The document discusses the technology tools used by the author for their coursework over multiple years, including a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop, Google search, Blogger site, SlideShare presentations, a Kodak camera, Sony Xperia Play phone, Picnik photo editing site, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel. Issues encountered included the laptop mouse stopping working and a camera with short battery life, while tools like Blogger, SlideShare, and Google were found to be most useful overall.
2. Lenovo ThinkPad T60
I have had this laptop for a couple of
years now. There was no new
technology I used on the laptop itself.
I took the laptop to school with me as
well as using it as home. This laptop
isn’t particularly light so it was quite
difficult to carry around. There were a
few times (as I mentioned in my
previous technology post) that the
mouse didn't work so I had to keep
restarting it. Due to this it limited the
time I had working if I was on a limit,
for example in a lesson.
3. Google.com
This was the only search engine I used
through out my coursework. I have
always found that this is the fastest
and best quality search engine. It was
easy to access other sites on it, such as
blogger and slide share. I’ve learnt
that I should continue to use Google as
I don’t have any criticisms!
4. Blogger
At first I found blogger very difficult to use
and thought it was over complicated. There
are still things I find unclear on the sight. For
example uploading a slideshare
presentation to my blog. To my surprise
‘upload a video’ wasn’t the way you were
meant to do it. I only found out how to do it
about a week before I started my evaluation
– as I knew I would need to be able to do
this. However, after using blogger for my
coursework I feel that I would use it with
confidence again if I ever needed to. I learnt
a lot about blogger and found that it was a
good site to use for presenting my
coursework.
5. Slide Share
I got a slideshare account as it had
been recommended to me by many
people. I have seen a few slideshare
presentations and was impressed by
there quality – as they presented
information clearly and in an
organised way. After learning how to
do it, I embedded the HTML code into
my blog, and this produced my
slideshare presentation on my post. I
would use slideshare again for
presenting my ideas.
6. Kodak M550
I found that this camera battery runs out fairly
quickly. I only found this out when I was taking
my recce pictures when my camera died about
¾’s of the way through. I had to continue once
my camera had charged again.
However, I was pleased with the quality of the
images produced. The camera was light, easily
portable and very robust. Apart from a low
battery life, I was very pleased with this piece of
technology.
7. Sony Erisson Xperia Play
I was able to access blogger through my
phone as they have a mobile friendly site.
I was unaware of this until I went on
holiday and needed to access my blog,
but didn’t have my laptop. This was very
useful as I didn’t want to fall behind on
the deadlines I had set myself through
out my coursework. I knew that my
mobile phone had access to the internet
but I didn’t realise that certain sites had a
mobile friendly site. I learnt that my
mobile has better internet connection
than I thought. I didn’t use it often before
my coursework as I thought it would be
too slow. But, after using to access my
blog, I intend to use it more.
8. Picnik
I had use picnik previously to edit pictures. Unfortunately
the site is closing down, however this means that I had
access to premium features for free. This was very useful
as it allowed me to edit my pictures, for example airbrush
and add makeup. This site was very good for editing my
photos. I found this site very easy to use, even when I
used it for the first time. I would of liked to of used it
again but the site is closing on the 19th April.
9. Microsoft Publisher
I used Publisher to help my create my
DPS. In fact, I used it for the majority of
it. It allowed me to easily add text
boxes and it is very easy to use. I liked
the fact I could group things and save
them as pictures – this meant I could
easily upload them to my blog. I didn’t
think I would use Publisher as much as I
did but, combined with picnik, was very
effective at creating my magazine.
10. Microsoft Word
I have been using Word of a number of
years and find it very easy to use. I could
use it to create slideshare presentations. I
like Word because it produces professional
looking documents which I needed, for
example my questionnaire.
11. Microsoft Excel
I used Excel to present my questionnaire
results. I wanted to do this to make my
blog a bit more interesting instead of just
writing long wordy posts. I was fairly
familiar with Excel and it became easier to
use as I was creating the pie charts. I
would use Excel again for this purpose.
