Final Project: Where to Begin?

It's the start of December and we were given our final project for the class. A few months ago, we chose a topic and have done multiple projects on it. I chose the topic of Media because I am personally interested in what goes on to get the news out and how it is recieved. The media is such an important topic because of its changes and evolution. As time goes on, people have more options than just the newspaper, which is beginnning to be a problem for the newspapers. The internet has made getting the news fater and easier. People are opening up their laptops for the latest news, whereas the newspaper is publishing news that is already sometimes already known. At first I didn't know where to begin on this project because the topic is so broad, but now I think I am on my way.


I started off really confused and didn't know where to begin. We were told that we needed to use 3 tools that we haven't used before to collect and present information. I spent quite a few days on go2web20.net, which is a website that has hundreds of online tools to choose from. It allows you to narrow down your search by clicking on different topics. I started by clicking the "To-Do" button because I wanted to find sites that would help manage my time. I would post due dates and post updates on what I'm doing. I found a website called diary.com, which allows you to do all the things I just mentioned. A cool thing about Diary is that Mr. Miller can accept my request and view my page and recieve the updates. This website is where I am storing some of my ideas, but I'm also using Google Documents. It doesn't count as one of my tools, but I think it is a really good way to use an "online version" of Microsoft Word.

One of my main ways of presenting my information is a video. I personally like making movies so I decided to do something that I enjoy. On Window's Movie Maker, I am going to edit a video of the Changing Media using clips of people I interview and pictures. I am also going to use people's YouTube videos and chop them up and insert them into my video. I've seen people do it but never knew how. I then found a tool from go2web2o.net called Online Video Converter. This tool will take the youtube video and convert it to the form you need to edit. It will save on my computer and be easily accessed. This tool allows me to get opinions from people online who I have never met before.

I am not totally set on my final tool but I think it may be digg.com. Digg.com is a social bookmarking site that you can join and view articles of people who like the same things as you. The other day I was experimenting digg.com and found great articles on the newspapers dying out. I will use digg.com as a tool to collect information and easily save URLs.

I hope to get this project done and manage my time. I don't mind presentations and this is much better than doing a research paper. I'm actually excited to make a movie because it is something I like to do on my own time. I'm unsure of using Digg, but if I am using a different tool, I hope to find it soon.

Picture: from Photobucket by spotus