Thursday, June 24, 2010

Tutorial eight

In this tutorial i learnt how to upload a flickr badge and youtube video onto my blog. Ive added short videos that give you step-by-step instructions on how to do this

Embedding a flickr badge onto blogger

How to embed a youtube video onto your blog

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Tutorial Seven: Assistive Technology

This tutorial focused on assistive technology and its uses. Assistive technology is "any item, piece of equipment, or product system that is used to increase or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities". (Cook, & Hussey, 1995)

An example of assistive technology equipment is the Go Talk. This piece of equipment comes in various forms such as the pocket Go Talk, The Go Talk 20+, and the Go Talk 4+. I'm going to focus on the Go Talk 4+. The Go Talk 4+ is a portable communications device that is battery operated. It has 5 recording levels, 20 messages recorded on 4 big buttons, and 4.5 minutes of memory. The size of the Go Talk 4+ is 23cm x 30.5cm x 2.9cm and it costs $229.
The Go Talk 4+ can be used for anyone who has a condition that limits speech. E.g Autism, down syndrome, and cerebral palsy. It enables people who struggle to communicate verbally to communicate with others.

Tutorial Six: The internet and online communities

The Tutorial for this week was about looking at online communities. The online community I'm going to focus on is facebook. Facebook is a type of social networking website where "users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally users can join networks organized by workplace, school, or college". Retrieved on 24, June, 2010, from www.wikipedia.org/wiki/facebook. Facebooks web address is http://www.facebook.com/.



The purpose of this site is to provide people with a social website that enables them to communicate and interact with others. The user can add friends, join groups, send both personal and public messages, upload pictures, upload videos, receive birthday notifications, and complete quizzes or games that are sent by other users.



I believe people choose to contribute to this community as its an easy to use website that enables them to communicate and stay in touch with friends and family no matter where they are around the world. I use facebook for this very reason. Facebook allows me to stay in touch with my family in South Africa and America. I can keep updated with their lives by looking at their wall posts and photos



Topics discussed on facebook are usually about whats going on in peoples lives but can be about anything the user feels like sharing or talking about. As peoples lives are consistently changing so are their profiles.



Ethics to consider when using facebook are:


  • False facebook accounts of people - identity theft.

  • Other facebook users can upload photos of you without your permission.

  • Potential for cyber-stalking and harassment.

The facebook community has many benefits over traditional notions of community. Users are able to quickly share lots of information and stay connected with people no matter where they are geographically. Users can remain silently observant before participating and all users are able to have an equal voice.


However there are still things that facebook lacks. It lacks face to face communication, It has limited communication tools, and those without Internet are unable to access it.

Tutorials Four and Five: Video production Sessions

In these Tutorials we learned some basic film production skills and the importance of planning and preparing for video productions. Our task was to work in a small group to produce a short film and to then post our short film onto YouTube. "YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos". Retrieved on June, 24, 2010, from www.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube.

The use of planning specifically storyboarding and scripting really helped make our short film possible. Storyboarding is the use of a sequence of pictures to tell the plot of the film as it will appear on screen. The storyboard is a plan of the end product. Our storyboard was made up of 10 pictures (scenes) and enabled all the members of my group to know exactly what was going to happen before we began filming. It was good because when we got stuck whilst filming or forgot a scene we could go back to our storyboard to help us remember what to do. The use of scripting enable the actresses in our short film to know everything they had to do and say. The use of a storyboard and of scripting enabled my group to make a great short film and made me realize how important good planning is to all films.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Tutorial Three:Blog

This tutorial was were we set up out blog and learnt how to use it.
"a blog is a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and web links". Retrieved on June, 23, 2010, from www.markitingterms.com/dictionary/blog. A blog is like a diary with all a persons thoughts, ideas, opinions recorded down on a website for people to share with others. Blogger is a website in which peoples blogs are able to be recorded down.