Reflection

This is my official final blog post.

I enjoyed the unit and felt that I have learnt a lot of new funky things. I got to play with sites such as Google Maps and Flickr which I most likely wouldn't have otherwise.

I let the blogs slip a little as other things got in the way, like work....

I would like to thank the lectures/tutors for all their help and feedback.

:O))))

Previous Project link

http://u3002192.blogspot.com/

Project 2 (including report)

For Project 2, I decided to create a photographic tour. At first I planned to write a story of a guy ‘Dave’ waking up in Hyde Park, delusional and uncertain of what he did the night before. I started to write the narrative however, I got stuck half way. I was unsure whether the narrative would be sufficient to sustain a visual story. I had the beginning and the end but no middle that had a climax/conflict in it. I then decided to go for a walk to see the Sculptures by the Sea at Bondi and as usual I took my camera with me. Whilst walking from Bondi to Tamarama, I took a range of photos which were mainly of the sculptures and other structures. I uploaded these photos onto Flickr to use for my project. After viewing the photos, this inspired me to write a new story targeted at children aged from 6-8 year old. Due to this, I kept the narrative short and simple by using plain English.
I downloaded Google Earth and started to play around with it. After a few attempts and not feeling that I was getting anywhere with the task, I decided to try out Google Maps. I found Google Maps much easier to use and felt it would work well with my story as it was easy to use from the views point. I came across a couple of problems whist using Google Maps. With Google Earth each placemark is clearly numbered and you could see the title without clicking on it. This is not featured in Google Maps. However I would have liked to use this feature. I searched the internet to see if I could find out how I could add this feature but I couldn’t find anything of relevance. I thought that maybe one could hover over the placemark and that would display the number or title, but this was of no success either. So I stuck with what I had to work with and numbered each placemark so the view could easily know which placemark to click onto next.
Another problem I encountered with the use of Google Maps was that after reviewing my story, I realised I needed to add an extra placemark towards the beginning of the story. I added the placemark and tried to move it towards the beginning though I was not able to. I again searched the internet to see if this was possible but could not find anything. In the end I asked Max for help and he told me that it’s a glitch in the system when using Explorer and suggested to use FireFox or Sefari. I found that FireFox worked well and fixed the problem. Additionally, Google Maps wouldn’t allow me to show direction so I had to draw the lines manually.

Also, the ‘Walk’ feature on Google Maps didn’t seem to work the way I intended it to. The paths were still on the road and I had to move the path free-handed to where I actually walked. Nevertheless, this could be been following the footpath along the road instead of the walking trail along the beaches and over the cliffs. Apart from the above I felt that I had learnt to use the program well within a short amount of time. There was a lot of information available on Google Maps and Earth located on the internet.

Furthermore, I used Flickr to upload my photos for the narrative. I also used ‘Creative Common’ to search for photos such as the women in the red hat and the guy in flip flops. I made sure that the photos were licensed appropriately for me to use. I wrote the story on a notepad and then typed it in Microsoft Word. This was handy as I then just copied and pasted the words into Google Maps in each individual placemark description.

Overall, Google Maps was relatively easy to use apart from missing a couple of features which could have made the narrative flow more effortlessly. For me the narrative was the tricky part, as I don’t believe I am the most creative person. This is one of the reasons I decided to do this as my project as it was more of a challenge for me. Overall, I feel that the project went well apart from the few glitches.

Here is the link to my photographic tour.

Quiz

So I dont think I did so well on the quiz and thought I would research the questions I couldnt answer. So now I know what I long tail is, check it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail

Icon test

Good VIbes SyDnEy!!!!!!

I got Tix to Good Vibes in Feb 09!!! YAY!!

check out the line up...

http://www.moshtix.com.au/Event.aspx?id=21397&pLock=&vip=&skin=641&ref=moshtix

WOO HOO - The Roots... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFb9UqELX8w

Whoops!!!

Obviously I'm not very good at blogging as I've somehow managed to lose access the first blog I created... Access gone!

So, I've created a new blog - here it is, I've managed to link it to my new blog, lets hope it works.

http://suzannabeljanski.blogspot.com/