are required to find out about the terms of use of the Christchurch City Council logo. The search box on their website will help you to find information. You can also read their "Terms of Use".
The Rugby World Cup logo is harder to find information about. The contact details provided are only a postal address in Ireland. There are two versions of the logo for 2011, the official IRB one and the Rugby NZ one. The NZ Rugby Union website offers email contact details, but they do not show the World Cup logos on their home page so may not be able to grant permission.
If you are requesting permission, you could ask on behalf of the class and let us know how you get on.

Flickr for Photos

Finding good quality copyright-free images is a challenge. One option is to use Flickr, but you will need to do this at home as it is blocked at school. Like Google, Flickr has an advanced search option. At the bottom of the page there is an option to search within Creative Commons-licenced content. Check under Additional Information and look to see what the conditions of use are (may need to clcik on"some rights reserved".)

Video Versions

You will be delighted to hear that consultation with Mr Molyneux convinced me that I was making things too hard for you!

Your assessment handout asked for the video to be provided in "two versions (one for the display screens and one for mobile phone distribution)". This is a requirement. What you should be thinking about here is whether your video will look good on a mobile phone screen - you may need to reconsider some design features for this version. Movie Maker and Elements both offer options when you save/export your project as a video. You need to explore the options and decide which is appropriate for your requirements.

Also, note that the CCC briefing paper suggested that it would be helpful to have "two versions of the video, one with spoken narration and one with a musical soundtrack added." If you put this into your refined brief, you need to do it.

Requirements

A number of students are starting to ask me whether their video is good enough. This is not for me to decide. What you need to do is:

• Check your Refined Brief for the specifications - have you done everything you said you were going to do? If not, why not?
• If your Refined Brief does not have detailed specifications, refer back to Briefing Paper 1 for what the council wanted.
• Check your assessment handout for what it requires from the video.
• Get feedback from a range of other people.
• Keep a record for your folder of each of these steps.

I suggest that you do all this before finally exporting/rendering your project files!

Getting feedback on your work

People are starting to ask me to look at their videos. I am happy to do this, but it is important to get feedback from a range of people. Ideally this would include people who are are in the target age group and are not working on the project themselves.

It is also good to have specific questions to ask them, so they do more than just say "great". Some possible questions to ask are:

• What do you think the point of this video is?
• Can you suggest any improvements?
• What do you like best about it?
• Would it make you want to come to Christchurch?
• How clear is the link to the Rugby World Cup?

Video Length

The Christchurch City Council has asked for a one-minute video.
This means that they want it to be one minute long! (State the obvious, why don't you?)
This means that one minute and 30 seconds is too long! And 45 seconds is too short!
I think a reasonable "tolerance" would be ten percent - this means that the video could be shorter or longer by 6 seconds.
It matters because charging for showing on TV is based on length.
It also matters because you need to DO what the client wants.

If it was impossible to do what they asked for, you would need to go back to them with a new proposal. This would involve renegotiating the brief.

Selecting footage

Selecting footage means making decisions for each video clip we have given you:

1. Do I want to use it at all?
2. Do I want to use all of it?
3. What part(s) do I want to use?

The result of this stage might look like this:

ArtsCentre1: no. Better to use a still, but Art Gallery is not going to attract young people much.

Botanic Gardens: yes, but needs trimming at both ends, to give 10 seconds. Would be good to get a shot of canoes on river.

Interesting discussion: Storyboard before or after selecting footage? If you were taking your own footage, I would suggest storyboarding first. However when you have video clips given to you it makes better sense to decide which are good enough to use and how long they are before storyboarding.

Copyright

When you are making something for a real customer and a real reason, you need to be "squeaky clean" about copyright. This means that EVERYTHING you use MUST be either copyright free or your own personal work. If you wish to use something that is copyrighted, you must ask for and get permission, and keep the evidence.
Just so there is no excuse for misunderstanding, EVERYTHING includes

• Video
• Still images
• Music
• And anything else!

And MUST means MUST!

Finding copyright-free material can be a challenge. When looking for still images, use Google Advanced Images Search and under Usage Rights select "labeled for reuse". At home, you could try Flickr - amateur photographers are often keen to share their work.

You may not use mp3 files, even if you own the CD. If you want to read more about the laws around this, try these sites:

• NZ Law Society 2009
• Creative Freedom NZ
• Consumer (this is from 2008, so slightly out of date, but explains things simply and clearly)

YouTube

YouTube is great for sharing videos, but of course you can't access it at school. I went looking at its policies and found a page of terms and conditions that you are agreeing to by "using andor visiting" the website. When I copied and pasted the text into Word, it came to 11 pages and 3914 words! I intended to summarise the main points for you but it was just too hard! You can look at the page yourself at home!

Instead, I found YouTube's Community Guidelines and saved them in iNet > ICT > Year 11-12 >CCC Problem. This webpage goes onto two Word pages and is only 745 words long. And it gives us eight guidelines that are easy to summarise and understand. I suggest using these as the YouTube Community Code of Practice. These guidelines are a good place to start when thinking about the standards that the Christchurch City Council is likely to set.

Gantt Charts

A Gantt chart is a way of managing your time when you are working on a project.
It may show time in weeks or days.
It shows all the jobs that need to be done to complete the project.
At the beginning of the project it shows how long you think each stage in the project will take.
It is useful to help you keep track of where you are up to.

A Gantt chart can and should be revised as things change. If something takes longer than expected, there is less time to spend on something else. If something is faster that expected, you can spend more time on something else, or even finish earlier! It is important to show that your Gantt chart has need adjusting during the course of your project.

Instructions for Monday 20th July were to

1. Open your Gantt chart.
2. Check that you have included storyboarding.
3. Revise so that you can complete everything by the due date.
4. Print an updated version.
5. Handwrite comments about changes needed.
6. Put into your folder - do not remove the old one.

Happy Birthday to the Library!

Christchurch's Public Library is turning 150 this year!
There is a website especially for this event.
As part of the celebrations they are running a competition, asking people to make a 1-3 minute video about the library and upload it to YouTube. The information on the competition page gives some guidelines which are also relevant to our Rugby World Cup video project and may be useful for developing codes of practice.