Monday, June 1, 2009

Tutorial Eight: Assistive technology

Assistive technology- Equipment and software available for people with special needs. No matter the impairment, there is likely an item of equipment or software that can assist people with learning, with communication and with using a computer.

Quad Joy- Developed for people suffering from paralysis (quadriplegia), progressive muscular dystrophy, motor neurone disease, Multiple sclerosis or arm amputation. You blow or suck to click, you move the mouse solely around by your mouth. This piece of equipment connects to the computer via USB and is around $1800-$1900.

The quad joy allows the person to play games and learn. They are able to have full access to computer programmes and acts as a way for them to express themselves, ‘to have a voice’.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Embeding a Flikr badge into your blog!

I have uploaded another step by step easy to follow clip on how to embed a Flickr badge into blogs.

How to embed You Tube videos into blogs

I have added a you tube clip which explains clearly step by step. Basically you copy the information in the 'embed' on the right side of the clip. Then you paste it into a new posting under 'Edit Html, and it should upload after clicking 'publish post'.


Thursday, May 14, 2009

Tutorial six: The internet and online communities

Threadless - http://www.threadless.com/
This is a website were people can design there own t-shirt and if they get enough votes fro the print the t-shirt is made and sold. You can design t-shirts for guys, girls and children.
People contribute to this website because it’s a chance for designers to get their prints out there and see how well received it is by the public. People who buy the t-shirts are looking for individual style because the t-shirts are not going to be in chain stores.
This Threadless community are seeking recognition for their T-shirt designs. The people who create and add their designs are creating a reputation and effectively a sense of community, belonging to the Threadless group.
-Snip of information from the comments board.
Ask Maria Taylor!!
Woohoo! We're super psyched here because MARIA TAYLOR is coming into the HQ today for a Tee-V interview and a performance!!What do you want to know? Submit questions below! If we pick yours, we'll send you something nice. :)”

The ethical issue around Threadless is the fact that its worldwide so people may copy each others ideas of prints that the people in other countries have not seen before and they could take the credit for someone else's design.
The benefit of this online community being worldwide is that it connects people from other countries. Threadless also connects people from around the world with similar interests in T-shirt designing.
Threadless lacks validity of the designs as you never know if the T-shirt designs are original or not. Another negative factor of the website is all the teenage jargon within the website.

Tutorial four and five: Video production sessions

What is youtube?
YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. You can go online and also make comments to peoples clips. Videos can range from humorous clips to educational.
The use of planning our short film helped a lot as we weren’t making decisions while filming we had it all organised frame by frame. Organising it before hand makes the directors job easier as everyone’s had the chance to have their say in the classroom and now its all up to the director they don’t have to argue while filming.
As there can be complications when filming like it raining or something having a clear planned out script helped us focus back to what weve got to do without leaving a shot out. Planning also cuts down the filming time and therefore resulting in more time for editing (the longest part).

Tutorial 3: Blog creation task

Tutorial 3: Blog description
Blogger was launched in 1999, it’s a place where people can go on the internet and publish their thoughts. Other people can also access there blogger page to read about their thoughts. Through blogger you can engage with your friends and customize your blog to show your personality for example customising your template, background or changing the colours, fonts and arrangements of page elements.

Tutorial Two: Digital Camera use and applications

Digital cameras
“A new technology is rarely superior to an old one in every feature”
Pulses of Digital cameras are you are able to delete any unwanted photos, you can print them yourself on your computer, you can email pictures easier without having to scan them.
Pulses of traditional film based cameras are I think most of the time it’s a better quality photo, you have the hard copy printed then instead of them all on computer files, I think you take thought out photos compared to taking lots of photos of the same thing using a digital camera because you know you can delete them later.
Digital camera photos are usually transferred from the memory card to a computer where they are stored in files. They can then be transferred by email (uploading/downloading), floppy disks, USB sticks, CD’s and posted on blogs or communicating websites.
The ethical issues when using a digital camera are that people may be in the background of a shot and haven’t given consent. Its very easy for the person with the photos to send them around to a lot of people and they are harder to destroy on file that having the had copy or negatives. There are also copyrights that go with photos so duplicating and emailing a photo is not always legal.
OTs can use digital camera’s when doing housing modifications to get an accurate photo of the room, on websites advertising a programme or group running, in catalogues or pamphlets about equipment.
Flickr.com is a place on the internet you can store photos and videos. You can edit them, make a slide show, crop and zoom in/out of photos.
One other photo storage website is: www.snapfish.co.nz
Optical zoom is: Is a zoom function in the lens of the camera that you can apply before you take a photo.
Digital zoom is: applied after the photo is shot it magnifies the photo although the larger it is magnified the quality of the photo decreases.
Megapixel is: the term used for the number of pixels there are in a photograph. Each individual pixel contain a colour that all goes together to make up the whole picture.